Vision

Some serious confusion here:

I don't totally understand Brian's point here. Comparing the approaches of Obama and Edwards, he writes, "whereas Edwards has been very clear about how he'd try to make the changes he wants, Obama has not exactly laid out a clear vision of how one transforms our country's politics. It'd be one thing if he gave any indication of understanding what steps to take to do that. But "wouldn't it be nice" isn't quite enough when the task at hand is so large."

But what is the Edwards vision of "how he'd try to make the changes he wants?" As I understand it, he'd try to make those changes by...trying to make those changes. Indeed, it's Obama, with his focus on consensus and civic engagement, who seems to be articulating a vision of how you make changes, albeit one I don't actually agree with.

I guess I don't know how to clear this up any better than I already did. I think it's pretty obvious which of the two more-progressive contenders talks at the meta level. But I'll give it a shot.

Edwards' vision as he describes it is not for a country with higher taxes on the wealthy, and capped greenhouse gas emissions, and a Medicare buy-in plan for arbitrary reasons. Edwards' vision is--he would say--for a country that helps alleviate global warming and provides health care for all of its citizens and to meet that vision he has put forth the routes he would take if he ruled the country by fiat. What that means in practice is that, if he wins the presidency, he'll go before the Congress at the height of his presidential authority and ask them to pass his plans. They'll get watered down, probably, and some of them might stall, but that's no doubt built into his thinking about how the country will change.

Obama on the other hand has a vision of a new cooperative and harmonious politics--one that, if met, would no doubt make the planes of governance more fertile for cultivating big, good changes. I can think of a handful of ways somebody with Obama's clout could inch toward that vision: Deal with the media the way Al Gore does, and encourage his peers in the field to do the same; run a campaign designed not to smear, but to shame those that smear others; use his platform as a popular senator to bring some more sensible Republicans to meet with our shaky allies and bitter enemies; create a nationwide community alliance and political engagement program. What I'm talking about is basically a white paper (or a series of white papers) laying out a plan(s)--like Edwards' plans--for a revolution in our politics. If he did that and--and did that persuasively--then his campaign would, for me anyhow, take on a new kind of shine.

Beyond that, though, Ezra makes a good point here:

Indeed, the most compelling explanation of how to create change came from Hillary Clinton in the last debate, who said, "What's important, and what I learned in the previous effort, is you've got to have the political will, a broad coalition of business and labor and doctors and hospitals standing firm when the inevitable attacks come from the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies who don't want to change the system because they're making so much money from it." That's actually a vision of how to achieve health reform. The problem with Hillary is, in fact, the opposite of that with Edwards, which is that I believe she's got a coherent vision of how to use the office of the executive, but I'm deeply unconvinced she's willing to deploy that savvy in service of serious change.