WHY OBAMA ATTRACTS THE RIGHT

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

WHY OBAMA ATTRACTS THE RIGHT

SAM SMITH - Harry Truman remarked that whenever anyone said they were
bipartisan he knew they were going to vote against him. Barrack Obama is
the latest major politician to use this ploy, promising mushy
abstractions instead of actual policies, making nice to everyone in the
room while ducking the issues they raise and, in a time of historic
confrontation over whether America can recover its constitutional
democracy, pretending that the answer is somewhere in the middle.

But what is the middle ground between democracy and fascism? Between
having a job or a house or being unemployed or homeless? Between having
health care or dying?

As William Lloyd Garrison put it, "Tell a man whose house is on fire to
give moderate alarm; tel1 him to moderately rescue his wife from the
hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe
from the fire into which it has fallen."

The myth of the happy center is a major illusion dominating public life
in Washington. . . Even the KKK, so often cited as an example of the
sort of threat the non-center poses, was powerful primarily because it
was at the center, holding political and judicial and law enforcement
office as well as hiding beneath its robes. In some towns, lynching
parties were even announced in the local paper. And in the 1920s, both
the Colorado governor and mayor of Denver were members of the Klan, the
latter well enough regarded to have had Stapleton airport named after
him.

The centrist myth most dramatically fails when those acting upon it
dramatically fail. What is the center on Iraq? On climate change? On the
creeping coup taking over America? On the monopolization of the
marketplace?

A 10,000 word piece in the New Yorker - purveyor of the appropriate to
the liberal elite - features Obama as the "conciliator" with hardly a
solid program or policy mentioned. The message of the article - like
Obama's - is that we don't need a president, just a therapist.

Take healthcare for example:

"'We've got to put more money in prevention,' he said. 'It makes no
sense for children to be going to the emergency room for treatable
ailments like asthma. Twenty per cent of our patients who have chronic
illnesses account for eighty per cent of the costs, so it's absolutely
critical that we invest in managing those with chronic illnesses like
diabetes. If we hire a case manager to work with them to insure that
they're taking the proper treatments, then potentially we're not going
to have to spend thirty thousand dollars on a leg amputation.' A young
man asked about health care for minorities. 'Obesity and diabetes in
minority communities are more severe,' Obama said, "so I think we need
targeted programs, particularly to children in those communities, to
make sure that they've got sound nutrition, that they have access to
fruits and vegetables and not just Popeyes, and that they have decent
spaces to play in instead of being cooped up in the house all day.'"

So just eat your vegetables and stay away from Popeyes and all will be
fine.

Pressed on the matter, Obama does go a little deeper:

"'If you're starting from scratch," he says, 'then a single-payer
system' -a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects
health insurance from employment- 'would probably make sense. But we've
got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as
well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult
to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that
people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is
thrown by the wayside.'"

Since ordinary people could adapt to the expansion of the Medicare
system in a matter of days, who are these people of whom Obama speaks
who might "feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives
is thrown by the wayside?" Well, the insurance companies would be the
ones most affected, and Obama has just sent a clear if covert signal
that he won't be messing with them.

The right understands the centrist myth far better than liberals. They
know that the center is homeland security for inaction in public, lots
of action behind the scenes, and power staying where it should: with the
powerful. It's not surprising that some of them see Obama as their man,
the "black Reagan" as he has been called.

Yet he is also the liberals' Pat Robertson, and while the right can see
where they can cut deals with him, the liberal evangelicals are all
misty eyed by his talk of hope and faith. But Harry Truman was right:
that guy serving you the happy meals of centrism in the campaign is
likely going to be on the other side after election day.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

A FEW THINGS TO FORGET ABOUT WHEN SUPPORTING OBAMA

PAUL STREET, Z MAG - So what sorts of policies and values could one
expect from an imagined Obama presidency? There is quite a bit already
in Obama's short national career that has to be placed in the "never
mind" category if one is to seriously to believe his claim (cautiously
advanced in The Audacity of Hope) to be a "progressive" concerned with
"social and economic justice" and global peace.

Never mind, for example, that Obama was recently hailed as a
"Hamiltonian" believer in "limited government" and "free trade" by
Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for
having "a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS." Or that he
had to be shamed off the "New Democrat Directory" of the corporate-right
Democratic Leadership Council by the popular left black Internet
magazine Black Commentator . . .

