The Crucible Awaits

From Andrew Sullivan's column for the Sunday Times (London), on the "asteroid strike" of Scott Brown's election last week:

It was staggeringly demoralizing for the Democrats.

In one swoop, the implications sank in. As long as the Republicans refuse to accept or compromise on anything, as long as they insist on filibustering every single piece of legislation Obama favors in the Senate, then nothing can be done. That's how the system works. It doesn't matter that the House passed health reform (and cap and trade) by a big margin months ago. What matters is that just one or two senators can hold up the entire process indefinitely. This is, of course, an insane way to govern a country. But it's right there in the Constitution. Because every state gets two senators, and the empty rural states tend to be Republican, you end up with the fact - illustrated by writer James Fallows - that the Senators favoring health reform represent 63 percent of Americans, while those voting against represent 37 percent. But the 37 percent wins. Hence the great spoof headline of last week:  Republicans win 41 - 59 majority in Senate. . . .

I feel for the guy. His bill was attacked by the left as a sell-out to insurance companies; it was attacked by the foam-flecked right as communism - the end of America as they have known it. The bill remains more moderate than those once proposed by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Obama has also taken all the blame for the recession and the debt, as if Bush never existed. And he has helped turn the economy around in ways not yet felt on main street.

But this is the big time and politics is a contact sport. How Obama responds to this will tell us a huge amount about him. He cannot and should not reinvent himself as a Democratic partisan. He isn't. He cannot fake populism. He's too responsible for that. He cannot ram a bill through by hook or by crook if he is to respect the genuine anxiety about the reform. So he has to be calm, patient, reasonable and somehow harness Democratic anger as well. He is still well-liked and his approval ratings have recently been gliding up. He could easily prosper personally, as Clinton did, by presiding over a Congress dominated by the opposition. But he does not want to be a Clinton; and the times require much more.

If he fails now, the reformist center of American politics, fragile at best, may be gone for a long time. And so his crucible awaits. The promise of his candidacy - that there must be a way to unite Americans in dealing with their longstanding problems - hangs in the balance. I do not know - because no one can - how he will grapple with this. But one recalls that politics, in the country as well as Massachusetts, is always pregnant with the possibility of surprise. And the audacity - for it is truly audacious now - of hope.