Thoughts on the Election
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
By John Bouman, President
The astounding election of the nation’s first African American President, who is also the first President of any ancestry that many of us here in Illinois personally know, is an occasion for all kinds of reflection and almost countless ramifications. Here are some initial thoughts on what it means.
It means that we have taken a giant step in the struggle against racism. It is immensely moving, and it will play out powerfully in aspirations, lives, attitudes, national self-image, moral positioning in the world, and many other ways.
It means we can lay to rest, perhaps forever, the incredibly unfair and damaging “joke” that the most feared words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” A generation ago, this wry bromide was the signal sent by a newly elected President that the national government would be smaller and would retreat from forthright grappling with difficult domestic problems, like poverty and inequality of opportunity. We had entered an era characterized by the notion that all of us are and ought to be “on our own”, to sink or swim according to our merits, our luck, and our hereditary advantages and disadvantages. As a nation we had forsaken the ethos that, while personal enterprise is important, we are also all in this together. That ethos is back.
It means there is a new commitment that there is an important role for government in addressing difficult problems. There is a new desire for and insistence on competence. If there is an effort by the government that fails or falls short, the first option will be to figure out how to do it better, not to shrug and call it evidence that government cannot do the job.
It means that one of those difficult problems that the national government will resume efforts to address is the problem of poverty and the improvement of justice and opportunity for low income people. It is clear from the track record we know here in Illinois and from the Obama campaign’s many policy positions on these issues that the president-elect understands the complexity of this problem and will act on it in many different ways. At least two of the top announced priorities for the immediate crisis are directly on point: jobs and health care.
It means that to make the needed investments, the new administration will need to find the money. Those who support the effort to address poverty, justice and opportunity will need to support the needed tax policies and budget changes. One clear change is that the new president will call for shared effort and sacrifice in order to accomplish important goals.
It means that it will be possible to think of many strategies and outcomes that have been unthinkable at the crucial and difference-making levels of government not in the daily public consciousness: the courts, the executive orders, the regulatory processes, the day-to-day decisions of implementers of programs and budgets, the discretion of regional and local federal officials.
It means we have to understand the incredible pent-up wishes and demands now laid at the door of the new administration. They cannot possibly all be met. Some will have to wait, and some may not happen at all. There will be compromises and disappointments in addition to real and significant progress. The high symbolic idealism of the campaign and the election result must be tempered by the practical demands of governing. This cannot be regarded as a disappointment - but as the real world asserting itself. If we get an effective, pragmatic and result-oriented national government, guided by values that conclude that “we are in this together”, and motivated by a genuine desire to improve justice and opportunity, then we will have a profound sea-change in this country and much will be accomplished.
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