The Optimist - Mark Schmitt - The American Prospect

[rrneck]

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_optimist

...the idea that America's "existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability" flies in the face of all observed reality. For at least eight years, those institutions consistently failed to deliver accountability, and the Department of Justice and courts likewise failed to punish some of the greatest abuses of power in our history.

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But Obama's apparent belief that existing institutions can do what they have so far failed to do -- and his resistance to creating new ones -- is emerging as an odd, surprising theme of his presidency.

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Strange as it is, there is something admirable, tough, and consistent in Obama's cockeyed optimism about our institutions. It's not like he doesn't know that our democratic institutions have failed. Rather, by asserting that they are capable of actually governing, he is, in effect, demanding that they do so, calling them out in much the way that he has called out conservatism: by taking it seriously.

I frequently find myself wanting the malefactors of the previous administration locked up now and their system of kleptocracy bitch slapped so far into the next century we won't have to worry about it for at least five or six generations hence. This fellow reminds me that meaningful change takes time. I hope we don't run out of it.

[kentuck]

1. I must admit...

that is my concern.