Move On MoveOn

Today I received an e-mail from MoveOn. Well, actually, I received an e-mail from MoveOn yesterday, too, and the day before that, and the day before that. Indeed, MoveOn, like some unusually persistent Jehovah’s Witness, has been knocking on my door every day for about three years now, and no matter how often I shut the door on it; or plead that I have my own church, thank you very much, it's back the next day, ringing my chimes with renewed ardor. 

I still occasionally agree to donate to one of their campaigns, or sign one of their petitions. (I even circulated one recently urging the President to cut our losses in Afghanistan, which, now that I think about it, is a little like singing folk songs to protest a gypsy moth infestation.) But more and more I sign primarily in hopes that by signing I might satisfy them for a while and buy myself some time. 

MoveOn had a great deal to do with getting Obama elected, and for that I am grateful. It proved remarkably effective in marshalling progressives and amassing the obscene resources a presidential campaign now requires. So this is not to criticize MoveOn for its successes, only its excesses, of which today’s e-mail is symptomatic. 

After quoting Margaret Mead’s assertion that real change only comes from small groups of thoughtful and committed people, MoveOn goes on to boast a membership of five million. This suggests to me that perhaps it should consider breaking up into small groups. 

But that's not what MoveOn is proposing. As if the daily imprecations to sign petitions circulated by MoveOn and its allies were not enough, it has just inaugurated a website on which all five million of its members are encouraged to compose and circulate petitions of their own.

“We'll send the most popular petitions to other MoveOn members to help build support for your cause,” say Anna, Julia, Michael, Wes, and the rest of MoveOn team, as they sign themselves. "It's easy to get started -- just click here." (A link follows that I do not intend to share.)

Considering all the petitions MoveOn has circulated, I can hardly blame it for running out of ideas of its own. But if that's the case, isn’t the better part of discretion to simply shut up and shut down for a while? Aren’t MoveOn and its imitators running the risk of wearing out us progressives as it is? Might it not be fatal to MoveOn’s efficacy in the next presidential campaign if not just Anna, Julia, Michael, Wes, and the rest of the MoveOn team send us petitions, but we start sending petitions to ourselves?

So I’ve got a petition for you: 


“We the undersigned ask that MoveOn stop with the petitions already so we can steel our loins for the battle to come.”

Where do I sign? 

Hyde Park Bred

I watched the Obamas at the Press Club last week, and enjoyed the comedy lesson the President gave a blowsy Jay Leno, especially when Obama followed a gentle jab at Michael Steele with a sly and perfectly timed, "My brother." 
     But what struck me again was the deep but wry affection in which Michelle and Barack Obama hold each other. It all seems to me utterly charming and entirely recognizable. 
     I was raised where the Obamas lived before coming to Washington: in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, where my father was Dean of the College at the University of Chicago in the early 1950s. There is something in the cerebral atmosphere of my old neighborhood that seemed to nurture relationships like theirs. 
     My parents shared it, as did several of their married friends. It was passion enriched by intellect,  devotion garnished with humor, erudition with humility. 
     My father went on to work for the Ford Foundation in India and in Africa, and died three years ago, at the age of 96. But before his death, my mother read Obama's autobiography to him, and he would make her pause every now and then to ask why Americans didn't choose men of Obama's quality and complexity for their President. How he would have rejoiced in Obama's election, and taken pride in the way he has handled himself. 
     
When I was very small my mother would sometimes say, perhaps in part to comfort herself that the sacrifices she made on his behalf were worthwhile, that my father should have been president. 
     I sometimes wondered to myself what sort of president my father would have made. I used to invent scenarios in which my father would be appointed, say, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. Then some catastrophe -- an electrical accident at a White House pool party, or a shipment of toxic hair dye -- wiped out the rest of the line of presidential succession, leaving my father holding the bag. 
     I suppose my father would have made a better, or at least smarter and better spoken and more honorable Chief of State than Nixon, Johnson, Ford, or either Bush. But would he have been crippled by his erudition and fair-mindedness, his sometimes lofty rationality and instinctive trust in the other guy's good faith? And would the country have forgiven him his sense of humor? 
     Though I could never really imagine it, Obama comes close. The Presidency is a terrible job to wish on anybody. But it has been fascinating, for better or for worse, to watch one of our own go about his business.