In Reinventing Political Culture, I argue that there are four components to Barack Obama’s project in reinventing American political culture: (1) the politics of small things, using new media to capture the power of interpersonal political engagement and persuasion, (2) the revival of classical eloquence, (3) the redefinition of American identity and (4) the pursuit of good governance, rejecting across the board condemnations of big government, understanding the importance of the democratic state. I think that there is significant evidence for advances on all four fronts. The most difficult in the context of the Great Recession was the struggle for good governance, but now the full Obama Transformation, responding the Reagan Revolution, is gaining broad public acceptance.

The election was won using precise mobilization techniques. Key fully developed speeches by the President and his supporters, most significantly Bill Clinton, defined the accomplishments of the past for years and the promise of the next four. Obama’s elevation of the Great Seal motto E pluribus unum (in diversity union), defining the special social character and political strength of America, has won the day. And now, the era of blind antipathy to government is over.

The pendulum has finally swung back. The long conservative ascendancy has ended. A new commonsense has emerged. Obama’s reinvention of American political culture is rapidly advancing. The full effects of the 2012 elections are coming into view. The promise of 2008 is being realized. The counterattack of 2010 has been repelled. The evidence is everywhere to be seen, right in front of our eyes, and we should take note that it is adding up. Here is some evidence taken from reading the news of the past couple of days.

It is becoming clear that Obama’s tough stance in the fiscal cliff negotiations is yielding results.  The Republicans now are accepting tax increases. Signs are good that this includes tax rates. A headline in the Times Friday afternoon: “Boehner Doesn’t Rule Out Raising Tax Rates.” A striking shift in economic policy is apparent: tax the rich before benefit cuts for the poor, government support for economic growth. The Republicans are giving ground. The grand bargain to avoid the fiscal cliff will represent a major change in policy, with broad public support.

Boehner is talking tough but is gathering support of his party to enable a deal on President Obama’s terms, the Times reports in another story. The Republicans will support now what Boehner negotiates.

Even Rand Paul is supporting Harry Reid’s proposal in the Senate to increase taxes on the rich, albeit with a professed assurance that this will hurt the economy and in the long run hurt Democrats. Rand’s ideological conviction enables him to politically act. He pretends to know that taxing the rich will ruin the economy and be good in the end for libertarian Republicans such as himself. But note: he is accommodating to the new commonsense as he expresses a conviction that in the long run it will end.

Shockingly, following the same pattern, Ann Coulter, the extreme right wing Fox commentator, scandalized her host Sean Hannity by maintaining that Republicans support Obama’s tax proposals. Rightists are recognizing that the winds are pushing left.

And the far right is moving to the margins. Witness Boehner’s demotion of four Tea Party Republicans from choice committee assignments in the House of Representatives , and Jim DeMint, the Tea Party Senator, choosing exile at the Heritage Foundation, as its president, over completing his term in office, a luxurious exile worth one million dollars a year.

There are also more creative Republican responses. Rising stars in the Republican Party, Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, gave speeches to a Jack Kemp tribute dinner, which emphasized the need to address the concerns and needs of the less advantage. I think that David Brooks reading of the significance of this is on the mark. There is a new “Republican Glasnost,” an openness to ideas, beyond trickle-down, ideas that could positively affect the life chances of the vast majority of the American citizenry, ideas that recognize positive government roles, that address the concerns of the less privileged.

The age of the attacks on big government is over. The times are truly changing. The New York Times today, under the headline “Obama Trusted on Economy,” reports on a Heartland Monitor Poll, finding broad support for Obama’s economic policies, with little support for  the Reaganesque Republican approach. The age of debate about good government has begun in an America that is becoming more comfortable with and confident of its pluralist identity, with more citizen involvement, and in which eloquence and intelligence matters. The election mattered.

On a more sober note: I don’t think that all is well in the Republic, that we are entering a new era of good feelings, that the President has the answer to all challenging problems. On many issues, the environment, national security, privacy and citizen rights, education and poverty, I think his policies and programs are wanting. I agree with the many leftist criticisms of Obama found on the left. But I think now is the time to push for corrections, with a chance to achieve them. As Obama himself said once, he has to be pushed to do the right thing.

I also think that the ideological polarization of the American public and its leadership is still a very serious problem. I wish the Tea Party were a thing of the past, but I fear it isn’t, and I hope the Occupy Movement will more practically engage in our pressing social problems, but I worry that it may not. It needs to work on speaking American, as Tom Hayden once put it in the 60s, stop dreaming about utopian visions, anarchism and the like, that make no sense to the broad American public, and address the incompleteness of the Obama transformation in ways that the public can understand and support. The emerging commonsense makes this possible. Obama has moved the center left, which has long been his project. The task for leftists is to move it further, engaging their fellow citizens.

Last month, I speculated that the supercommittee had the potential to help drag our legislature into a more authentic form of bipartisanship, a bipartisanship based on principled mutual compromise in the tradition of Henry Clay. I expressed my belief that the makeup of the committee would determine its ability to affect change. In that respect, the prospect of the committee changing the status quo now seems bleak. There is great opportunity but the membership of the committee suggested that the opportunity will be missed.

