Business-as-usual politics is an endeavor of the immediate and the parochial. Progressive politics looks beyond the immediate moment, but never past the people who are here right now. It’s a grand contradiction, one that defines whether politics is a war for limited resources or a shared endeavor to create the best possible common good.

Few people recognize, much less understand, progressive politics as I define it. Business-as-usual politics: that’s easy to see. It’s what’s on the news every day, what the blogs talk about, what the people you bitch about (if they even mention politics at all). It’s Congress failing to deliver health care reform. It’s every bitterness you’ve felt when the politicians fail to do what you think is necessary and right.

It’s a lifeless, soulless enterprise concerned with personal gain; as John Kitzhaber put it the other day, it’s Joe Liebermann grabbing for parochial gains just because he could. “Disgusting” was Kitz’ assessment, and that was restrained. National politics is increasingly irresponsible and unresponsive to the needs of the American people because more and more of the actors, or the mechanisms in which they function, are concerned with little more than winning a tiny, narrow debate that, even if they do win, produces nothing of value.

Sadly, few outside of these political enterprises see a bigger picture either. Meta-thinking is not something that comes naturally to most people. Explaining to human beings why they should grasp and support a perspective broader and more ambitious than what they were raised is difficult, to put it mildly. Staring up into the vastness of space and imagining a life and a being that is more wonderful than the greatest we can imagine? Good luck. Most people would rather stay at home and wait for the next American Idol.

But, to misquote and take out of context a good line from the Bible: Without a vision, the people perish. Perhaps few people are ready or able to see great, broad vistas; that does not mean we should not pursue and celebrate these. We saw, in Obama’s 2008 campaign, how people respond to a bold and grand vision of America, of the world. Yet we also saw, in 2009, how few people actually grasp what that vision requires: letting go of old, tiny, parochial politics and learning something new. Something bigger and better. Learning anything new is tough, and when it comes to politics, with its roots in so many aspects our of lives, letting go of the old to take up the new is incredibly risky and difficult.

For me, however, as appealing as the huge visions are, moving away from little politics had less to do with the grand and theoretical and much more to do with the close and personal. As a parent, and now a grandparent, the lives of those I love have fueled my political efforts. Our old politics is failing to provide a future for my children. Our old, tiny politics is destroying the world. We can’t change that by changing policies or policy-makers (to crib more from Kitz); we can’t dabble at the margins or rearrange the seating. We have to abandon politics-as-usual.

But the only way we can do that is to keep two different perspectives at the same time: the “big picture” and the “near and dear”. This is why I support Kitzhaber: he gets the big picture changes that need to be made, and he can articulate that need. I believe this gives him the capacity to lead us in making the structural changes that are required — big-ass changes that will cause many to revolt and fight as they protect their narrow, parochial interests, but changes that have to be made if we are to progress into the future and not die there.

At the same time, I think of my sons and my granddaughter; I think of my friends and their families. The feminist motto — All politics are personal — is as true as any words we can speak. Creating a grand future is a wonderful idea, but we are not doing it because it is such a great idea: we are doing it because we want better things, a better life, for those we love. We want to act in these huge, world-changing ways because of the lives we care about. The baby we hold, the friend we chat with, the freedom to walk through a park in peace. Little things that are under threat from little politics. Little things that demand our politics, as our hearts, become huge and special.

Not easy to articulate. Even harder to do. And tragic if we fail.