Legal Commentary

Don't Make Me Do It

By Big Tent Democrat

By now, we are all familiar with the almost certainly apocryphal story about FDR -- ""I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." And indeed, President Obama himself said "hold me accountable" just a few weeks ago in a video to Netroots Nation.

Obviously, Robert Gibbs disagrees with this approach. Matt Yglesias writes:

[W]e’re seeing a serious confusion here on the role of political activists in the system. [. . . I]t’s not the job of activists to be “satisfied” with compromises premised on the current boundaries of political feasibility.

Whatever your view of how the Obama Administration and Dems have performed, it seems to me that Yglesias' point is inarguable - surely it is not the role of activists to be satisfied with half loaves or crumbs. The role of the activist is, in the words of Frederick Douglass, to "agitate, agitate, agitate." On this issue, I think the wisdom of Frederick Douglass exceeds that of Robert Gibbs.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 10, 2010 (boomark / email).