Obama As The Red And Blue President

Manzi thinks over the Brown win:

I don’t know anybody who supports the status quo health care finance system in the U.S. Reform is required, and what is likely more important than the specifics of the first step is that we get underway on what will, if we’re lucky, be iterative reform in which we have a political system that can learn from experience.

Sensing just how much reform is possible, and getting a nation to go along with you is one mark of a statesman.

FDR, Churchill and Reagan all had this mysterious ability (and good luck) – they were each able to reconcile the eternal tensions of a society, as manifest in the specifics of their time and place, inside one mind. I believe that Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich were able to do this only in productive tension with one another; in combination, they produced pretty good governance. As per Ross’s comments, I suspect that we will discover during 2010 whether Obama is able to do this, or will require tension with a more conservative congress.

My sense is that Obama understands that his core responsibility as president is not being a partisan figure. That's what he ran against in many ways. And I think he sees all this in terms of eight years. He is gambling on democracy working over time, on the president setting the general direction but allowing the Congress and the public to decide how fast and how specific they want to get. He always said he wanted to be the president of the red states and the blue states. His major problems right now are a) an apoplectic and incoherent opposition that feels it is doing something by randomly harnessing populist frustration in a recession and playing the Rovian politics which is all they know and b) a useless bunch of disorganized morons and cowards who make up the Congressional Democrats.

But he's still by far the best thing we have going for us. And this struggle has just begun. Politics is not magic; it's not a one-off event. It's a process of grueling argument, tussling and debate. And the deeper truth is: many Independents who are ornery right now like Obama. His decency and civility and reason are plain to see. And so this is his moment as well. To be the anchor in a turbulent time and to keep making the arguments for necessary reform.