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WASHINGTON -- They might have the WH and Congress, but progressives - gathered this week for a four-day conference billed as "America's Future Now!" - aren't universally pleased with the Obama administration.

As a coalition of liberal groups announced their union today behind an unprecedented $82M grassroots and advertising campaign to push for health care reform, some consternation remains in the Democratic base about if Pres. Obama is pursuing a sweeping enough package. Others expressed dismay with his decision to increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

During the question and answer portion of a panel about "The progressive movement in the Age of Obama," held at the Omni Shoreham and featuring Organizing for America director Mitch Stewart and Change to Win chair Anna Burger, among others, Burger was interrupted by a female audience member who barked from the darkened ballroom: "Why not single-payer?"

"It would be great to have single-payer, but I don't think that's going to happen this year," she said, adding that whatever plan is ultimately adopted, Democrats seem to be moving toward a public option plan that allows people to opt out of the system, will make a difference in people's lives.

A few minutes later, Deepak Bhargava, with the Center for Community Change, interjected, "I think many of us think the single payer system would be the best system," he said, drawing enthusiastic applause from many activists in the room.

But then he pivoted. "It is a step on the path," he said.

A step isn't enough for everyone. After eight years of assailing Pres. Bush's leadership, progressives are regrouping in an effort to leverage their newfound fortune - a WH in Dem hands and a Senate just one-vote shy of a filibuster-proof majority. They even had to change the past name of the annual confab from "Take Back America."

Some today sounded a broad caution that progressives shouldn't quiet their call for change just because Obama is at the helm or Congress is dominated by members of the president's party.

The best gift the left can give Obama, said MoveOn.org's Ilyse Hogue, is a "vibrant, vocal progressive movement."

While Roger Hickey of Campaign for America's future suggested that an "inside and outside strategy" modeled on the civil rights era efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Pres. Johnson in the 60s, will help the Democrats shepherd their policy plans through Congress, Hogue suggested the entire movement shouldn't fall in line behind consensus proposals if they don't go far enough or Democrats just because they're Democrats. She named Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), in particular, as one whose stance on the Employee Free Choice Act remains in question.

"With all respect to Roger, I think our job is not to be inside or outside," she said. "It's to take the doors off the hinges and smash the walls down."

Progressives have reason so far to be pleased with Obama. From his public support for "card check," as EFCA is called, to his signature of a new equal pay law, he is making good on several campaign promises. But health care - and the shape of the plan he ultimately endorses - could create a fault line in the movement of people who worked so intensely to elect a one-term junior senator from IL.

Much of the focus of this week's conference seems to be creating unanimity behind shared goals - even if not all can be achieved. A video of Obama addressing the group in '06 and '07 was played for the crowd.

"It's going to be because of you that we take our country back," he said, at a past conference. The clip was set to upbeat music.

And several participants mentioned Obama's background as a community organizer. The message to attendees, of course, was that he knows what you do, he's done it himself, and he knows how critical it is to getting approval for his agenda.

But during that same question and answer session, a male audience member yelled, "Afghanistan!" apropos of nothing being discussed.

So for some on the left, the president isn't fulfilling all of his campaign promises and is starting to disappoint. Others suggest any divide is overstated. Hogue, for one, said that the media loves to fan the flames of "hot Dem on Dem action," as she called it.

"The famous firing squad in a circle, I don't think we're anywhere near that," said Helen Brunner, a DC resident attending the conference.

Change to Win's Burger put it differently. "Are there days when I wake up and think, could he have done more or could he be further out there? Absolutely." She said there will be more days like that, but noted still that Obama is a "transformational" president.

"We have to make him successful," she said. "We have to make him the best that he can be."

As for that massive push for health care reform, the groups supporting the effort include Health Care for America Now, the AFL-CIO and Change To Win, the Children's Defense Fund, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, Rock the Vote, National Women's Law Center, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Democracy for America. The money will be used for grassroots organizing (troops are already on the ground in 46 states) and a sizeable advertising campaign.

