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With apologies to Greg Sargent, I've stolen his title for this post because, to be honest, there really isn't any better way to lead than with this quote. Like John Edwards before him, it looks like Barack Obama is going to make comprehensive health care reform one of the centerpieces of his presidential campaign. First an excerpt of the speech (which Sargent provides in fullhere), and then some thoughts.

Plans that tinker and halfway measures now belong to yesterday. The President’s latest proposal that does little to bring down cost or guarantee coverage falls into this category. There will be many others offered in the coming campaign, and I am working with experts to develop my own plan as we speak, but let’s make one thing clear right here, right now:

In the 2008 campaign, affordable, universal health care for every single American must not be a question of whether, it must be a question of how. We have the ideas, we have the resources, and we must find the will to pass a plan by the end of the next president’s first term.

I know there’s a cynicism out there about whether this can happen, and there’s reason for it. Every four years, health care plans are offered up in campaigns with great fanfare and promise. But once those campaigns end, the plans collapse under the weight of Washington politics, leaving the rest of America to struggle with skyrocketing costs.

For too long, this debate has been stunted by what I call the smallness of our politics – the idea that there isn’t much we can agree on or do about the major challenges facing our country. And when some try to propose something bold, the interests groups and the partisans treat it like a sporting event, with each side keeping score of who’s up and who’s down, using fear and divisiveness and other cheap tricks to win their argument, even if we lose our solution in the process.

Well we can’t afford another disappointing charade in 2008. It’s not only tiresome, it’s wrong. Wrong when businesses have to layoff one employee because they can’t afford the health care of another. Wrong when a parent cannot take a sick child to the doctor because they cannot afford the bill that comes with it. Wrong when 46 million Americans have no health care at all. In a country that spends more on health care than any other nation on Earth, it’s just wrong.

And yet, in recent years, what’s caught the attention of those who haven’t always been in favor of reform is the realization that this crisis isn’t just morally offensive, it’s economically untenable. For years, the can’t-do crowd has scared the American people into believing that universal health care would mean socialized medicine and burdensome taxes – that we should just stay out of the way and tinker at the margins.

Although the speech goes on to provide a few specifics, as Kevin Drum points out, its fairly light on details. Unlike Kevin, however, I think this is actually one of the better features of the speech. Let me explain...

Throughout our history, transformative campaigns - realigning campaigns, if you will - have all had one distinctive rhetorical feature. They have all operated at a very, very high level. And they have done so for a very specific reason. Campaigns that drive realignments are about changing perceptions far more than they are about changing policies. Minor changes, they have all argued, are no longer enough. Our politics are broken, they claim, and only a wholesale transformation will allow us to meet the new challenges we face as a nation.

Think back, for example, to Reagan's campaign in 1980. It wasn't about policy; it was about rethinking government itself. Undoubtedly Reagan had many specific policy goals that he sought to achieve, but in his campaign he never described them in any great detail. Of course that frustrated many of his critics, but from Reagan's perspective that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Having cast the system as broken, he could recast his critics as defenders of the status quo, people so wedded to the status quo that they could not see the truth. While he was thinking "big," they were still thinking "small," part of a system desperately in need of reform.

By focusing on the meta-narrative, rather than on specific policy details, Reagan turned the campaign into a battle of ideas. He understood, I would argue, that if he could force the nation to rethink its relationship with its government, the battle over policies would already be won. Although "trickle down economics" became one of the catch phrases of the 1980's, what the decade really was about was "trickle down ideology." Once government had been recast as a problem, the entire conversation changed. Policy options that previously seemed logical now seemed bizarre, while options that had previously been impossible to defend suddenly were impossible to ignore. Change the meta-narrative and you've changed everything.

To this day, people are often surprised to learn that FDR was Reagan's favorite president. But from this perspective, it shouldn't be surprising at all. FDR engaged in precisely the same sort of campaign. FDR called the nation to rethink its government first and its policies second. His opponents, he argued, had broken the system, and both they and their ideas had to go. And most importantly, although FDR admitted he did not have all of the answers to the nation's problems, he argued that by bringing a new vision of government to the nation he would help us find our own way.

I don't know whether Obama is doing this consciously or not, but he clearly is working at the same rhetorical level. Compare the framing of Obama's argument above to these excerpts from the Inaugural Addresses of both FDR and Reagan. First, FDR:

Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and have abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

And now, Reagan:

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding: We are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Well, our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we're sick—professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, tabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, "We the people," this breed called Americans.

Well, this administration's objective will be a healthy, vigorous, growing economy that provides equal opportunities for all Americans, with no barriers born of bigotry or discrimination. Putting America back to work means putting all Americans back to work. Ending inflation means freeing all Americans from the terror of runaway living costs. All must share in the productive work of this "new beginning," and all must share in the bounty of a revived economy. With the idealism and fair play which are the core of our system and our strength, we can have a strong and prosperous America, at peace with itself and the world.

I'm not, for the record, trying to suggest that Obama will necessarily be the next Reagan or FDR. What I am suggesting, however, is that he is playing precisely the same rhetorical game as those two men.

Battles over meta-narrative aren't always what win presidential contests. There are only certain moments in our history when they matter. But at those moments, it is important to understand that they are the only thing that matters. 2008, I would argue, is one of those moments. And the candidate that understands that will be the next President of the United States.

So yes, Kevin, Obama's speech is light on specifics. But at this political moment, that is as it should be. Define the narrative, and the policies will follow.