Drew Westen: Hoping for Audacity

(HuffPo) The President is offering the public a series of stories that are all missing half the plot and half the characters–namely, the part of the plot that says how we got where we are (e.g., 50 million without health insurance, half a million losing their jobs every month, 1 in 8 homes foreclosed or in danger of foreclosure, 70% of our energy coming from regimes hostile to us and gas prices on the rise again even as demand has fallen)–and the characters responsible for those gaps in the stories. He is trying to sell health care reform without calling out the drug and insurance industries, whose profits have soared at our expense. He is trying to sell financial reform without pointing his finger squarely at the banks and speculators who bankrupted us. He is trying to sell energy reform without blaming the oil companies who racked up record profits as Americans racked up record debts paying for their gas. And he is trying to sell all of these essential reforms without mentioning that there’s been a party–not just nameless “naysayers”–that has been fighting every one of these reforms for decades. When the President does feel compelled on occasion to mention the people who not only put their interests above the public interest but are now funding the lobbyists and attack ads aimed at derailing his agenda, he speaks in passive voice about how “mistakes were made,” or refers to unnamed “naysayers.” The President’s hero is Abraham Lincoln, but it is the Lincoln who penned the Gettysburg Address, not the Lincoln who ordered Union troops to fire.

Roosevelt never made the mistake of letting Americans forget for one moment that the Great Depression was Hoover’s depression. And as Paul Begala noted this week on Bill Maher, Ronald Reagan, who inherited an economy in trouble and an American public that felt humiliated over our government’s inability to recover our hostages from Iran, never failed to blame Jimmy Carter for every mistake he ever made as President–and then some. We remember Reagan’s brilliant ad as “Morning in America,” when in fact, the first line of that ad was, “It’s morning again in American” (emphasis added). The ad was, indeed, inspirational in tone, but it was also relentlessly critical by contrast with the “dark night” of Carter/Mondale.

No one should have been allowed to play with our financial futures the way the banking industry did. No one should have been allowed to amass fortunes in the oil industry or in oil speculation as everyday Americans were loading themselves down with credit card debt to pay four dollars a gallon for gas. No one should have lost a job or a home because someone wanted to turn a quick buck and didn’t give a damn what the impact might be on millions of families, shareholders, or pensioners. No industry should have been incentivized to increase its profits every time it denied insurance to someone with a “pre-existing condition” or stamped “denied” on a legitimate medical claim.

Those are stories the American people need to hear. Those are stories conservative Democrats need to hear echoed from their constituents if they are going to do what’s right by them.

As the President is fond of quoting Martin Luther King, the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice.

Mr. President, now is the time to make it bend. Dr. King didn’t seek conflict, but he never avoided it. It’s time to follow his example.