Towards the end of his speech, President Obama said the following words: “…when facts and reason are thrown overboard and only timidity passes for wisdom, and we can no longer even engage in a civil conversation with each other over the things that truly matter that at that point we don’t merely lose our capacity to solve big challenges. We lose something essential about ourselves.”

While Obama’s speech made some forceful observations about how Social Security and Medicare were sought to be blocked by many who claimed that this heralded Socialism (which was obviously such a bad thing in those days of the Cold War, but oh, wait a minute it still is), his own “public option” found its way into the speech only at around half-time. Can one say, almost timidly? Perhaps, it is Obama’s way of claiming wisdom? He wants this reform to pass. In some form. And maybe he will succeed in this. But, did he lose something essential about himself (his progressive self) in the process?

Before the speech I was listening to some of the talking heads who were bouncing around with the question – Who is the audience going to be for Obama? In other words, the question was whether he would cave in to all those who have relentlessly pushed to make the watered down public option sound like the coming of forced labor camps to America? Or, stand up and see that he does not need to do any of this tight-rope-walking business to do the right thing by his own moral principles?

So, who did Obama have in mind as his audience? As expected, he tried to talk to everybody in his vision which included the “scared elderly population” (a constituency which the media has convinced many people actually exists), some of his progressive friends to his left, and the sad looking small bunch of Republicans who kept sitting for the most part defiantly when everyone else was clapping away. And he assured each of them in his smooth voice: that Siberia was not at their doors, that there was a public option, and then again that no one would be forced to pick his public option which was anyway not being paid by taxes (a strange public institution indeed, if it is so).

We can hope that some of the scared elderly are less scared now. We saw that many Democrats tried to clap really hard and long to express their cheerful support. Yet, one cannot blame his progressive friends for not being too happy with his offering. He could have at least said that the time for Medicare-for-all was not yet here by his calculations. Instead, he said that he wished to be the last President to take up healthcare reform. Which means that public option Obama-style is all we can ever hope for in our imagined Caring Society. And we know that his Republican colleagues do not care much for his valiant attempts to be inclusive – they did not even care to amend their preformatted response statement (read by a doctor with 3 malpractice suits against him, at least acc. to some of the media reports) which was full of factual errors about Obama’s plan and of course all the other kinds of errors they have specialized in. Perhaps it will reduce the hate-mongering by townhall hopping rightwingers. But then, why should this happen? Perhaps, progressives will be told next, “thou dost protest too much.” We should celebrate the “public option” (if it weren’t so polite sounding, the term actually makes me think of a stock option or a initial public offering). And we should know what to do when that happens.

Since I hate to end on a note of pessimism, I wish to end with something from a far away place, and time, which allows me to understand the great defense of liberalism that Obama’s speech (especially in his last 10 mins) genuinely tried to be.

In 1936 there was a memorable exchange in India between Dr. B.R.Ambedkar (a towering 20th century figure in India who combined the spirits of Frederick Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr., and WEB DuBois in articulating the cause of India’s Untouchable community while fundamentally directing modern India’s move to embrace liberty, equality and fraternity) and Mahatma Gandhi – two of Hinduism’s best students. The context was the former’s trenchant critique of Hinduism’s oppressive practices, especially the practices and institution of caste, which Ambedkar argued was detrimental to all Hindus and not simply to the untouchables or the most oppressed and exploited group of castes within Hinduism. In his dissent, Gandhi despite welcoming Amedkar’s critical view of Hinduism argued that Hinduism, like any other religion, must be evaluated on the actions of its “best specimens, not its worst.” Responding to Gandhi, Ambedkar who faced the wrath, contempt and discrimination of innumerable Hindus asked, “why [do] the worst [specimens] number so many and the best so few?” He went on to argue that the only logical explanation was to admit that religious ideals (in this case, of Hinduism) had “given a wrong moral twist to the lives of the many and that the best have become best in spite of the wrong ideal.” Ambedkar’s erudite and humanist critique of Hinduism was an internal critique since he was speaking from within the fold when he was still a Hindu (he converted to Buddhism along with hundreds of his followers just six months before his death in 1956). It was nevertheless not acceptable to Gandhi or to the bulk of Hindus who rejected it as an attack on Hinduism’s roots. Tragically for Hinduism and Hindus, it was forgotten that Ambedkar made distinctions between a religion of [customary] rules that he wished to destroy (which was how he saw Hinduism being practiced), and a religion of principles which he wished to bring into existence in its place. Thus, he exhorted:

“…you [Hindus] must give a new doctrinal basis to your Religion – a basis that will be in consonance with Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, in short with Democracy…This means a complete change in the fundamental notions of life. It means a complete change in the values of life. It means a complete change in outlook and in attitude towards men [sic] and things. It means conversion; but if you do not like the word, I will say, it means new life. But a new life cannot enter a body that is dead. New life can enter only in a new body” (excerpted from Annihilation of Caste With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi, 1936).

Obama may very well be one of the last liberals of our age. And, like the best of liberals who went before him, Obama’s public option plan ought to show left progressives, especially, spiritual progressives like the many Tikkunistas on NSP, the clear limits of liberalism even when he may have given a “winning” speech for his landmark policy legacy (see Dave Belden’s blog on the difference between spiritual progressives, liberals and conservatives). Like the Hinduism that was in need of renewal, liberalism too seems to be stuck as a religion of rules (the customary rule of bowing to the power, morality, efficiency and inevitability of the market even when that institution has repeatedly shown itself to be incapable of delivering humane, equitable and just social products), incapable of morphing into a religion of principles where caring, sharing, cooperation, and public good trump the holy cow of private profit and the tyranny of efficiency.