Obama, liberals and despair

As I've mentioned from time to time, in addition to these duties I edit a quarterly journal in Washington called Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, an excellent small magazine of, well, ideas.

I usually edit rather than write, but in the new issue I have a big long piece called Against Despair: how our misreading of history harms progressivism today. You can probably imagine much of it from that alone, but I basically take on this idea that Obama compares terribly unhappily to FDR and LBJ. Which is true enough - when your idea of "history" is reduced to those moments of great liberal triumph. Actual history is slower and messier. FDR and LBJ had their moments of backtracking too. Point: progressive change always takes time and faces ferocious opposition.

I was also on C-SPAN this morning discussing it, and you can watch that here if that's your cup of tea. I was wearing a very pretty tie, if you ask me.

I'll be interested in the thoughts of the thoughtful among you, which is most of you. On the essay I mean. And the tie if you want. Here is the general link to the journal, if you want to look around. And here is the link straight to my piece. But there's lots of other interesting stuff there too.