Asia Times Online :: Asian News, Business and Economy.
Rated • 1 review • liberal politics, capitalism, obama, fdr • atimes.com
From the page: "The challenge for progressives is to do the same: to use the sense of open-ended possibility sparked by Obama's victory to push the electorate - and thus the Obama administration - further than it now is willing to go. But here's the most important thing: all our facts and logical arguments alone won't be enough to do the job.
We have to understand as well what top-notch politicians like Roosevelt and Obama grasp intuitively: When people lose their economic hope, they feel insecure not only about their jobs and their bank accounts, but about everything in their lives. The same uncertainty that may make them suddenly welcome a spirit of political change also can lead to an unbearable sense of being unsettled. In that situation, many people long for "a sense of continuity and stability that is unavailable in economic life", as Obama recently put it.
The president-elect knows, as FDR knew, that a successful politician must respond to voters' fears as well as hopes. Both in the early 1930s and today, the winning presidential candidates sensed that any politician or movement that seemed to symbolize not just change, but overly rapid and unsettling change, would have a tough time getting public approval, no matter what policies were being promoted."