During a lunchtime press conference, Howard Dean, recent past chair of the DNC and a doctor, said that it's more important to have a public plan than a bipartisan plan. "Bipartisan," he said, "is not an end in and of itself."

He said that Republicans haven't helped Obama with the stimulus package nor do they seem poised to offer an assist with approving his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the nation's highest court.

"If they're in there to shill for the insurance companies, I think we should do it with 51 votes," Dean said, suggesting that it be accomplished via budget reconciliation.

Dean added: "The American people voted for real change. They knew exactly what he was proposing when he was on the campaign trail."

(JENNIFER SKALKA)

Robert Samuelson finds that the American media's infatuation with Barack Obama is one of the great unreported stories of our time. He observes that Obama has inspired a collective fawning ; Samuelson manfully seeks to rectify it. He observes that the main check on Obama's power comes from congressional Democrats, who largely share his goals. The infatuation matters, Samuelson writes, because Obama's ambitions are so grand.

James Lewis agrees. "Stalin himself couldn't have wished for a more slobbering press corps," writes Lewis. For contrast with the American media, Lewis presents Telegraph "polemical commentator" Gerald Warner: "Barack Obama: all the bad guys are giving President Pantywaist the finger." To be fair, however, Ralph Peters had much the same to say yesterday in the New York Post.

St. Paul's Webster Magnet Elementary School changed its name last month to the Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary. What's wrong with that? Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editor David Shribman makes an impassioned plea on behalf of the school's namesake:

Webster was the greatest orator in the age of great oratory; some of his words remain in the American memory, even in this ahistorical age. He was probably the most eminent Supreme Court lawyer in American history, having argued 249 cases before the court, including several of the landmark cases of the early 19th century that shaped constitutional law in the United States for generations. And he was one of the greatest secretaries of state ever (and the first to serve non-consecutive terms, one under William Henry Harrison and John Tyler, another under Millard Fillmore).

"He achieved great distinction," says Kenneth E. Shewmaker, editor of the "Diplomatic Papers of Daniel Webster." "Barack Obama may have greater distinction because he had the chance to be president. A senator doesn't have that kind of power, but if we understand his legacy, including his role in creating the sense of American nationalism, we wouldn't wipe Webster's name off our buildings."

After pleading Webster's case, Shribman makes the larger case for the preservation of historical memory:

Changing the name of a school from Webster to Obama is a symptom of a larger problem in American life.

"The kind of present-mindedness that wipes out historical knowledge is a cultural fault of American society," says Hyman Berman, an emeritus history professor at the University of Minnesota. Alan Berolzheimer, a Norwich, Vt., historian who as a young man worked on cataloging and publishing the "Webster Papers," adds: "You don't make light of a long-standing historical figure whom a community honored in the first place."

Americans like to name schools after political figures. In Minnesota, there is an elementary school in St. Paul and a high school in Minneapolis named for the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash while running for re-election in 2002. The University of Minnesota has the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, named for the mayor, senator and vice president who is the state's greatest historical figure. And the University of Minnesota Law School is housed in Walter F. Mondale Hall, named for the former senator and vice president. Mondale is very much alive.

"There should be room for Daniel Webster on our schools," says Mondale, who is 81. "He would want it that way, and he deserves a place. And though I know names can go up and they can go down, let's leave Mondale Hall alone for a while."

In working on the column, Shribman found the powers-that-be at Webster Magnet School present a case study in historical amnesia:

There is no trace at all of Webster in the Obama Service Learning Elementary school today, not even a picture of Webster, who may have been the subject of more formal portraits of any man of his time, if not of all American history. Indeed, in the period leading up to the vote on the name change, the principal of the school, Lori Simon, actually had to figure out for whom the school was named originally.

If Webster had been remembered at the school, I am quite certain that what was "remembered" would have been wrong. Such is certainly the case with what high school students are taught, for example, about Lincoln, whose political hero was Webster, when they are taught anything at all.

