This blog is housed on a site dedicated to an artform often centered on heroics. It’s a harmless fantasy, but when it’s just a fantasy in real life it can do a lot of harm. There’s been a strange turn in the Obama Administration in recent days, in which the rhetoric gets tougher the less effective the policies really are. The President called major bankers to the White House — those who managed to show up — for a woodshed photo-op *after* which he talked tough about what would be expected of these captains of an industry everyone’s tax dollars disappeared in the general direction of. He himself hit the climate-change summit toward its end and gave rousing speeches about getting meaningful work done — emerging with a completely nonbinding and open-ended compromise statement, brokered by the U.S. and our partner architect of the Iraq War “coalition,” Britain. Then there’s healthcare… or it seemed there was going to be.

To quiet right-leaning members of their own party (or essential defectors like Joe Lieberman), Senate Democrats flensed their own bill of anything that would cause expense or effort from the insurance companies (and that goes for the proscription on pre-existing-condition exclusions too, since there’s nothing to keep them from jacking up our price for this protection). This was with the full encouragement of the White House, to which all 60 nominal Democrats in the Senate were called for another of these sleeve-rolling seminars, which make a show of tough choices and tenacious principle but from which everyone emerges with sweeping unilateral compromises.

The president gave a contentious speech after that one, and the automatic emails I get from the White House have since talked about the urgent need to get this “historic” legislation passed. Unspecific mention is made of compromises that had to be made, as in all legislation. The “compromise” in this case, however, was an abandonment of the president’s own stated principles — including a public option to provide real competition for unrestrained insurers — with all his administration’s energy directed toward moderating allies of this plan in Congress rather than pressuring those breaking ranks and siding with big-business Republicans. Not getting all you want and not fighting for any of it are two very different things. Sadly, the “reality” we’re being asked to accept is one broader and more discouraging than the president intends.

It has to do with accepting business-as-usual from even the most rhetorically idealistic of politicians. To an extent, rhetoric alone can be revolutionary. Obama had been uncommon, almost unprecedented, in the level to which he would confront critics’ claims and counter-arguments head-on. The very passing acknowledgment of “compromises made” in current White House spam is a disappointing step back to the mere deletion of opposing viewpoints and recently reneged positions we’re more accustomed to.

The decade now ending was uncommonly overt in its affirmations that popular will doesn’t matter. Millions of people taking to the streets — many of whom never had before — against the Iraq fiasco months before it started was just the most vivid example. There is a feeling of foregone conclusions and timetable-driven policy at work in both that misadventure and the president’s and Senate’s rallying around a bad healthcare bill. The Bush Administration was explicit about the ability to wage war in a time of year with favorable weather constituting the deadline by which weapons-inspectors must find a reason for going to war at all or go home; Obama has become fixated on the face-saving grail of getting a healthcare bill done within the year, whether or not it meaningfully addresses the issues he raised in introducing it.

The majority of Americans who still favor a public option — and the majority of Democratic voters who say they’ll stay home in 2010 if the current version of the bill becomes law — have waited several lifetimes for truly affordable, fully available healthcare, and could wait a little longer for the right fight to be fought. If it’s already lost, though, they shouldn’t stay home — and next time a lot of them should try being on the ballot themselves.

Obama understands well the power of symbols — his oratory remains stirring, even when there is no accomplishment behind or proceeding from the words (and he’s calling us to fervor about positions opposite to the ones being promoted before; a worrisome Clintonian definition of unity and victory without even Bill Clinton’s honest high-handedness toward his base). Symbols drive us — the sacrifice of Martin Luther King, the vision of Thom Paine, etc. — but it would be nice if some leaders would be more than symbols while they’re alive (as the guys I’ve listed were). It’s still early in the administration, but some major ground is being ceded already, no matter how rousing the rhetoric and disciplined the stagecraft.

We may just have to settle for what Obama represented — determination, principle, and a connection to common experience. Most of us need no schooling to understand the growing privation and powerlessness of the many, and increasingly have no choice in trying to do something about it. The 2008 campaign — and the movements since — released a spirit of participation and persistence that no one should — unilaterally — seal back up. He started it, and we have to finish it; even he never said anything different (though there was no expecting how soon he might not go there with us). Obama was a great idea, and a valid one. Maybe he’s not “The One” after all. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t Another One somewhere. Or another 300 million.