CHARLOTTE, N.C. – He didn’t deliver a clear second-term agenda, or a speech that thrilled. He didn’t explain how his re-election will spell an end to Washington’s policy stalemate. But President Obama did offer a sort of consolation prize in his convention speech: a new theme to sum up his case against Mitt Romney.
That theme was citizenship, and specifically the obligations that American citizens have to each other and to the society they re-create every day. The president’s description of Republican disdain for those bonds – a government that says “you’re on your own,” in the words of one his former economists, Jared Bernstein – crystallized what is at stake in this election more effectively than most of his previous speeches.
Dispatches and quick takes from Charlotte.“This country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations,” he said. “We, the people, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.”
That sense of responsibility is lacking, he noted, when banks trick families into signing mortgages they cannot afford, making the case for financial regulation and a consumer protection agency that Republicans have fought at every turn.
It is lacking when government cuts money for teachers who offer a little girl an escape from poverty, or a Pell grant for college that could make her a scientist or a president – “and it is in our power to give her that chance,” he said, in contrast to a party that favors such cuts.
It is lacking, he said, when a political party systematically makes it harder for poor people and minorities to vote. When lawmakers ridicule providing health coverage to the uninsured. And when retirees are presented with a limited voucher to cover their medical needs,instead of a Medicare program.
And it is particularly lacking when the wealthy are delighted to write $10 million checks to buy elections but are unwilling to pay a few thousand more in taxes to pay for the obligations of citizenship.
“This is what the election comes down to,” he said. “Over and over, we’ve been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way, that since government can’t do everything, it should do almost nothing.” But this isn’t a country, he said, that believes people should not get sick if they don’t have health insurance, or breathe pollution for the sake of industrial progress.
I was one of those who had hoped Mr. Obama would explain how a second term would be different from the first, but instead he had a slightly more grim and purposeful message to convey: government has a significant role to play in keeping society from fraying, and someone has to fight for it against the forces of individualism. That battle, more than any specific policy, is what he wants to continue in another term.