There are plenty of instances of misleading and otherwise bad stats being used by anti-piracy groups, like the recent BSA numbers from Canada that were basically made up. Now, a group from the UK is saying that piracy costs that country's economy tens of billions of pounds. It makes the same mistake as plenty of other studies before it: counting every instance of piracy, or perhaps even just the availability of copyrighted material on file-sharing networks, as a lost sale. It's fallacious to assume that every single person that downloads a piece of content, or simply has access to it for free, would pay for it if the free version wasn't available. Furthermore, any study like this that says an entire economy is being harmed by X amount of money because of piracy is pretty much bogus. This money that's supposedly being lost because of piracy isn't being lost by the economy, as undoubtedly it's being spent elsewhere. It's not being flushed down the toilet or turned into ether, it's just not ending up in content companies' bank accounts.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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About the Author: P.J. Crowley serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.

Last week, I began my tenure as the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.  I am humbled and exhilarated by the task before me and am grateful for the trust and confidence President Obama and Secretary Clinton have placed in me.

Almost 20 years ago, I was assigned to Germany, one of the highlights of my 26 years serving with the U.S. Air Force.  I have been contemplating those days as I prepared for this assignment.  During my time in Germany, the Berlin Wall ceased to divide East from West.  The people of East and West Germany literally pushed until the wall was breached and ultimately removed.

In the aftermath, when given a choice, the people of Eastern Europe rejected Communism and moved swiftly to associate themselves with the rule of law, market economies and responsible and accountable governments.  This success was due in no small measure to institutions like the United States Information Agency, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which helped foreign publics understand that they could have the rights and opportunities of free people.  This was public diplomacy at its best, and proved to be a cornerstone of our policy of containment.  Now, Secretary Clinton’s focus on using smart power – the full compliment of diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural tools is leading us back to a balanced approach to foreign policy that served us well throughout our history.

As we know, global challenges hardly disappeared with the end of the Cold War.  Today, we continue to combat extreme ideologies in an expanding conflict in Afghanistan while dealing with festering violence in Iraq.  Success in this current struggle will require the same kind of patience, determination and skill that we demonstrated during the Cold War – identifying a clear, peaceful and modern alternative to the people of the world, reinforcing our strategic narrative while diminishing that of extremist insurgents.  As Secretary Clinton stated in her recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the State Department is seeking the resources to deploy a new strategic communication strategy to buttress our foreign policy.  Ultimately, we cannot succeed unless we build and sustain public support at home and around the world.

Today’s global communications environment is dramatically different than it was even a few years ago.  A digital image can be transmitted from anywhere in the world at an instant, as we saw with the cell phone image of the execution of Saddam Hussein and its impact.

One of my goals is to have the State Department communicate its message more strategically.  In order to do this, we must be dynamic and use all available means both old and new media - traditional methods such as the Daily Press Briefings as well as experimenting with new media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and video through the Internet.  The culmination of this effort will be a virtual presence that is engaged in a global dialogue, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in all corners of the world.

Given the expanded nature of the communications environment, Secretary Clinton decided to restructure the Bureau of Public Affairs.  I will serve as the Assistant Secretary, but not as the every day spokesman for the department.  One of my foremost responsibilities will be to ensure that public affairs informs public policy.  This is why you’ll hear me repeatedly coming back to the idea of a strategic communications plan.  My task, working with Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale and the newly designated spokesman, Ian Kelly, will be to serve as the senior advisor to the Secretary, contribute to the administration’s interagency strategic planning and lead the Bureau of Public Affairs and the dedicated public affairs professionals at the State Department and around the world.  I am an avid Red Sox fan.  Judith is a Yankees fan and Ian, a Cubs fan, but we are united by a higher calling and significant challenges.

Tackling these global challenges – extremism, nonproliferation, climate change, global health and food security just to name a few – will require, as Secretary Clinton has said repeatedly, coordinated, international partnerships at the government-to-government and people-to-people levels and all variations in between.  In order to build and sustain such partnerships, we must communicate effectively.  Effective communication is a two-way street, so as much as I look forward to keeping you informed on new initiatives, I’m even more eager to hear your ideas.