PRESIDENT OBAMA'S PROBLEM

President Obama does have a problem. He's a mainstream, centrist liberal, not a progressive. That means he's about 50 years out of date. I think he's an essentially a good man; he's smart, a constitutional scholar, his heart is in the right place, but his thinking isn't. He is also tied to neoliberal principles, those vestiges of cold war thinking that are not so much different from neoconservatism. That ideology makes us a dominant and interfering power in the politics of other nations and earns us their disrespect. These are major reasons why Obama is having such a hard time solving our current problems.

The old liberalism should be dead. No ideology can last in the face of unpredictable social changes. The Republicans took advantage of liberalism's decline, but with little evolution of conservative policies, only repackaged. These ideas have run aground. But liberalism didn't die; it has evolved into a progressive ideology that is a major critique of the old liberalism, yet preserves its spirit. Many Americans seem to understand this, but the Democrats in charge don't understand this. They are too tied to the status quo and the support of large corporate and other special interests.

It's hard for him and the Democrats to fight against the Republican ideologies: rampant, unregulated capitalism, a gambling economy based in the stock market, privatization of social concerns. The supposed wisdom of markets, capitalism and profit must be questioned. Corporate and other institutional political powers should be curtailed and placed under the will of the people to serve us, otherwise they are rogue institutions acting in self-interest for the benefit of a few to undermine the well-being of the nation. This may be the only way to restore the responsibility of government.

For many decades it appears that our presidents have been puppets of the controlling corporate and government institutional powers. They can't be fully independent. Obama isn't an exception. His power relies on their agendas, not the agendas of the people. A president must act only on the support of the people.

I'm not sure how to restore the independence of the presidency or whether we should allow an executive independence from the wishes of the people. Shouldn't he be dependent on the wishes of all the people and encourage us to deliberate issues and devise a better national agenda so that he might help us to achieve it? Shouldn't the president represent the will of the people and be the spokesman to implement it?

Obama wants to be be the representative of all the people, but it is impossible to achieve total agreement among Americans. We operate by majoritarian democracy. G. W. Bush tried to be a ruler and failed. But Obama needs to reach out to us as a leader and be more persuasive for the causes that would make our nation a better place for everyone. He should also be willing to offer critiques of policies that haven't worked and can't work. He must be able to promote a comprehensive ideology for major social change toward greater fairness and political equality. He still hasn't presented us with a coherent set of reasons to make broad social changes, so his opposition can too easily pick away at him. Sadly, he isn't a visionary who can inspire us.

Progressives must find better ways to influence president Obama and push him toward these more humane and equitable principles. I think he might be amenable to changing his mind when he sees the reasoning underlying what the people need, but he will need a large, committed support base. It would be easier to influence this one single man than the many representatives in Congress, with their intertwining connections to special interest powers. Then, if progressives had his pulpit it would be easier for us to influence the Congress on a state by state basis.