Obama isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century.
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The Quiet Revolution: Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine | The New Republic (via colinkloecker)
I’m not sure we Americans can yet appreciate how badly damaged the functional apparatus of our democracy was by the end of the Bush Administration. In the wake of their consolidation of executive power, extreme secrecy and disregard for civil liberties, we must first rebuild our democracy before we can rebuild our nation. See also Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette.