Never mind that Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton
Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin
and "other Wall Street Democrats" to counter populist rebellion against
corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Or that he lent
his politically influential and financially rewarding assistance to
neoconservative pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman's ("D"-CT) struggle
against the Democratic antiwar insurgent Ned Lamont. Or that Obama has
supported other "mainstream Democrats" fighting antiwar progressives in
primary races . . . Or that he criticized efforts to enact filibuster
proceedings against reactionary Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

Never mind that Obama "dismissively" referred - in a "tone laced with
contempt" - to the late progressive and populist U.S. Senator Paul
Wellstone as "something of a gadfly." . . . Or that "he posted a long
article on the liberal blog Daily Kos criticizing attacks against
lawmakers who voted for right-wing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts."
Or that he opposed an amendment to the Bankruptcy Act that would have
capped credit card interest rates at 30 percent. Or that he told Time
magazine's Joe Klein last year that he'd never given any thought to Al
Gore's widely discussed proposal to link a "carbon tax" on fossil fuels
to targeted tax relief for the nation's millions of working poor . . .

Never mind that Obama voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill
that rolls back working peoples' ability to obtain reasonable redress
and compensation from misbehaving corporations. . .

Or that Obama claims to oppose the introduction of single-payer national
health insurance on the grounds that such a widely supported
social-democratic change would lead to employment difficulties for
workers in the private insurance . . .

Never mind that Obama voted to re-authorize the repressive PATRIOT Act.
Or that he voted for the appointment of the war criminal Condaleeza Rice
to (of all things) Secretary of State. Or that he opposed Senator Russ
Feingold's (D-WI) move to censure the Bush administration after the
president was found to have illegally wiretapped U.S. citizens. Or that
he shamefully distanced himself from fellow Illinois Democratic Senator
Dick Durbin's forthright criticism of U.S. torture practices at
Guantanamo. Or that he refuses to foreswear the use of first-strike
nuclear weapons against Iran. . .

Never mind that Obama's famous 2004 Democratic Convention Keynote
Address - widely credited for catapulting him to national prominence -
expressed numerous reactionary and incorrect notions that make the
praise it received from the far right National Review (who called
Obama's oration "simple and powerful") less than mysterious on close
examination. . .

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2007/street0207.html

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

OBAMA: IMPERIALIST IN DOVE'S CLOTHING

ROBERT KAGAN, WASHINGTON POST - Obama's speech at the Chicago Council on
Global Affairs last week was pure John Kennedy, without a trace of John
Mearsheimer. . . No one speaks of the "free world" these days, and
Obama's insistence that we not "cede our claim of leadership in world
affairs" will sound like an anachronistic conceit to many Europeans, who
even in the 1990s complained about the bullying "hyperpower." In Moscow
and Beijing it will confirm suspicions about America's inherent
hegemonism. But Obama believes the world yearns to follow us, if only we
restore our worthiness to lead. . .

His critique is not that we've meddled too much but that we haven't
meddled enough. There is more to building democracy than "deposing a
dictator and setting up a ballot box." We must build societies with "a
strong legislature, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, a vibrant
civil society, a free press, and an honest police force." We must build
up "the capacity of the world's weakest states" and provide them "what
they need to reduce poverty, build healthy and educated communities,
develop markets, . . . generate wealth . . . fight terrorism . . . halt
the proliferation of deadly weapons" and fight disease. Obama proposes
to double annual expenditures on these efforts, to $50 billion, by 2012.
. .

"We cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger
unless we ensure that every child, everywhere, is taught to build and
not to destroy. . .

Okay, you say, but at least Obama is proposing all this Peace Corps-like
activity as a substitute for military power. Surely he intends to cut or
at least cap a defense budget soaring over $500 billion a year. Surely
he understands there is no military answer to terrorism. Actually, Obama
wants to increase defense spending. He wants to add 65,000 troops to the
Army and recruit 27,000 more Marines. Why? To fight terrorism.

He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to
Kandahar," and he believes that "the ability to put boots on the ground
will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now
face." He wants to ensure that we continue to have "the strongest,
best-equipped military in the world."

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last
resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever hesitate to
use force -- unilaterally if necessary," not only "to protect ourselves
. . . when we are attacked," but also to protect "our vital interests"
when they are "imminently threatened." That's known as preemptive
military action. It won't reassure those around the world who worry
about letting an American president decide what a "vital interest" is
and when it is "imminently threatened."

Nor will they be comforted to hear that "when we use force in situations
other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear
support and participation of others." Make every effort?

Conspicuously absent from Obama's discussion of the use of force are
four words: United Nations Security Council.

Obama talks about "rogue nations," "hostile dictators," "muscular
alliances" and maintaining "a strong nuclear deterrent." He talks about
how we need to "seize" the "American moment." We must "begin the world
anew." . . .

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||