Incrementalism

One of the most frustrating things about being a Liberal is patience.  We are so desperate in our conviction to our beliefs that we want the world to shift over night.  We want peace, justice, compassion and civility to arrive like a torrential rain cleansing society of injustice and malaise.  We are filled with hope yet the very hope we cling to lays the ultimate seeds for much of our eventual frustration and dismay.   When we elect a candidate based on a message of hope and change we tend to envision it as if we are buying a product.  We simply have to take it home, open it up and we can sample the fruits of our labor and our money.  We hope it will be deliciously sweet, filled with all the promises that were made.  Often however, as the metaphor would come to suggest the flavor is much more complex.

Little in America changes quickly. We always like to think it will yet we live in a system that for better or for worse does not allow this.  It can be frustrating at times as we seem to creep along with the speed of running molasses.  Often times we view a radical event as a moment of instant change.  Take Civil Rights for example.  It was a turning point in the history of the nation and few can argue today that it was a turn for the worst.  It was a change that had to happen yet as quickly as it seemed to occur, in reality it was built on the blood and sweat of the lives of those that suffered and the movements for social change that preceded it.

President Obama is frustrating indeed.  For a Liberal he represented the best hope for a radical vision yet as his first term comes to a close we look around and feel left behind.  We wonder what happened to the promises?  Where is the justice and social change that was promised?  Why isn't the world a new and better place? 

Lyndon Baines Johnson

The problem is that we fail to understand a truth wise men like Barack Obama discovered long ago.  Change will come and paths will be defined yet much to our chagrin, it won't happen overnight.  This is the world of incrementalism.  It is a word that by its very nature seems slow.  It suggests a caterpillar inching along and at times seeming to make no progress at all.  Yet in truth progress is all around us, we have to just open our eyes and look. 

Liberal progress is often defined in a much more complicated way than conservative progress.  Conservatives form into single seemingly achievable goals and then the dedicate vast amounts of patience and energy to achieve them.  In the 1960s a vow was made to dismantle the social contracts established by FDR and the War on Poverty initiated by LBJ.  Some programs that now seem institutional have forever remained on the conservative chopping block.  Social Security and Medicare among them.  They are often not openly discussed but glimmers of a forty year effort sometimes creep out and appear in the form of the Paul Ryan Budget Plan or in President GW Bush's effort to privatize Social Security. 

Congressional Control

Rallying cries are issued around social issues that elicit passion, single minded dedication and most importantly votes.  The dirty secret is that often there is no plan to exact real change only symbolic.  Take anti gay marriage amendments for example.  What do they really do beside deny legal rights to a minority? Three decades ago it was flag burning.  The most insipid yet effective of all efforts has occurred in the seemingly rock solid support by Conservative politicians of the Right to Life movement.  From 2003 to 2005 Republican's controlled all the levers of power yet no legislation banning abortion was ever passed.  This during a time when cloture votes were allowed far surpassing the complete Republican cloture gridlock of the last four years.  Cloture for the unfamiliar is the obscene Senate rule that just to allow a nomination or a piece of legislation to even be discussed and voted on in the Senate 60 Senators, a super majority must agree.  The unspoken reality among Conservative leaders is that abortion is far to powerful vote motivating issue to ever have resolution.

It is no wonder that the most effective period of Democratic control that allowed Civil Rights and the Great Society to progress spanned the years from 1961 to 1967 when the Democratic party in the senate actually defied all odds an maintained a super + majority.  

With all this gridlock and all this frustration change for a Liberal seems non existent and presidential promises seem far from complete.  Yet incrementalism continues to creep along.  It exists not only in legislation but in attitude.  It is in the reality that in 20 years the debate today over gay legal rights or military service will seem as bizarre as laws that once blocked a black person from sitting in the front of a bus or drinking from a white only water fountain.  The reality is our children don't understand this conversation and as each child ages incrementally the world changes.

Today we are openly discussing wealth disparity in a society that is more unequal than at anytime since the 1930s.  Some are starting to notice that the middle class, the vehicle that carried us through 50 years of growth and prosperity is vanishing.  In its stead is an impoverished under class most of whom have no idea they are poor.  All they know is they can't afford health care, decent food is too expensive and home ownership, once an American icon is disappearing. 

Today we realize our health care system is broken and it may require total collapse before a new system is developed.  Sacrifice will have to become universal before the collective voice will demand change. 

While our President may not have achieved the ultimate goals we desire he is guiding us along this path.  Incrementally we work our way into the future and at some point the ultimate change will seem to have happened overnight to those that witness it.  Only those that remember will know the truth. 

A President is simply a man.  He is not a God.  He is not omnipotent.  Some might try to be, yet the process will ultimately humble them.  I have witnessed 45 years of American politics and through that time I can say that for me the most important qualities are commonality of purpose and vision for the future.  He might be a rich man or a poor man yet I want to believe that he or perhaps she understands my life and the frustrations I feel.  Frustrations like sending my child to college, paying my mortgage, staying healthy and feeling like I can enjoy some fruit of a lifetime of labor.  I begrudge no man wealth, I ask simply that they spend a time viewing life through my eyes and the eyes of the other 307 million Americans that just do our best to get by.  Oh there are another 3 million or so but they belong to that top one percent. 

As I have previously noted above my desk hangs a picture of President Obama sitting on the bus Rosa Parks once sat on in Selma, Alabama.  I know in his mind as he looks out the window that she once did he realizes change eventually happened but it didn't come overnight.  Another friend of mine mentioned once that she visited that same bus yet when it was her turn, she sat in the back seat.  People tried to point out Rosa Parks seat.  "This is where she sat." they said.  My friend told them she knew where Rosa's seat was.  You see, contrary to those wanting to experience the moment of change, she wanted to see the world that led up to it.  She wanted to understand incrementalism.