Why Won't Obama Lead?

The "Why won't Obama lead?"meme had been just about drained of all its flavor when suddenly...

We need someone who can lift us up again. Enter President Obama.

...Karen Tumulty threw up the Bat Signal and demanded the Dark Knight return to save us:

President Obama, I understand your reluctance to weigh in on Trump’s latest transgression. You are a respecter of norms, including the one dictating that former presidents steer clear of criticizing their successors. And for all the barriers you shattered, racism was never a topic upon which you seemed eager to hold forth.

But silence now is unacceptable. It is time to make yourself heard.

And yet, in the very next paragraph, Ms. Tumulty accidentally touched on why putting President Obama back in the spotlight would not just be pointless, but counterproductive.

We have long since given up expectations that anyone in Trump’s own party will do or say anything to call him out for what he is. The few who tried at the beginning have capitulated, been driven from office or walked away.

As is usually the case with columns like this, the point-of-failure here is the word "We".

Allow me to demonstrate by lightly re-editing Ms. Tumulty's column to clarify what she is really saying:

The not-crazy 40% of this county has long since given up expectations that anyone in batshit-crazy, racist Republican 30% of this country will do or say anything to call him out for what he is...

Like altogether too many journalists, Ms. Tumulty has apparently forgotten that the original Great Obama Uplift Project rested on the assumption that if Democrats would just elected an honorable, intelligent, decent, scandal-free, humane President who would agree to ignore 30 years of escalating unhinged rage and racism in the GOP and instead offer to work with them to solve our nation's problems with an open hand and a selfless heart that they would meet him halfway.  Or a third of the way.  Or on the five yard line.

Instead, no matter how hard he tried -- no matter how many concessions he made to their increasingly ludicrous demands -- they told him to go pound sand.  They unloaded eight years to sabotage, slander, sedition, racism, conspiracy mongering on him --

-- and then went on the nominate and elect the King of the Birthers.

In 2004 and 2008 and 2012 this kind of hopeful, uplifting rhetoric was, at best, aspirationally Utopian --

There are no red states or blue states, just the United States. pic.twitter.com/xm7EFGjK

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 1, 2012

-- and at worst, recklessly delusional.

If President Obama wants to return to the fray with a sword in each hand and fire in his eyes, I will gladly dust off my many, many "Half Fox/Half Free" posts from long before Donald Trump entered the picture --

Because looking at the eye-melting madness that now runs freely and openly through the Right and the jaw-dropping "Both Sides Do It" denialism that continues to infest most of our media from top to bottom, it has never been more obviously true that we as a nation cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

-- and stitch them together into a rousing call-to-electoral-arms.  Gratis.

But enough already with the looking-back-longingly at the Days of Hope-and-Change with gooey nostalgia.  As I wrote back in 2010:

In order to avoid wasting his presidency, squandering the opportunity we have given him, and letting the country spiral into a permanent corporate feudal pest-hole, Barack Obama must do the hardest thing of all: he must exceed his design specifications. This is not unprecedented, but like Franklin Roosevelt the capitalist-turned-social-Democrat or Abraham Lincoln the compromiser-turned-Emancipator, Obama must let go of a central pillar of his identity and embrace the brutal fact that our modern house divided against itself cannot stand.

That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

That we will become all one thing, or all the other.

And that this is your fight, President Obama.

This burden has fallen to you: it cannot be shirked and cannot be delegated.

If you take up this challenge, millions of us will have your back, Mr. President.

But if you cannot summon the inner strength to evolve past your reflexive need to compromise with people who want to destroy you, then we are all well and truly fucked.

Sadly, President Obama never did evolve far enough past his reflexive need to compromise with people who want to destroy him to make a difference.  Perhaps it was too much to ask of any Democrat who managed to make it to the White House during these dark times.

I don't know.

What I do know is that we are all indeed well and truly fucked.  Because what Republicans really wanted all along was to lynch President Obama on the White House lawn.  And electing President Stupid was the next best thing.

So enough with this "We" bullshit.

At this moment in history, there is no "We".  Maybe there will be again.  I hope so.  But at this moment there is "Us" and there is "Them" and there are a few million carping cowards and quibbling Both Siderists who are desperate for this not to be true.

But it is true.

And if you will indulge me while I dip into Mr. Lincoln's inexhaustible trove of beautiful, powerful words one more time let me state very clearly that the dogmas of the Hope-and-Change past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.

We must disenthrall ourselves.

And then we shall save our country.

Behold, a Tip Jar!