What you call "liberal" I would call forward-facing. I don't think the US can afford to cling to a past long gone.
rumborak
Well, you call it that because you happen to agree with a liberal point of view from what I've seen here. I call it "liberal" because that's just the current nomenclature for the type of political world-view that Obama's appointees tend to embrace. Most of my European friends do this:
when I refer to Obama as a "liberal" because from their perspective he's damn near a conservative, and I can see how they would think that, but then, they don't live here.
So, I completely agree with you about those views being "forward facing," but the unfortunate reality is the power brokers that hold sway in our political system do not. This country is, generally, a center-right country. Frankly, a guy like Obama is lucky to be in office, and I know a lot of people here think he's a lock for a second term (I believe that view is influenced greatly by the relative youth of the audience here) but I don't believe that's the case at all.
What I find downright laughable is the fact that everyone on the political right in this country was doing an awful lot of hand-wringing about how Obama was "the most liberal senator" and such before he got elected and now everyone on the political left in this country is doing an awful lot of hand-wringing about how he's nowhere near as progressive as they had hoped.
What both sides seem to be forgetting is the fact that pretty much every president in the last 50 years has RUN on the extreme left or right but GOVERNED from the center. The exception to that being George W. Bush who governed from the center-right. But George W. Bush had a distinct advantage that Obama does not have. Bush did not face a unified Democratic opposition in the legislature the same way Obama faces a unified Republican opposition. That makes a MASSIVE difference in what an executive can actually accomplish.
This is why I've really just settled for Obama's court appointees, because aside from his watered down health care legislation that's about all he's going to get.