I'm going to take responsibility and try and make it a good day.

I've made this argument since last summer (2007) that the real Progressive agenda that Obama brings to the table is getting people interested in government again.  It was very easy during Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton, and especially Bush Jr. to feel like the whole thing was a self-perpetuating tragicom that followed no rules and responded to no outside pressure.  It didn't really matter what any of us thought.  I think the Bush Jr. years took this to a whole new level, but it has been there for a very long time.

Making people feel this way is a political strategy that generally favors a center-right status quo.  After all, if politics (and by extension government) is completely run by crooks and liars, why even try to understand it?  Why waste your time looking at the details of, say, Welfare Reform, the Iraq War (either one), the FISA legislation, the Bailout.  And, if that's your honest belief, then who cares about public service or the functioning of critical government agencies?  Maybe FEMA never worked anyhow.  And, finally, why should any of us pay taxes?  I don't want my money going to Colombian death squads.

What Obama brings to the table is a crapload of interest in the government and how it works.  He brings with him voters who, maybe for the first time in a generation, are excited about a politician and think that the government could be made to work.  This is critically important because when people pay attention to politics, it's harder for politicians to pull one over on them.  It'll still happen, but there will be a mitigating force.

Dracomicron

I think the issue is this.

Most democrats are good people to the shock of many republicans.
Most republicans are good people to the shock of many democrats.

Most people are not super duper smart.
Most politicians are smarter than average.
Most remaining problems are very complex so much so that even the smartest don't understand what will happen.

Because of this Politicians are unable to deliver what they WANT to deliver.  This looks to most as though they are lying about what they will deliver when its merely they are ignorant of how terribly terribly difficult and unpredictable things are.

First of all, the "they're all the same" belief is the mark of people who vote or are Republican.  It's called 'leveling' to refuse to see distinctions that actually matter.

Having said that, in a way there is an oblique truth to the point of view.  Every politician of our time is, because s/he has to be, a surfer on the wave of public opinon.  We are that small d democratic as a society- lower middle class people and blue collar people presently constitute the majority of the people who see politics as something in which to their individual interests and opinions are dealt with.  (A century ago most or all blue collar people sold their votes or got told how to vote, and middle class white men were the people who were in fact in control of what public opinion was.  And two centuries ago it was upper middle class or upper class white men who bought or controlled how middle class white men voted.)

And blue collar and lower middle class people in this country have a lot of baggage in physical needs and psychologically in unresolved fears and resentments.  (As did the classes of people who controlled public opinion in earlier times, who likewise played their needs and resentments out until they were resolved.) That slow unpacking and dealing with and ditching of that particular baggage is what defines our politics now.

We're also at the end of 40 years of a phase of individualism in politics, of a public consensus to do the minimum necessary to make it through the day and through the year as a collective.  Because otherwise we might (God, how awful) help undeserving or hopeless people with our time, effort, and wealth- poor black people, felons, gay people, Latinos, Muslims, the mentally ill etc.  And not spend that time, money, and effort punishing our enemies.   Maybe we were in fact economically and psychologically overstretched as a society in 1972 or 1980 or 1994- and 2001 released a lot of pent-up remaining existential fear of nuclear missile and bomber attacks from the Cold War.

A lot of people stay stuck in some point of time.  We probably were mostly done with our fears and probably had the economic size and power in the late 1990s and early 2000s that this anti-collective phase probably should have passed quietly then.  But Republicans dug hard at the remaining deep feelings of fear- fear of physical destruction, fear of social changes, fear of being poor again, fear of the loss of religion, fear of being governed by people who don't like to kill their enemies, fear of grudges from the past in the rest of the globe and domestically, fear of violent crime, fear of a world in which serious scientific education is a necessity.  We have now exhausted our fears, I think.  

But many people sadly never quite exhaust their fears fully once tapped, or sense of loss of the past that they cling to.  They don't return to faith in the collective, aren't willing to invest in society at large and its endeavors that make its future.  And they express it by rejecting and tuning out the politicians who represent the public opinion, who represent the desire to start doing serious and constructive things together again.

Of course, too deep and fervent a belief in collective endeavors also always comes to grief.  Large groups of people always set a lot higher and more ideal-based goals than can be accomplished.  Or, are truly necessary.  But it's the forward motion that matters, the better and stronger and larger foundations laid for the future.   We can often build high on small and inadequate foundations, but the edifice soon falls again.  See the moon project, for example.  Better to care about the solidity and size of the foundation, and consider the height of the edifice built in this generation in e.g. universal health care or environmental protection or alternative energy a bonus to be grateful for but a bit transient.  Everything good we do has to undergo revisions eventually, some tearing down again before getting built higher, better, stronger.

We do have some great accomplishments to show for all our pains.  We are going to fully understand every disease in the next few decades and will have cures for many.  We have excellent pictures from the planets, unbelievable pictures of the stars, and men have been to the moon and back.  We were the first First World society to learn both a love of and respect for wildness and wilderness.  We created the weapons of greatest destruction- and now we are the power that most sees to their elimination.  We have become the most diverse and functional and creative large society on the planet, despite our disputes- our despair over setbacks is great because our expectations are so great.  We have as a society dealt with all of the great issues of human history, though some more than others, and despite the pain of it and terrible cost in blood we are a society that ultimately becomes an increment more human and humane and fair every generation.   Every generation more ignorance and bigotry passes away, more grievances end.  We are terrible in our sloth and indifference and ignorance- and yet so energetic and capable and in a form wise when we choose to that we are more than a little afraid and then deeply proud or ashamed (or both) at the results of unleishing our collective energy on anything.