The president didn't change the recipe in his State of the Union Address beyond asking others for new ideas. Scott Brown seemed to come out of nowhere, but it was the energy of lots of small, determined steps and lots of righteous anger that propelled him to Washington. His election is a reminder that democracy thrives when voters think independently. Trend-spotters are always slower to catch on to what's happening than the trend-changers who organize around change. Scott Brown is a trend-changer.
The idea that a "Kennedy seat" could be bequeathed automatically to a Democrat sounded like Massachusetts voters believe in something like the divine right of senators. A political party is not a dynasty; neither is it a family. A senator represents a variety of people with different ideas of their own about what's best for them. Divisions diminish when a strong leader, idea or a group of ideas draw them together with common sense for common cause. The tipping point is usually difficult to see from Washington and the president, who campaigns against Washington where he now happens to live, didn't see it.
When Deborah Converse, who runs a Kennedy museum in Hyannisport, Mass., was asked about Scott Brown's success, she answered with bluntness typical of New England. "It wasn't about the Kennedy seat," she told The New York Times. "I think the Democrats wanted to make it that way, but it just wasn't." She voted for Martha Coakley, but she knew how independent-minded her neighbors are, and Coakley canvassers knew the game was over when they saw Brown yard signs sprouting on lawns next to cars in the driveway with Obama bumper stickers.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in Boston only 22 years after the Revolution and the "first philosopher of the American spirit," would understand. Our institutions, he said, are not superior to the individual citizen: "The State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen."
He could have been talking about the irresponsible way in which health care legislation was jammed through Congress. Cunning can be synonymous with politics, he observed, but "the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting."
President Obama observes that when his poll numbers are low he's perceived as "cool, cerebral, cold, detached," and when his poll numbers are high he's "calm and reasoned." In his State of the Union, he was cool, offering the same old reasons for change he made in the campaign.
David Plouffe has his work cut out for him to help the president "regroup, refocus and re-engage." Otherwise, he'll watch everything go poof! Or maybe just plouffe!