Rise to the Moment

Rise to the Moment

The New Republic:

The greatest risk for Democrats is not that Obama will try to do too much, but that their terror of failure will lead them to waste an historic opportunity. This is not a Clintonian moment. It is more like the moment Lyndon Johnson inherited in 1965, or the one Franklin Roosevelt faced in 1933—a chance to reshape American government. The Democrats have it in their grasp to master the great problems of public life if they can summon their collective nerve. The only thing they have to fear is fear itself.

As all of the other progressive bloggers are chanting ad nauseam: Obama ought to seize this historic opportunity not to reassert traditional Clintonian political commitments by “triangulating” policies and hence conceding enormous political capital to the discredited GOP, but to redefine the terms upon which the entire political debates are framed. As soon as Obama has succeeded in framing the debates on progressive grounds, redefining such terms as “center” and “bipartisan,” in a way he will have already won and whatever cabinet choices he picks will be peripheral in this regard. (Via TPM.)