Rebuild the Dream (16 page)

The fact that the environmental movement and the progressive movement were both largely silent during that whole period represents a huge failing, politically and morally. If George W. Bush or John McCain had been president during an oil spill of this magnitude, environmentalists would have protested coast to coast, and congressional Democrats would have insisted on serious reform.

The opportunity, indeed, the mandate, to put a low-carbon economy back on the table had presented itself dramatically. There are few moments when the world is riveted by a cause, when the public and political elites might listen to arguments afresh. It is political malpractice for social-change advocates not to seize those moments. The months of Democratic control of Congress were winding down; a large enough outcry might have won more safety measures for oil and coal exploration, in addition to a clean energy manufacturing agreement or a green bank to finance clean energy production. A determined effort spearheaded by environmental groups with multimillion-dollar budgets might have led to some serious legislation in the 111th Congress, even a mandatory clean
energy goal for the nation. Such a push would have been the right thing to do, offering immediate protection for today's energy workers and opening the door to a brighter energy future for all.

But the window for action closed.

In the end, Congress did not pass a single piece of truly groundbreaking legislation in the wake of the disasters. There was not even a serious uptick in eco-activism. In fact, more than a year would pass before significant environmental protests surfaced on any issue. (In summer and autumn of 2011, Native American groups, climate champion Bill McKibben, young crusaders from
350.org
, and other environmentalists helped disrupt plans for the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would have brought super-dirty oil from the Canadian tar sands right through America's heartland.)

Looking back, that failure highlighted a lack of healthy independence on the part of the environmental community. It mirrored a similar weakness throughout the progressive movement. People were so enthralled with Obama that very few progressive leaders, organizations, or institutions were willing to challenge him publicly, even when the health of the planet was at stake. I include myself in that indictment.

The 2008 campaign was a campfire around which millions gathered. But after the election, it was nobody's job or role to tend that campfire. The White House was focused on the minutiae of passing legislation, not on the magic of leading a movement. OFA did the best that it could, but the mass gatherings, the idealism, the expanded notions of American identity, the growing sense of a new national community, all of that disappeared.

It goes without saying that clear thinking and imaginative problem solving are easier in hindsight, away from the battlefield. I was in the White House for six months of 2009, and I was outside of it afterward. I had some of the above insights at the time, but many did not come to me in the middle of the drama and action. Most are the product of deeper reflection, which I was able to do only from a distance.

Nonetheless, the exercise of trying to sort out what might have been and trying to understand why nobody was able to make those things happen in real time has informed this book and shaped my arguments going forward.

Let me speak personally: looking back, I do not think those of us who believed in the agenda of change had to get beaten as badly as we were, after Obama was sworn in. We did not have to leave millions of once-inspired people feeling lost, deceived, and abandoned. We did not have to let our movement die down to the level that it did.

The simple truth is this: we overestimated our achievement in 2008, and we underestimated our opponents in 2009.

We did not lose because the backlashers got so loud. We lost because the rest of us got so quiet. Too many of us treated Obama's inauguration as some kind of finish line, when we should have seen it as just the starting line. Too many of us sat down at the very moment when we should have stood up.

Among those who stayed active, too many of us (myself included) were in the suites when we should have been in the streets. Many “repositioned” our grassroots organizations to be “at the table” in order to “work with the administration.” Some of us (like me) took roles in the government. For a while at least, many were
so enthralled with the idea of being a part of history that we forgot the courage, sacrifices, and risks that are sometimes required to make history.

That is hard, scary, and thankless work. It requires a willingness to walk with a White House when possible—and to walk boldly ahead of that same White House, when necessary. A few leaders were willing to play that role from the very beginning, but many more were not. Too many activists reverted to acting like either die-hard or disappointed fans of the president, not fighters for the people.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama went too far to the left to accommodate his liberal base. In my view, the liberal base went too far to the center to accommodate Obama. The conventional wisdom says that Obama relied on Congress too much. I say Obama relied on the people too little, and we tried to rely on him too much. Once it became obvious that he was committed to bipartisanship at all costs, even if it meant chasing an opposition party that was moving further to the right every day, progressives needed to reassess our strategies, defend our own interests, and go our own way. It took us way too long to internalize this lesson—and act upon it.

The independent movement for hope and change, which had been growing since 2003, was a goose that was laying golden eggs. But the bird could not be bossed. Caging it killed it. It died around conference tables in Washington, DC, long before the Tea Party got big enough to kick its carcass down the street.

The administration was naïve and hubristic enough to try to absorb and even direct the popular movement that had helped to
elect the president. That was part of the problem. But the main problem was that the movement itself was naïve and enamored enough that it wanted to be absorbed and directed. Instead of marching
on
Washington, many of us longed to get marching orders
from
Washington. We so much wanted to be a part of something beautiful that we forgot how ugly and difficult political change can be. Somewhere along the line, a bottom-up, largely decentralized phenomenon found itself trying to function as a subcomponent of a national party apparatus. Despite the best intentions of practically everyone involved, the whole process wound up sucking the soul out of the movement.

