This is a good write-up from the UK. Our neighbors were/are watching.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie/3387076/the-age-of-obama.thtmlThe Age of Obama
Alex Massie
Wednesday, 25th February 2009
And so it begins. The contrast between Barack Obama last night and George W Bush was striking. Not merely in terms of the content of their speeches, but in their demeanour: whereas Bush seemed a shrunken figure in his final years, dwarfed by the enormity of the challenges of the Presidency and by the scale of his own blunders, Obama, armed with the confidence of victory and unburdened by the oppressive turn of events, seemed to fit his surroundings more comfortably than his predecessor ever managed - save for those first few months after 9/11.
snip//
Obama has never pretended to be anything other than what he is: a pretty orthodox liberal in, by the standards of national politics, unorthodox clothing. But look at how he frames an issue: "Nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough." The reference to Roosevelt is clever: if TR wasn't exactly a conservative, he remains a Republican hero. So referring to him gives a patina of bipartisan comity to what is in reality a rallying call to the Democratic mainstream. Secondly, TR was President a long, long time ago and yet healthcare still needs to be fixed. This gives a modicum of extra urgency and energy to Obama's promises. Thirdly, talking about the economic impact of the current system is a way of appealling to the economic self-interest of those who already have high-quality coverage. It's not just altruism or hand-outs we're talking about here, folks! But of course the current system offends our "conscience" so it is a mater of morals and a kind of referendum on what country we want to be and the extent to which we can live up to our ideals. There you have it: in one sentence Obama manages to include, one way or another, just about everyone (apart from the libertarians).
There's no policy detail here, of course, merely an imperative to get on with the job. Politically this is sensibe: the details of health-care are tortuous and liable to be misunderstood even by people paid to understand them. Much better to build a degree of momentum behind the Idea of Reform rather than proceed with reform and then have a kind of public referendum upon the messy details and compromises that the system inevitably produces.
And that momentum exists. For better or for worse, this is Obama's time now. I think he senses that he can be Reagan's mirror-image: a President who rolls up the political map and draws a new one, redefining an era in his own image. It's early days yet, but that's the level of ambition he's working at. And right now it seems as though the lights of Republicanism are going out and it may be some time yet before we see them again.
Full text of Obama's speech at link~
UPDATE: Ross Douthat chimes in and, happily, seems to agree with me. Or I agree with him. Anyway:
Obama was fantastic - worlds better than his inaugural. He laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda of any Democratic President since LBJ, and did it so smoothly that you'd think he was just selling an incremental center-left pragmatism. I think that he has an acute sense - more acute than most people in Washington, probably - of just how much running room is open in front of him at the moment, and he intends to make the absolute most of it.
UPDATE 2: Dan Drezner also heard a Democratic Reagan. For better and, yup, for worse.
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