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.