Barack Obama had a choice between liberalism and the Democratic party. He chose the latter, and it cost him dearly.
Liberalism, as an ideology, insists that government can do good and great things for the people and the world if the people running the government are smart liberals. The Democratic party says the exact same thing. But liberalism is an ideal, while the Democratic party is that ideal’s representative here in the real world — and in the real world, political parties always disappoint.
Just to be clear — and to avoid a lot of “Oh, yeah? What about Republicans?!” responses — this is true of the GOP, too. Conservative ideology holds that government should do only those things that only government can and should do, a list that is very short. For instance, government shouldn’t be in the business of playing favorites in the economy. It shouldn’t “pick winners and losers.” Rather, it should be a fair umpire and let competition work its magic. Alas, Republican politicians routinely fall short of this ideal, preferring to be pro-business rather than pro-market. That, in so many words, is why the Export-Import Bank is immortal.
But this was supposed to be liberalism’s moment. This was supposed to be a new Progressive Era. Obama came into office vowing to be “transformative,” just like Ronald Reagan — the difference being that Reagan ushered in an era of skepticism about government, while Obama wanted to usher in an era of hope and idealism about all the wonderful things government can do. In Obama’s mind, this put him at odds with Republicans, and in a partisan sense, it obviously did.
But as a matter of policy, Obama’s real challenge came from within. Government’s failures in recent years can be laid not at the feet of the Republican party but at the feet of the Democratic party. If you were to ask most serious liberal policy wonks how they would make government more effective, a good number of their answers would involve doing things the Democratic base of the party would never, ever allow.
Smart liberalism has no love for bureaucratic inefficiencies. There’s nothing inherent in liberalism that says public-sector unions should have a stranglehold on the government payroll the way they do. FDR loathed the idea of government workers unionizing.