MARCHIN' SHOES

Maxine Waters of California seems ambivalent. She is a black Congresswoman who is in the habit of declaring that she loves the president and wants to help him be a successful candidate, then poking him smartly in the eye. Most recently she responded to his speech before the Congressional Black Caucus by intimating that it was puzzling, condescending, and insulting.

You can see what she was getting at. There was the lingo -- the dropping of final "g"s, as in workin', trying', complainin' --affected to make him sound either black or like George W. Bush. Then there was his admonition to quit bitchin' and get out of their bedroom slippers and into their marchin' shoes. As though they were a bunch of slackers who were letting him down.

He had better have them with him; if he's the Democratic nominee and blacks stay home, his chances of re-election go from diminished to demolished.

But what would they be voting for? The unemployment rate among blacks was at 11.5% when this administration took office. It is now at 16.7%. The president has not proposed any measure to alleviate unemployment specifically in the black community, where it is worse than anywhere else. He is fearful that any "favoring of his own" (over whites) would worsen his lot. This calculated neglect is part of the price blacks are paying for him, and who can blame them if they aren't convinced he's worth it?

After failing to initially demand a tax hike for the rich because of other priorities and then trading away any chance for one, Mr. Obama has made that his issue of the moment -- now that he has no leverage and it won't happen. This is what his forsaken base always wanted to hear, but today who could trust him to follow through? Despite this new "combativeness", his approval rating goes down and down. He is out of options.

The cynicism of this administration is probably less evident to him than to his apparatus. The money from Wall Street pours in and is heralded as a tribute to his pragmatism and his ability to get along with all crucial elements of our diverse polity. No one says that one pleases the lamb by patting it on the head and the lion by doing nothing while it eats the lamb; this sophistication is the sine qua non of the contemporary statecraft that's all about money.

Part of me would love to see a black candidate enter the Democratic nomination race as an uncompromising truth-teller and fearless reformer. Meanwhile, in Madison and on Wall Street a movement takes shape that will sooner or later go national.

Politics is finally not about money but about support, not about rhetoric but about issues, not about being all things to all people but about being the right person for one's hour. It is time to march -- not with the Barack Obamas and Mitt Romneys but over them to a future that is not theirs but ours.