Cutting Off Our Noses

By Sniffles

As you may have noticed, we cats have recently had a few verbal tussles with Barack Obama's critics on the left. These are the folks we label "liberal losers," because they insist that if the President doesn't immediately perform 100 percent in line with their world view, he's as bad as Bush was, or worse.

During these cat fights, we've noticed a few themes that run through their arguments: We are blind Obama followers; we have no principles; we can't stand dissent; we should go hang out at the DNC website, where everyone agrees with one another all the time.

Ridiculous.

We cats aren't known for being particularly empathetic creatures (although we are good at jumping up on laps and purring). But we actually understand a lot of the liberal losers' frustrations. We, too, would like to turn around the ship of state on a dime. We, too, would like to snap our fingers (if we had any) and make all the hangovers from the Bush Administration go away. But our system of government isn't like that. In the words of the gay activist Franklin E. Kameny, these things take time.

Why? Because even in a democracy in which a majority of the people have spoken, American government and American politics are inextricably intertwined. In order to get anything accomplished — to be a good-deed-doer in any sense of the word — you have to think in long-range political terms, not just ideological ones. Which means that along the way, you have to make compromises and forge consensus. This helps keep you in power — not an end in itself but the essential means to the ends that you want to achieve.

President Obama understands this, maddening as it is to our good friends on the left. He may be an ivory-tower Constitutional law professor, but intellectually, Obama also lives in the real world. This is a rare leadership quality in an era that isn't as polarized and cacophonous as ours; the fact that he's not only among us but is also our President is, to us cats, an astounding and fortuitous turn of events.

In short, our dear fellow liberals, undermining Obama from the left as well as from the right is not helpful. He is not the enemy. He is far more your friend than anyone on the other side ever will be.

So give it a try. Think politically. It doesn't make you less pure.

It helps you get the stuff you care about done.