Obama & The Left

Obama is being attacked from both the right and the left. The right is attacking because they think he is going to transform America into a liberal land of socialism, government health care, expanded abortion rights, and gay marriage. The left is attacking him because they think he won’t transform America into a liberal land of socialism, government health care, expanded abortion rights, and gay marriage.

Because Obama is taking a fairly moderate approach, the left wing folks are rather upset by his failure to be the liberal savior they envisioned. While some of their criticism is well founded, the folks on the extreme left need to keep in mind that Obama is not their President, but the President of the United States. He has to govern the whole country and has to be aware of the legitimate needs and concerns of all the people, not just the folks on the far left.

As an analogy, I’ll use my own experience as a professor. I teach at a state university and my classes do not have any pre-requisites. As such, a class might have a student who has just been accepted to Harvard law school and a student who barely passed high school and who is now taking remedial math and english to get up to speed. While I could teach the class in a way that is aimed entirely at the future Harvard student, that would not take into account the legitimate needs of the other students. Likewise, making my class into a remedial high school class would help the other student, but would hardly be good for everyone else in the class.  Since I am the professor for the whole class and not just the two extreme students, I have to teach to the middle. The price for this is that the class will be somewhat disappointing for the future Harvard student while being rather tough for the remedial student. But, I have to do what is best for the class as a whole.

Likewise, Obama cannot give the left everything they crave. After all, it is not just their country. While the folks on the left think they are right and that justice requires that they get their way, the reality is that all the other people cannot be ignored. They have concerns and rights as well. And, of course, there is the practical matter of getting people to go along-and this often requires compromise.

Naturally, there are matters on which there should not be compromise. But, most of politics is open to such compromise and, in fact, requires it. While the folks on the left should argue for what they value (as the folks on the right should), they should also temper their complaints and criticisms.