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For me, the great mystery of the Obama Administration is its struggle with simple truth.  Why not name the clarity now offered by Democrats and Republicans?

The GOP stands universally against nearly all proposals from the Administration.  Moreover it offers no substantive alternatives.  From health care to financial reform Republicans just say no.

The American public is unaware.  Recent Pew research reveals that only 32% of voters know that the Senate passed health care reform without a single Republican vote.  26% know it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster.  Winning a majority of 51 Senate votes accomplishes nothing.  First you need 60 votes to break the Republican filibusters used on nearly every issue.

Pew’s two data points make clear a minority of voters understands the Republican strategy:  win political advantage by opposing every proposed action.  The reward emerges as voters aim their frustration at majority Democrats by voting Republican-in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

If a 51 vote Senate majority would carry the day we would now have health care reform, financial regulation, greater employment stimulus for the economy, and many more filled high level positions in the Executive Branch requiring Senate confirmation.

The mystery of the Administration is that it knows what is transparent in today’s politics:  bipartisanship isn’t possible.  Rather than speaking in a nuanced way that seeks to convince of his desire for compromise the President should simply speak the truth.  Consistently name what he seeks to accomplish, consistently name the specific obstruction from Republicans, consistently offer to work with all seeking solutions in good faith.  The President provides the example.

President Obama appeared recently before the Republican Congressional Caucus.  With clarity and intellect, with respect and civility he named their political talking points and the lies embedded in them.  President Obama schooled the nation.  This must become the communication strategy that guides the Administration’s bully pulpit.

I don’t know whether victory is the result.  American voters determine victory.  I do know that naming the truth and standing for our commitment and values grows the spirit.

Now the Supreme Court weighs in with a political gift equivalent to what Massachusetts delivered Tuesday.  The five conservative Republican appointees to the Nation’s Highest Court today enshrined as law the following definition:  Corporations spending unlimited amounts of money to secure the election of candidates who will give them whatever they want is “free speech.”  If you thought Wall Street had adequately displayed its ownership of Congress by thwarting any meaningful financial reform in the wake of the financial system melt down, well stand by.  You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Republican Presidents appointed all the five justices issuing this radical ruling.  George Bush named two of the five.

Beginning in the administration of Ronald Reagan Republicans adopted policies that began the greatest transfer of wealth in American history.  The funnel, of course, has been aimed squarely at the bank accounts of the wealthiest of our citizens.  The Supreme Court now says the wealthiest, through the corporations they own, can spend unlimited amounts of money to secure the election of candidates who will watch their backs.

Can anyone still hear the graceful Lincoln words: government “of the people, by the people, for the people?”  I hear five justices singing government “of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy.”  It is the government we get from the party chosen Tuesday by Massachusetts.

After the 1972 Presidential election many Massachusetts residents displayed a bumper sticker that read:  “Don’t blame me.  I’m from Massachusetts.”  It was the only state that voted for George McGovern over Richard Nixon.  As vast sums of new money flow to the 2010 Republican candidates for the House and Senate we’re going to need a new bumper sticker.

In the second day of so many trying to make so much sense of the special election in Massachusetts there is only one analysis that makes sense.  There is no sense to be made of the result.

People were angry about joblessness, mortgage foreclosures, health care and Wall Street?  If that’s true then the voters really are dumb.  They voted for a guy who will join 40 other Republicans in the Senate who can only speak one word:  “no.”  “No” to a stimulus that reduces joblessness, “no” to helping those struggling with foreclosure, “no” to health care reform, and “no” to any meaningful reform of banking regulation.

Even worse, Massachusetts’s voters have endorsed one of the most shameful and destructive political strategies in American history.  They’ve enabled the Republicans who believe that by standing in opposition to any solutions-ANY solutions-they will achieve the political result they live for-their need to retake power.  Remembering the 2000 to 2008 time period, won’t that be a great experience to relive?  Massachusetts apparently thinks so.  They endorsed it Tuesday.

This is not to say I don’t appreciate a protest vote.  If that’s what Massachusetts was up to they could have voted for Joe Kennedy the Libertarian on the ballot.  With intent, they chose the Republican.

Let me be clear, Democrats have indeed earned our anger.  They allow their colleagues-Lieberman and Nelson the best examples-to use the process to work against common good and for their own individual, petty desires.  They wallow in this sickening scene for nearly a full year.  They cower in the shadow of Wall Street’s titans.

We could rise from the ashes by taking advantage of the opportunity Massachusetts gifted to Democrats.  Now that 60 Senators is past history let’s establish some party discipline.  Remove Lieberman’s and Nelson’s seniority.  Take Lieberman’s Homeland Security committee and install a new chair who is not a certifiable head case and actually gives a damn about America.

Most importantly, may our President find the voice he walked away from as he left the campaign trail and moved into the White House.  We need his spirit, intelligence, capacity to restore America.  If he stands we will stand with him.  Together we will do what we knew we could do in November 2008.

