Change we can facilitate in

In America, the "price of getting too far ahead of the majority" can be politically ruinous. It is a truism that President Obama seems to embrace, opines David Remnick. He writes: "At a fundraising dinner in 2008, in Montclair, New Jersey, Obama told one of his favorite stories about F.D.R. (He told the story apropos of the Israeli-Arab dispute, but it also pertains to gay marriage.) Obama recounted how when F.D.R. was confronted by the civil-rights leader A. Philip Randolph about the racial injustices in the country and the need for the President to use his powers and his bully pulpit, F.D.R. said he agreed but he would only take action when he was forced to do so by a popular movement. 'Make me do it,' he told Randolph." Echoing a similar theme, Ezra Klein observes: "Presidents campaign promising to create change, but they govern by facilitating it. The model of the persuasive president inspiring the country to support what they previously opposed has virtually never been borne out in American political history. Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t manage it with World War II (the nation remained stubbornly isolationist - until Pearl Harbor). ... it’d be wise for the country’s view of the president’s power to evolve towards the realities of the office." Wouldn't that be nice.