If you didn’t catch Marisa DeFranco’s appearance on the WGBH show Greater Boston, I have the video clip here.

You can access the DeFranco web site at www.marisadefranco.com and her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/DeFrancoForSenate. You can also follow her on twitter at twitter.com/#!/marisadefranco.

Not only do I like the message that she has about what her campaign is all about, but I also like the fact that she is not afraid to deliver it. She manages to explain, in the short amount of time that she is given, what she believes needs to be done and why it will work.

With her you know where she stands. She also explains the factors you may not have known that explain why her plan will work. The opposition will of course try to convince you of something else, but at least you have something to hang your hat on when you try to think whether or not DeFranco or her opposition is more likely to be right.

On this blog, I tend to focus on economic theory and sometimes try to make everyday analogies to explain what all that means. Marisa DeFranco has a way of just cutting to the chase and giving you what you need to know. That is why she is running, and I am not. (Of course there are many other reasons, too.)

From CNN comes this video:

Somehow she fails to mention that only about 6% of the Republican voters in Iowa took to her message. Well, she is true to her Bush heritage, never, ever admit you made a mistake.

This result would be comforting were it not for the fact that there are a slew of Republican contenders remaining that are almost as far off their rocker as she is.

In this video Bachmann says:

Our country is in very serious trouble and that this might be the last election to turn the nation around before we go down the road to socialism… President Obama and his socialist policies must be stopped … and I sought the nomination of the party of Reagan the party of Lincoln

I wonder how aware Bachmann is of Abraham Lincoln’s First State Of The Union Address in which he said:

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits.

Sounds almost Socialist to me. I wonder if Reagan knew about Lincoln’s feelings when he fired the air traffic controllers. Of course, back in those days, the Republican Party and its Southern Strategy rarely if ever mentioned Lincoln. Maybe that is Bachmann’s problem in Iowa. Maybe they are now convincing themselves that Lincoln believed in States’ Rights and was on the side of the Confederacy. Maybe that great historian, Newt Gingrich, can explain how Lincoln was Robert E. Lee’s commander in chief. Does this mean that true patriots secede from the Union and then fire their guns on a Union fort? The Occupy movement is pretty mild compared to that.

I keep saying that I want a politician who can not only produce the best results that are politically possible, but I want one who can also change what is politically possible.

Even Senator Obama quoted President Franklin Roosevelt’s idea about what was needed to change the politically possible.  I mentioned it in my previous post A New Bush Era or a Push Era?

Back when Barack Obama was still just a U.S. senator running for president, he told a group of donors in a New Jersey suburb, “Make me do it.” He was borrowing from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who used the same phrase (according to Harry Belafonte, who heard the story directly from Eleanor Roosevelt) when responding to legendary union organizer A. Philip Randolph’s demand for civil rights for African-Americans.

So, how could President Obama have changed the politically possible by making use of what he learned from President Roosevelt?

Let’s take the Health Care improvement debacle as a case study.

Previous Presidents would have put together a health care proposal and presented it to Congress.  President Obama was afraid that any proposal that his administration wrote would be instantly attacked by the opposition.  He decided not to make a proposal, but to let Congress cobble together something that he could decide to sign or not.  This strategy earned him a weak, inadequate proposal that will not reach his original lofty goals and is under attack by the Republicans with every means at their disposal even after it was passed into law.

So what could Obama have done differently?

Even before a proposal was written, he could have gone to the public with the outlines of the minimum that the public should be demanding.  He should have warned the public that this proposal would be severely attacked by the vested interests who would stop at nothing to prevent such a bill from passing.  He would then have advised the public that unless they made it crystal clear that they would not accept anything less, the opponents would have a good shot at preventing the bill from passing.  He would have helped organize a grass roots campaign of protest rallies in cities across the country demanding health care reform as he had outlined.

When it was then crystal clear to the news media and every politician that was watching that the public was solidly behind health care reform and that the public was actively engaged in making sure it would happen, the President Obama could have rolled out his proposal.

At that point the opposition would have to play catch-up.  They would have to debate on the turf that the President had set.  Rather than the lobbyists being able to scare politicians to vote for what the lobbyists wanted and against what the silent public wanted, the lobbyists would have faced a completely different situation.  What was politically possible at that point would have been changed dramatically from the actual situation that President Obama faced as the Congress was putting together the bill and as they tried to get it passed.

Instead of this kind of tactic, the President is constantly putting the cart before the horse.  He waits for the political climate to be changed against him and then tries for the best he thinks he can get given that political climate.  He then even goes so far as to convince himself that he should compromise before he gets started and only try for what he is absolutely sure he can get.  All this tactic earns him is even less than what he thought was the minimum.

I think that The New York Times is implying that the message from the 2012 New Year’s baby is I Just Got Here, but I Know Trouble When I See It.

Sunday Business asked the six economists who write the Economic View column to do a little blue-sky thinking on issues as varied as the Fed, Europe and housing. You won’t find stock tips. But if 2011 was any guide, the best advice for 2012 may be this: Hold tight.

Even the economist who was an adviser to Mitt Romney did not say that tax cuts for the wealthy was a solution to our problems.

Perhaps Christina Roemer had the most balanced view.

But even better would be measures that increase employment today, while also leaving us with something of lasting value. Because many people worry about increasing the role of the federal government, why not give substantial federal funds to state and local governments for public investment? Tell them that the money has to be used for either physical infrastructure like roads, bridges and airports, or for human infrastructure like education, job training and scientific research. Then let the states, cities and towns figure out what would work best for their citizens.

Even this proposal bows to what she sees as the political reality.  Let the states and towns do it, not because that is the best way economically, but because this is the best we can hope for politically.

I am still looking for the candidate who will both do what is politically possible now and change what is politically possible.  Barack Obama said he would be that politician, but either he had no clue on how to change the politically possible, or he never intended to do that when he won the election.

I see no national politician, even one on the horizon, that can be the politician I seek.  We will just have to take the best that is available and try to figure out how to grow the one we want.  I think that growth process starts with movements like the Occupy movement.  I am not sure there has ever been an example of the rise of that desired politician without being preceded by some lasting protests of  the citizens.

By the way, the clue that Obama should have had is that he needed to promote citizen action as a way to strengthen his hand politically.  President Roosevelt knew that.  Obama even quoted Roosevelt’s remarks that showed it.    So maybe I was wrong.  President Obama had a clue at one time.  He just did not follow up with the necessary action.  He seemed to go out of his way to negotiate with the opposition in private and starting way too late making it impossible for the citizens to force the issue.