We’ll find out January 27^th when President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in….

Multiple, complex factors form a political reality in Massachusetts.  Offer any explanation and the odds are good you’re at least partly right.  Before we drink the tea bagger brew though, let’s agree the country hasn’t suddenly taken a sharp right turn.  Democrats reflexively steering that direction sew the seeds that come harvest will exact a greater political cost.  The view from my window:

Summers and Geitner lead a Wall Street approach to promised financial reform.  The insurance industry gains billions in the name of universal health care.  Gays and lesbians endure less than human status with hardly a whimper from our national leaders.

Barack Obama as candidate passionately packaged values that joined a complex mixture of 53% of those who voted a year ago.  Barack Obama as governor massages a largely out of sight process.  The occasional glimpse reveals Joe Lieberman’s personal political rant holds greater power than reform.  The loud resulting noise is the air stampeding away from our January 2009 enthusiasm.

Yes, governing is different from campaigning.  Yes, Democrats cover a much larger political continuum than do Republicans and intra party discipline is harder.  Yes, Americans are not policy wonks.  But the strong majority that emerged to elect Barack Obama expects a government that adheres to its values.  Stand for the people as you said you would and fight the good fight.  Campaign reformer morphing to pragmatic President does not enthuse.

Democrats gifted political control of Congress to Republicans in 1994 with two sorry years of unforced errors.  Please, please could we avoid déjà vu?

This time Massachusetts warns.  Get up off the floor Democrats.  Stand and deliver.

Simple conclusions disappear in the complexity of the topic.  The nation stands, teetering and barely balanced, on the precipice of universal health care coverage.  It is a heroic accomplishment.  Especially because it is realized only by fighting through every bobby-trapped Republican-and that would be all of them-in the House and Senate.  Ds in the House show more style and substance than their crawling, scraping counterparts in the Senate.

Senate sausage makers would achieve universal coverage using a deeply flawed system.  Pumping billions into big health care corporations they reward the past casual exchange of human life for monetary profit.  Is it very different from handing billions to the Wall Street titans who now stand against minimal protective regulation?  The pattern holds no promise.

Ah but included are these new regulations of the health care corporations.  Yes but they’re invisible when you stand within view of regulations in Switzerland-a country successfully using a private system to provide universal coverage.

Tied in a Christmas bow is the bottom line question:  will we stand between 31 million Americans and health care coverage because we so hate the corrupt corporations that will provide it.  Howard Dean and MoveOn.org demonstrate the answer isn’t easy.  The good doctor notes the rising value of these corporate stocks as he warns that Senate Democrats condemn us to purgatory for decades.

Victory, even the bitter tasting, is victory.  Swallowing this pill should carry future rewards:  a Democratic party with the courage to learn and enforce minimal party discipline.  Hire political moving vans to carry “Democrats” willing to sacrifice common good for personal political gain to the home of their living dead soul mates-the Republicans.

And finally, our President must find his voice.  He grew hope from the soil of a very dark American chapter.  Carried to the White House on the shoulders of millions, audacity-not timidity-burned in the hearts of both army and general.

We hunger for audacity.  We need audacity.

“We’re now on the one-yard line,” Ax locates the Health Care Reform ball.  Perhaps.  But any team in sports using the Senate playbook would never break the red zone let alone win a game.  Winning requires goals shared by individuals willing to sacrifice for the whole.  If a majority of 51 could pass legislation Senate Democrats might even meet the definition.

51 votes and we have a public option.  51 votes and we have Medicare buy-in.  60 votes and we are forced to provide universal health coverage through a system that insures obscene profits for private corporations.  60 votes and we enshrine the old system of torturing those profits from the sick and dying.

Paul Krugman provides deeper historical perspective of the filibuster in today’s New York Times.  Short version:  it was used sparingly until this arcane procedural rule ran into the current crop of Senate Republicans.

Let’s translate the GOP use of the filibuster for nearly every piece of legislation.  Republicans stand against the representative democracy built by our founding fathers.  They based the union on the ideal that common good grows from the free market place of ideas.  Come all and reason from the best thinking of each individual.  Take action on the consensus of the majority.  Collective wisdom-the fuel of progress-is set free.

Those who know Vietnam will remember the words of one military commander:  We had to destroy the village in order to save it.  Senate Republican now apply the strategy to the nation.

Crawling through the emotional and intellectual minefield of health care reform grants all the right to disappointment.  It cannot take you to voting Republican in 2010 if you care about a more perfect American union.

It is nearly one year since we Americans implemented hope.  Reflection and perspective are proper accompaniment for anniversaries.

A glass version of the rising sun emblem of the Obama campaign hangs on our bedroom wall.  Just under the cross.  It is for me a proper juxtaposition.  What we do together in the name of all is an elemental part of faith lived.

