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Sam Smith
It is now reasonable to think about Barack Obama becoming our next
president. There are a number of significant virtues in this, such as
the end of the dismal Bush-Clinton-Bush era of corruption,
corporatization and cultural decay. Such as our first reasonably honest
president in over 30 years. Such as a president desiring not just a more
powerful America but a better one. Such as a president who might deal
with other countries decently and not as a schoolyard bully.
On the other hand we will still have a president who supports the
Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind law, the basic fallacies of the war on
terror, the continued abuse of the war on drugs and a medical industry
controlled by profiteering insurance companies. He also appears largely
indifferent to the collapse of constitutional government. There is
nothing liberal, progressive or enlightened in any of these positions
and it is a marker of the dismal state of liberalism that Obama has not
been called on them.
Instead of mindlessly shouting "Yes, we can," liberals and progressives
should be telling the Obama crowd, "Yes, but."
They could take a few lessons from the GOP rightwing which, even with
the nomination all but sewed up, has still been able to force John
McCain to change his positions on a number of key matters. Even when
they lack a majority, they know how to stand their ground and shape the
politics of the situation.
Liberals, on the other hand, not only never once forced Clinton to back
down on one of his conservative moves, they never even tried. The same
pattern is now clearly growing with Obama.
Liberals didn't used to be like that. They understood - as the GOP right
does today - that politics is a two front war: one front takes on the
other party and the second front confronts elements of your own party
with which you disagree.
This was obvious when liberals had to deal with the likes of George
Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Richard Daley or Camine DeSapio. Today,
however, this same constituency - so deep into iconic rather than
programmatic politics - is happy to help any Democrat enter the White
House with no questions asked as long as the candidate, like a fine wine
or classy car, adds gloss to their own image.
The effect of this phenomenon is likely to be quite different with Obama
than it was with Clinton. Clinton, after all, was a con artist who
corrupted others even as he enjoyed his own corruption. Further, the
falsely premised enthusiasm he inspired was largely used for the benefit
of himself and those close to him.
Obama is a more traditional politician, flawed to be sure, but without
the depth of cynicism that propelled the Clintons and their friends. I
imagine at times that as president he might be a bit like Dwight
Eisenhower, placidly non-productive, occasionally exploited by corrupt
friends, but mainly running the country like it was the world's largest
7-11, adequate but unchanging. Hope will be replaced by calm.
The advantage of this is that you have a president who is not going to
do anything as stupid as invade Iraq or start a war with Russia. On the
other hand, when the Eisenhower administration ended we found ourselves
at the beginning of an era we now know as the Sixties. Imposed
tranquility can keep a lot from coming to the surface, but only for so
long.
The other possibility is that Obama will be a Jimmy Carter-like
transitional figure. Carter served as the bridge between New Deal-Great
Society social democracy and the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush robber baron
neo-capitalism that was waiting on the other side of the Seventies. In
a similar way, Obama - far too careful and conservative to actually
fulfill the hopes he has aroused - may at least ease us from the Reagan
era in which we still suffer to something demonstrably better. Sometime
after his tenure, we might actually discover a reason for hope.
We can, of course, only guess. A major recession could quickly raise the
level of public impatience with the lies of neo-capitalism and put aside
Obama's caution. America's fourth great awakening - the religious
revival some believe began on the left in the Sixties only to end up
later as a major tool of the right, could wear itself out. What we may
actually be seeing in the fundamentalist fervor of Obama's supporters is
a sign of the transfer of faith from God back to politics again. It has
been noted that after earlier great awakenings, something positive
happened: the American revolution, the abolition movement and later the
rise of progressive politics.
We can only guess, but it is safe to say that the excessive enthusiasm
for the gossamer promise of Obama suggests that something important is
happening well beyond the candidate himself. He just seems to have been
at the right place at the right time - exploiting but not controlling.
In any case, if all goes about as well as can be expected these days,
beginning on January 20 we will be introduced for the first time to the
real Barack Obama. Hope and other cliches will take a back seat to
budget and bills.