As a result, when the backlash came, the hope-and-changers had no independent ground on which to stand and fight back. Grassroots activists had little independent ability to challenge the White House when it was wrong and, therefore, a dwindling capacity to defend it when it was right.

The Obama administration had the wrong theory of the movement, and the movement had the wrong theory of the presidency. In America, change comes when we have two kinds of leaders, not just one. We need a president who is willing to be pushed into doing the right thing, and we need independent leaders and movements that are willing to do the pushing. For a few years, Obama's supporters expected the president to act like a movement leader, rather than a head of state.

The confusion was understandable: As a candidate, Obama performed many of the functions of a movement leader. He gave inspiring speeches, held massive rallies, and stirred
our hearts. But when he became president, he could no longer play that role.

The expectation that he would or could arose from a fundamental misreading of U.S. history. After all, as head of state, President Lyndon Johnson did not lead the civil rights movement. That was the job of independent movement leaders, such as Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer. There were moments of conflict and cooperation between Johnson and leaders in the freedom struggle, but the alchemy of political power and people power is what resulted in the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

As head of state, Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not lead the labor movement. That was the job of independent union leaders. Again, the alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the New Deal. As head of state, Woodrow Wilson did not lead the fight to enfranchise women. That was the role of independent movement leaders, such as suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Ida B. Wells. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in women's right to vote. As head of state, Abraham Lincoln did not lead the abolitionists. That was the job of independent movement leaders Frederick Douglass, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman. The alchemy of political power and people power resulted in the emancipation of enslaved Africans. As head of state, Richard Nixon did not lead the environmental movement. That was the job of various environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, and other leaders, like those whom writer Rachel Carson inspired. Once again it was the alchemy of political power and people power that resulted in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

The biggest reason for our frustrations and failures is that we have not yet understood that both of these are necessary—and they
are distinct. We already have our head of state who arguably is willing to be pushed. We do not yet have a strong enough independent movement to do the pushing. The bulk of this book makes the case for how and why we should build one.

In the next chapter, I will detail the rise of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street—two movements that arose in the vacuum left by the hope bubble's collapse.

T
HE LIBERTARIAN POPULIST REVOLT OF 2OO9
, also known as the Tea Party movement, seemed unlikely to derail Obama's agenda when it first emerged. Where did it come from? What did it have going for it? And why did it succeed?

There are a few theories on the origins of the Tea Party. Some call the godfather of the movement Ron Paul, the congressman who ran for president in 2008 on an anti-tax and anti-war platform. Among the fund-raisers and stunts he organized to galvanize his supporters—who were primarily other unwavering libertarians, as well as young folks attracted by his anti-war and anti-war-on-drugs position—were reenactments of the original 1773 Boston Tea Party, when civilians protested action by American colonists against Britain's planned tax on tea.

Others refer to an infamous, on-air rant by CNBC
Business News
editor Rick Santelli on February 19, 2009. Santelli went off, allegedly incensed by the Obama administration's Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, a $75 billion program to refinance the mortgages of homeowners at risk of losing their homes. In fact, the program cost less than one-one hundredth of the cost of the total bank bailouts, but it somehow made for irresistible fodder for Santelli, who called it “subsidizing the losers' mortgages.” Santelli, speaking from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, called for “tea parties” in protest.

The Santelli video went viral, and overnight a Facebook page, and websites such as
ChicagoTeaParty.com
and
reTeaParty.com
went live. These sites organized events in at least a dozen cities for February 27, to protest the stimulus bill Obama had just signed, and planned yet more events for “Tax Day,” or April 15. The Tea Party phenomenon, as we know it, had begun. Santelli called it the proudest moment of his life, saying, “I think that this tea party phenomenon is steeped in American culture and steeped in the American notion to get involved with what's going on with our government.”

Yet the roots of the movement can be traced at least as far back as the Libertarian Party's 1980 presidential campaign. It pitted a man named Ed Clark as the presidential candidate and David Koch as his vice presidential candidate in a hugely unsuccessful effort against Ronald Reagan as the Republican presidential candidate. The Clark-Koch platform called for an end to federal regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy, as well as an end to income taxes, Social Security, minimum-wage laws, and gun control.

Undeterred by this collosal, libertarian failure, the VP candidate, Koch, and his brother, Charles, decided on a longer, stealthier road to achieve that platform's goals. They founded and funded, to the tune of billions of dollars, arch-conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute and the Mercatus Center; they gave about $900,000 to the campaigns of George W. Bush and other Republicans; and they started the groups Citizens for a Sound Economy, Citizens for the Environment, Americans for Prosperity, and Patients United Now, to offer technical support and activist-training.

In return for their investments, the Koch brothers' businesses have received handsome rewards. Koch Industries is a conglomerate that operates oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota. It also owns Georgia-Pacific lumber (which annually produces 2.2 billion pounds of the carcinogen formaldehyde), Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other environmentally nasty products. Their annual revenues are estimated at $100 billion.