My personal commitment to Barack Obama grows from deep roots.  That he offered to be our President and that we accepted creates a bond beyond any individual political issue or period of time.  If not, we cannot sustain our form of government.

During the Obama For America campaign I had the luxury of time to give eight months of more than full-time volunteer work.  Witnessing his oath of office was more than adequate pay.

As I observed many people respond to campaign symbols one, more than any other, captured the heart of the collective effort:  Shepard Fairey’s Hope poster.  The American Age of Darkness, fully entered in 2,000, nearly extinguished hope.  Over time, hope takes many forms.  In the campaign, we each firmly held a personal knowing of hope.  In day-to-day governance external forces mold the shape of that hope.

Year one conclusions:

§  The election of Barack Obama was a transformational event for America and for the world.  Alone, it is cause for a Nobel Peace Prize.

§  The unambiguous ending of torture and working toward closing Guantanamo is a singular step toward restoring American honor.

§  Seeking consensus among nations is the only strategy to unravel a twisted world community.

§  Denying access to health care for any American is a national sin.  Repentance does not most effectively result from baby steps.

§  Real action, not rhetoric, creates economic stability.  Reform of our financial system should always precede bailout.

§  “…all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness….”  We remain in violation of our most emphatic first Declaration.

And so year one of the Obama Administration is for me more like an accomplished year in a Clinton Administration than a Kennedy’s.  I still hope for Camelot.

The World Series opens tomorrow.  Basic strategies seem clear.  The Yanks and Phills are not small ball teams.  Seeking a single here, some steals, sacrifices and a methodical run or two isn’t their style.  While good enough to carry out any game plan, the National and American League champs are big inning teams.  Get leadoff hitters on base so the long ball sluggers that follow can bring them home.  We can only dream about players like these in Washington D.C..

In the midst of the worst health care crisis facing any modern, industrialized nation our elected representatives struggle months on end to implement any solution.  Senate Leader Harry Reid’s rejection of those pronouncing the public option dead is welcome.  But can you even call it small ball?

Reid’s public option offers the choice of a government run insurance program to maybe ten percent of the American people.  They could actually make that choice in about seven years.  And that’s if they don’t live in a state that chooses to opt out of the plan.

Almost one year ago the American electorate embraced a historically radical shift in public policy.  George Bush to Barack Obama is a 180-degree turn.  We now watch electeds who hang back at perhaps the 30-degree turn mark.

America needs a big inning.  Americans chose the big inning team last November.  It struggles to cross a minefield of ignorance, stupidity and crass power seeking.  The scene slaps the face of millions struggling for health and life.

We’ll of course take any progress on health care.  But as Peggy Lee sang a generation ago:  Is that all there is?

That Franklin Roosevelt’s wisdom is timeless is clear amid the current contentions over health care reform.  Listening yesterday to what passes as debate in the Senate Finance Committee fear was invoked relentlessly by Republicans.  Their argument:  we cannot take a bold step toward reform because the American people are afraid.  In other words fear rules.  Do whatever is necessary to push it back even if it is wrong and destructive.

Finally one lone Republican has surfaced who has ears to hear the call of history.  Let us applaud Olympia Snowe for her courage in the face of threats from her caucus.  Let us not cede control in shaping the final Senate bill.  One Republican vote in the name of a barely audible whisper “bipartisan” is not a fair trade for a real public option to compete with the multi billion dollar health corporations.  More than cost containment it stands for simple humanity in how we treat the ill and advance health for all.

There are miles to go on health care though considerably fewer than was the case two days ago.  President Obama suddenly has a gravitas not discerned before by our silly pundits.  In realizing a sane reformation of health care in the United States, the only thing we have now to fear is fear itself.

For those who believe world peace is possible only through a process of international engagement and consensus:  “Thank you Nobel Peace Prize committee.”  Their decision is as stunning as November’s American decision to turn 180 degrees.  The Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama is a formal international recognition of the courage of America’s electoral act.  It is an international acknowledgement of the promise our decision contains.

As stunning as the awarding of the prize is the reaction in the United States.  Traveling recently in Europe took me out of our current national context.  We have become a nation of wildly opinionated critics who relate to life through the context of the negative.

I am one among most who greeted news of the award with disbelief.  Stunning surprise for me does not result from a sense of undeserved.

What has Barack Obama accomplished?  Let’s start with his election.  He played no small part in it.  That America chose such a radically different course last November brings historic consequence not only to our country.  Inviting the world to bring its dignity and join to resolve intractable problems is no small matter in the face of our recent past.  Establishing a national priority and beginning the work to rid the world of nuclear weapons is no small change.

Many nod to political fallout from this award with a sense of regret.  If we thus shape our actions we will forever cower in the corner from Rush Limbaugh and Michael Steel and their fellow travelers.

Let us celebrate this honor.  With humility, clearly knowing much hard work stands before us.  Before all great advances there was first their promise.  No small thing promise even worthy of a prestigious award.