Beyond all the rhetoric and political marketing of hope and change in the 2008 election cycle, I was never under the delusion that the Obama administration would be anything more than the latest iteration of Third Way politics, a political brand that is little more than Republican politics without all the hate of 'the other'. Still, I did hold out some hope (see what I did there?) that we'd see some reversals to the NCLB craziness, even if they were largely symbolic. It has therefore been depressing to see the Obama administration double down on NCLB and launch a full frontal assault on one of the republic's most successful institutions.

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A feature of the Obama presidency has been his campaign against the American public school system, eating way at the foundations of elementary education. That means the erosion of an institution that has been one of the keystones of the Republic. The project to remake it as a mixed public/private hybrid is inspired by a discredited dogma that charter schools perform better. This article of faith serves an alliance of interests -- ideological and commercial -- for whom the White House has been point man. A President whose tenure in office is best known for indecision, temporizing and vacillation has been relentless since day one in using the powers of his office to advance the cause. Such conviction and sustained dedication is observable in only one other area of public policy: the project to expand the powers and scope of the intelligence agencies that spy on, and monitor the behavior of persons and organizations at home as well as abroad.

The audacity of the project is matched by the passive deference that it is accorded. There is no organized opposition -- in civil society or politics. Only a few outgunned elements fight a rearguard action against a juggernaut that includes Republicans and Democrats, reactionaries and liberals -- from Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York to the nativist Christian Right of the Bible Belt. All of this without the national "conversation" otherwise so dear to the hearts of the Obama people, without corroboration of its key premises, without serious review of its consequences, without focused media attention.

When you add in that the administration has been captured by Wall Street interests, that it asserts the right to kill anyone (including American citizens) using drones without even a hint of judicial oversight and its massive expansion of the Bush era surveillance state, it really is hard to underestimate the damage that Mr. Hope and Change has done to progressive politics in the US. With Hillary and the next generation of Rubinites on the horizon, it is safe to say that the future doesn't look bright.