Obama's Resurrection

Sasha Abramsky, author of Inside Obama's Brain, writes here about the resurrection of Obama's transformative Presidency.

Obama has always been more interested in long-term transformative politics, in the building of new institutions and new social relationships, and in doing so at a sustainable tempo, than in the short-term gimmicks that too often pass for serious political discourse in modern-day America.

Senior policy advisers I spoke with for my book told me how Obama would come into meetings and tell them that instead of thinking about tomorrow's poll numbers or headlines, they should think about what sort of a country they wanted to live in twenty years down the road, then think about what institutions and policies had to exist ten years from now to put America on the road to that sort of change; then think about what it would have to look like five years, and finally one year from now to get there.

Thinking long-term, instead of being preoccupied with the twenty-four hour news cycle, has always made Barack Obama a hard political figure to pigeon hole, and it has frequently made commentary on Obama inadequate. When the daily headlines go sour for Obama, commentators stampede to denounce his ineffectiveness, his indecisiveness. It happened during the primary season, when many argued he couldn't close the deal against Clinton -- and then he did. It happened during the election campaign when many, including influential figures within the Democratic Party, thought he had been blind-sided by McCain's choice of Palin as a running mate -- and then he rode out the hype and won a resounding election victory. Now it has happened again with health care reform.