I don’t know.  But even in ignorance pieces of the puzzle are there.  Keep breathing.  Call on foundational values.  Openness created from honesty, humility, the history of your journey, reason, love, propel the next small step.  To reach the objective movement is required.

A man approaches Abraham Lincoln and asks how he could have known the strategy to win the Civil War.  I didn’t, replied Lincoln.  Like the captain on a Mississippi River boat I could steer toward the next visible point.  Repetition carries us home.

Great battles with some problems alter life.  Stamina, like hope, has limits.  Lincoln paid a price for the weight resting on his shoulders.  It is a life truth that some are called to carry more, to suffer more.  Whether a father, a child, a friend, a president, life can overwhelm.  Keep breathing.  Take the next small step toward the next visible point.

On January 28, 2009, Ted Kennedy thunders the pass in his endorsement speech at American University.  And in that moment, the power of oratory nearly makes it so.  In the hearts and in the souls of those of us who lived in Camelot for a fleeting American moment in the 1960s, deeply convicted of Barack Obama’s promise, the idea that the legend of John Fitzgerald Kennedy could be bequeathed is as real as the morning sunrise.

We survive what follows:  an unending, conflicted primary campaign; an American resurrection at the Denver convention; a general election campaign so much closer than it should have been; the crisp, cold joy of a Washington D.C. morning January 20^th 2009; the crush of two-million human bodies desperate to witness the Constitutional result of the Nation’s decision.  Individual stories mesh into a national fabric from which Barack and Michelle Obama step forward and sway At Last to Beyonce’s lilting voice.

Governing becomes a sand that falls through outstretched fingers.  The national leader to whom words had passed the torch comes face-to-face with the most intransigent major political party in American history.  Its objective focused on blocking any solutions-even the act of appointing relatively minor government officials.  Willing to pay any cost Republicans marshal their disciplined march toward a single objective:  Barack Obama’s political demise.

Expectations of reasoned solutions from Americans voters gifted with political power dissolve.  The haunting words passing the torch ring hollow in the nation’s capitol.   Promised reform and national regeneration an idea now possible only through the President’s single, complex political party.  Flailing in the face of the new challenge, hope freezes above all the pictures of the January 20^th two million.

The screaming wake up call sounds from Massachusetts.  A House Speaker muscles aside an incrementalist approach offered by a Chief of Staff.  Embracing Nancy Pelosi’s bold awakening the President discovers his capacity to lead that we found so compelling during his improbable campaign.  Binding not to “the need to win but the need to be true” Barack Obama turns to those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear-all, all, Democrats.  We hold our collective breath this past Sunday.  Then suddenly our lungs fill with the air of thawed hope.

In action, through leadership, Barack Obama closes his fingers around the passed torch.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?