It's now been a week since the senatorial election in Massachusetts. I've heard the pundits and their myriad reasons for Scott Brown winning. What does this election mean for Obama and the Dems as we enter the State of the Union address this evening? My favorite reflection on the election's significance was written as the election was underway. David Brooks wrote a column titled The Pragmatic Leviathan. Brooks writes:
When I was in college, I was assigned “Leviathan,” by Thomas Hobbes. On the cover was an image from the first edition of the book, published in 1651. It shows the British nation as a large man. The people make up the muscles and flesh. Then at the top, there is the king, who is the head and the mind.
When the Pilgrims left Britain to come to America, they left behind that metaphor as well. For these settlers, and the immigrants who have come since, the American nation is not a body with the government as the brain. Instead, America has been defined by its vast landscape and the sprawling energy of its entrepreneurs, scientists and community-builders.
In times of crisis, Americans rally around their government, but most of the time they have treated it as a supporting actor in national life. Americans are an unusual people, with less deference to central authority and an unparalleled faith in themselves. They seem to want a government that is helpful but not imperious, strong but subordinate.
Over the years, American voters have reacted against any party that threatens that basic sense of proportion. They have reacted against a liberalism that sought an enlarged and corrosive government and a conservatism that threatened to dismantle the government’s supportive role.
A year ago, the country rallied behind a new president who promised to end the pendulumlike swings, who seemed likely to restore equilibrium with his moderate temper and pragmatic mind. …
… But his has become a voracious pragmatism. Driven by circumstances and self-confidence, the president has made himself the star performer in the national drama. He has been ubiquitous, appearing everywhere, trying to overhaul most sectors of national life: finance, health, energy, automobiles and transportation, housing, and education, among others.
He is no ideologue, but over the past year he has come to seem like the sovereign on the cover of “Leviathan” — the brain of the nation to which all the cells in the body and the nervous system must report and defer.
Americans, with their deep, vestigial sense of proportion, have reacted. …
… Trust in government has fallen. The share of Americans who say the country is on the wrong track has risen. The share who call themselves conservative has risen. The share who believe government is “doing too many things better left to business” has risen. …
…The American people are not always right, but their basic sense of equilibrium is worthy of the profoundest respect. President Obama has shown himself to be a fine administrator, but he erred in trying to make himself the irreplaceable man in nearly ever sphere of public life. He erred in not sensing that even a pragmatic government could seem imperious and alarming. …
I go back to a post I wrote October 30, 2008, … a week before the election … in response to a Christian Science Monitor article, Is Obama Really a Socialist? In one sense, I agree with Brooks that Obama is more a pragmatist than an ideologue. He doesn't always toe the line with traditionally liberal positions and strategies. But even pragmatists have some core principles that shape their governance.
For Obama, I believe Brooks has nailed it on the "head": Obama sees the government as the head with society as its body. In 2001, Obama publicly said that he believes government has a responsibility not only for negative rights … the right to be free from government intrusion as stated in the Bill of Rights … but positive rights. He called for a Second Bill of Rights: Everyone is supposed to have a positive right to a living wage, a home, health care, a good education, and so on. It is government's responsibility to see that all these things are met. Government ceases to be the subordinate referee and aid to the other institutions in society who lead in their respective roles and instead becomes the societal manager … the head of the Levithan from whom all other institutions of society are merely an extension. There is a quasi-divine aura projected on government. Government is to meet our every need and free us from hardship. The credo becomes "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country," as though the national government was a god we come before and offer ourselves in votive service. The real credo should be, "Ask not what your country can do for you – ask how the country may aid us as we serve each other in God's name. "
We are essentially talking about the notion of subsidiarity. First articulated by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891), it is probably best summed up by Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno:
It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. (79)
Now there can be considerable debate about which things constitute arenas where government should be involved, but there is a strong identification in the U. S. with the idea that government is not the center of the societal universe.
I doubt most voters who are unhappy would articulate their unease precisely the way I have here. Still, I do think that for many, there is a general sense of unease about moving government to the center of everything … or functioning as the head of the Leviathan. Many independents wanted solutions that respect the middle ground between too little government and corrosive imperious government, and that is what they thought they were getting with Obama's image as a centrist non-polarizing leader. Now there is buyer's remorse.
I think other issues were at work as well. Some just don't like the health care bill. Many are concerned about the fiscal issues. Some may be okay with health care but believe the Dems have neglected the economy and other concerns with an inordinate focus on health care. I don't want to oversell one explanation, but I think the Levithan factor is significant. It is the prevalence of this Levithan mentality in the minds of so many Democrats … whose emphases and concerns I sometimes share … that causes me usually to vote Republican… sometimes with a clothespin to my nose. 🙂
The challenge I see is for Obama to recast himself as someone who respects the important but supporting role that government plays in American life. The problem is that I'm not sure he or the current leadership of the Democrats can. I sense there is something approximating a Leviathan mentality permeating their worldview.
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