It's not time "to scream bloody murder"...

Many vocal progressive bloggers seem to believe that Barack Obama is revealing himself -- by his appointments and his willingness to evaluate entitlement programs -- to be a closet conservative. One commenter on a major blog today insisted that "it's time to scream bloody murder" about Obama. The tendency of progressives to do this -- indeed, the habit of doing it, so well-developed (and well-motivated) during the Bush years -- is self-marginalizing when it comes to influencing the thinking of independent and not especially partisan voters whose support gave Obama such a decisive, mandate-creating majority last November. Obama obviously intends to reinforce and expand that mandate, and he's succeeding in doing so. Government is not merely a policymaking picnic, followed by spending programs. A president can't get change out of a democracy without developing and sustaining reliable popular support that will help him or her command the heights of governing, so that the elaborate, creaky, balky functioning of government -- legislative as well as executive -- can be pushed decisively to produce change. And again, that's obviously Obama's strategy. "Screaming bloody murder" at Obama will not only be regarded as irrelevant by anyone who does not already want to hyperventilate, it will lessen and not amplify the screamers' influence on actual events. Screaming at politicians may make the screamers feel better, but it will accomplish absolutely nothing. If you want to influence Obama, ignore him -- and persuade the kind of people who voted for him that he hasn't yet embraced the kind of change they voted for.