It is reasonable to expect to find a man far more timid than we have
been led to believe. It is interesting to learn only just recently from
Vanity Fair that Obama was elected president of the Harvard Law Review
on the 19th ballot, as the overtly compromise candidate. This compromise
law student would grow into a man who would promise to put right-wingers
like Chuck Hagel in his cabinet, notably without similar promises to
Democratic progressives or members of the Green Party. Compromise is
clearly his safe haven; he is far more concerned with not doing wrong
than with doing right.
And he is a lawyer. It is popular to consider that an asset for a
politician, even though nearly half the members of our dysfunctional
legislatures are lawyers, a job otherwise held by less than one percent
of our population.
Observers as far back as de Tocqueville have railed against the American
tendency to overload its politics with attorneys. And if you look at the
record of lawyer presidents it's pretty mixed. We've had 26 of them.
With the exception of four founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln and FDR,
the list also includes Millard Fillmore, James Garfield, Chester Arthur,
William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon,
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Hardly an argument you want to present
to the jury.
My view is that lawyers in politics tend to be okay if they are clearly
on your side. Otherwise they can be a pain in the butt. When people
complained to me that John Edwards was a trial lawyer, I would respond,
"Yeah, but he would be our trial lawyer."
The other good lawyers are those for whom the law is simply a part of
their life, informing it but not inspiring or guiding it, as in the case
of FDR and Lincoln.
But Obama appears to be a lawyer through and through, which is why, for
example, his healthcare plan is so awful. A pointlessly complex miasma
designed for no higher purpose than to keep the insurance industry off
his back. If you watched that recent debate in which attorneys Obama and
Clinton spent a half hour trying to wriggle around the politics of the
issue, you'd had little idea that they were actually talking about a
large number of ill people not being able to afford to be ill because of
the insurance industry.
In short, lawyers like Obama are great for handling divorces and
settling disputes at the Harvard Law Review - perhaps even in the Mid
East - but you don't want them to lead movements. Their minds are too
weighed down with caveats.
So if you want anything really good to happen in an Obama administration
you will have break through the infinite subsections and footnotes of
his brain and convince him that it is, on balance, better and easier to
do the right thing.
Obama is an empty vessel. If liberals and progressives are as
pathetically obsequious towards Obama as they were towards Clinton, that
vessel will be filled with the desires of large financial institutions,
health insurance oligopolies and foreign policy experts attempting to
compensate for hormonal insecurities by invading this or that. And Obama
will end his term with the status of Reid or Pelosi rather than of JFK.
It could be happen differently if liberals and progressives were to
follow the techniques of the civil rights movement with the Democrats or
the contemporary GOP right, a politically sophisticated blend of
intramural pressure and cooperation.
It could begin with a list of no more than a half dozen demands that
would become as familiar to the media and the public as have such
rightwing nemeses as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.
Single-payer healthcare and an end to American military invasions should
be top contenders for the list because they already have sizable
constituencies, media attention and are embarrassing to the Democratic
Party establishment.
But first, an awful lot of people have to get their heads straight,
starting with the poodle libs who have done so much damage to the cause
of positive change by their loyalty to deceptive hustlers and their
indifference to political substance.
We need a movement in which Obama is a key target, a healthy ally or a
major opponent based not on warm and cuddly feelings but on the reality
of his reaction to, and participation in, progressive change.
In short, the Obamania needs to die on Inauguration Day, replaced by a
movement to end American imperialism, restore the Constitution, unravel
the evils of neo-capitalism and instill some eco-sanity. It will be the
strength of such a movement, and not the new president's virtues, that
will largely determine whether he does the right thing and whether the
right things happens.
If, on the other hand, we just wait for Obama, we will wake up one
morning and the words on our lips will not be "Yes, we can" but "Why the
hell didn't we?"