The Committee on Deficit Reduction is nominally a “joint select committee.” Emphasis should be given to the “joint” nature. Select committees generally suggest, but don’t legislate.  In the present supercommittee, I see the spirit of the conference committees that resolve contentions between Senate and House bills. “Going to conference” offers possibilities of compromise that would not have previously existed for the conferees in their respective chambers or standing committees. Conference rules state that “the conferees are given free reign to resolve their differences without formal instructions from their bodies.” Senate scholar Walter Oleszek quoted an anonymous Senate leader opining, “Conferences are marvelous. They’re mystical. They’re alchemy. It’s absolutely dazzling what you can do.”

In the Obama budget talks, posturing was encouraged by heightened visibility. Separate branches of government competed for authority. With the supercommittee, we move to what Erving Goffman called the “backstage.” The individual actors have more agency to shape the outcome than the participants of last year’s deal. That is why I believe an overview of the members involved will not only be informative, but help us understand the debate’s nature. I have my partisan interests. Nonetheless, while I think the Democrats have some problems, I think the real problem lies with the Republicans.

The Democrats: The House delegation is perhaps too easy to dismiss as Pelosi loyalists – Van Hollen and Clyburn have been her top lieutenants. On the Senate side, Patty Murray is a progressive who could create real dialogue. However, my intuition tells me she is acting primarily as a representative of party leadership. There is nothing wrong with this (and I afford Senator Kyl the same leniency) but I am concerned it may constrain her in a way that, say, Senator Leahy would not have been. Senator Baucus suffers from allegations by Alan Simpson that he was all but absent in the Simpson-Bowles commission work. John Kerry, in contrast, was praised for his commitment to that report, and the “Senate Man” image that hurt his presidential bid may help him maneuver the wheeling-and-dealing of a private conference.

The Republicans: The choice of their delegates reflects a complete disinterest in any compromise. The committee is stacked with the “true believers” Jeffrey Goldfarb describes as a threat to the delicate relationship between truth and politics. Equally disturbing is how the choices seem to reflect ignorance of Americans’ struggles. “Out of touch” is a campaign cliché, but POLITICO’s David Rogers provided an interesting piece of journalism highlighting that the committee Republicans are all white men with “considerable wealth.” McConnell and Boehner are savvy politicians — they know that their selections convey a message beyond the fitness of the members to solve the problems in front of the committee. I’m incredulous that a single, competent woman or minority was not available to serve (Olympia Snowe? Susan Collins? Marco Rubio, even?).

So who are the GOP’s voices at the table?

Senator John Kyl of Arizona. Mr. Kyl was part of the Biden working group, but I would caution seeing this as a sign of bipartisan commitment. Mr. Kyl has followed up last fall’s inflexible opposition to the START treaty (despite full-throated support from the national security community and respected Republican experts including Dick Lugar)with the statement “I’m off the committee,” if defense cuts are considered. This after only one meeting.

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is the only member on the committee who voted against the debt ceiling compromise, and I suspect that is the primary reason he was selected. Someone like Jim DeMint has more experience and more cache with the Tea Party.

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio was elected in the Tea Party tidal-wave, but he is a pragmatic, career politician at heart. He served as budget director for George W. Bush. Portman describes himself as a “hawk on tax reform.” I believe that this is the proper lens through which to view Boehner’s unusual choice of appointing two Michigan representatives: Reps. Camp and Upton. Upton chairs the powerful Committee on Ways and Means through which any tax legislation would pass. Camp chairs the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which, by virtue of its broad jurisdiction, would be affected by practically any tax code changes.

Tax reform is popular with both parties. If the supercommittee were to hone in on  tax code reform, it may appear that acrimony could be avoided while addressing the deficit. I am not convinced Boehner’s motives are so pure. Boehner’s view of tax reform is essentialy of the revenue-neutral school of thought. A focus on revenue-neutral reform would allow a “front stage” appearance of mutual concession, while the “back stage” would hardly be worthy of the name in Goffman’s sense, opening the door to of a series of Democratic concessions to further tax cuts. From a practical standpoint it would also help the committee to avoid making the hard decisions it was convened to make.

Co-chair Jeb Hensarling is the House’s most fervent crusader against spending, and further complicates the tax reform issue. He could be a powerful advocate to push the tax reform angle. It was Hensarling who rallied his caucus to vote down the September 2008 financial bill, an action that sent the market into such a panic that the Bush bailout was passed on the second go with the Senate at the wheel. But Hensarling could also put the brakes on tax reform. Deficit hawks are not monolithic in their support of revenue-neutral reform and if Hensarling senses corporate taxes could be increased as a result, any movement on that issue would likely be stalled.

Considering the restrictions of the Democratic conferees and the aversion to concession of the Republican conferees, it seems to me that  any deal will necessarily have Senators Kerry and Portman as the designated deal-brokers. Their experience and relative pragmatism, respectively, will allow the committee to come to an agreement. But I fear it will be a modest agreement – a deal, not a compromise .

A great opportunity likely will be lost. Congress was given an opportunity to work outside of the normal constraints of legislation. There was a possibility for “alchemy.” Instead, I fear, there will be a deal almost indistinguishable from those the Senate has historically passed with regularity. We may save ourselves from an immediate crisis, but at the cost of continuing on our current path of disruptive partisanship avoiding the serious problems we face.