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Sam Smith
It is now reasonable to think about Barack Obama becoming our next
president. There are a number of significant virtues in this, such as
the end of the dismal Bush-Clinton-Bush era of corruption,
corporatization and cultural decay. Such as our first reasonably honest
president in over 30 years. Such as a president desiring not just a more
powerful America but a better one. Such as a president who might deal
with other countries decently and not as a schoolyard bully.
On the other hand we will still have a president who supports the
Patriot Act, No Child Left Behind law, the basic fallacies of the war on
terror, the continued abuse of the war on drugs and a medical industry
controlled by profiteering insurance companies. He also appears largely
indifferent to the collapse of constitutional government. There is
nothing liberal, progressive or enlightened in any of these positions
and it is a marker of the dismal state of liberalism that Obama has not
been called on them.
Instead of mindlessly shouting "Yes, we can," liberals and progressives
should be telling the Obama crowd, "Yes, but."
They could take a few lessons from the GOP rightwing which, even with
the nomination all but sewed up, has still been able to force John
McCain to change his positions on a number of key matters. Even when
they lack a majority, they know how to stand their ground and shape the
politics of the situation.
Liberals, on the other hand, not only never once forced Clinton to back
down on one of his conservative moves, they never even tried. The same
pattern is now clearly growing with Obama.
Liberals didn't used to be like that. They understood - as the GOP right
does today - that politics is a two front war: one front takes on the
other party and the second front confronts elements of your own party
with which you disagree.
This was obvious when liberals had to deal with the likes of George
Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Richard Daley or Camine DeSapio. Today,
however, this same constituency - so deep into iconic rather than
programmatic politics - is happy to help any Democrat enter the White
House with no questions asked as long as the candidate, like a fine wine
or classy car, adds gloss to their own image.
The effect of this phenomenon is likely to be quite different with Obama
than it was with Clinton. Clinton, after all, was a con artist who
corrupted others even as he enjoyed his own corruption. Further, the
falsely premised enthusiasm he inspired was largely used for the benefit
of himself and those close to him.
Obama is a more traditional politician, flawed to be sure, but without
the depth of cynicism that propelled the Clintons and their friends. I
imagine at times that as president he might be a bit like Dwight
Eisenhower, placidly non-productive, occasionally exploited by corrupt
friends, but mainly running the country like it was the world's largest
7-11, adequate but unchanging. Hope will be replaced by calm.
The advantage of this is that you have a president who is not going to
do anything as stupid as invade Iraq or start a war with Russia. On the
other hand, when the Eisenhower administration ended we found ourselves
at the beginning of an era we now know as the Sixties. Imposed
tranquility can keep a lot from coming to the surface, but only for so
long.
The other possibility is that Obama will be a Jimmy Carter-like
transitional figure. Carter served as the bridge between New Deal-Great
Society social democracy and the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush robber baron
neo-capitalism that was waiting on the other side of the Seventies. In
a similar way, Obama - far too careful and conservative to actually
fulfill the hopes he has aroused - may at least ease us from the Reagan
era in which we still suffer to something demonstrably better. Sometime
after his tenure, we might actually discover a reason for hope.
We can, of course, only guess. A major recession could quickly raise the
level of public impatience with the lies of neo-capitalism and put aside
Obama's caution. America's fourth great awakening - the religious
revival some believe began on the left in the Sixties only to end up
later as a major tool of the right, could wear itself out. What we may
actually be seeing in the fundamentalist fervor of Obama's supporters is
a sign of the transfer of faith from God back to politics again. It has
been noted that after earlier great awakenings, something positive
happened: the American revolution, the abolition movement and later the
rise of progressive politics.
We can only guess, but it is safe to say that the excessive enthusiasm
for the gossamer promise of Obama suggests that something important is
happening well beyond the candidate himself. He just seems to have been
at the right place at the right time - exploiting but not controlling.
In any case, if all goes about as well as can be expected these days,
beginning on January 20 we will be introduced for the first time to the
real Barack Obama. Hope and other cliches will take a back seat to
budget and bills.
It is reasonable to expect to find a man far more timid than we have
been led to believe. It is interesting to learn only just recently from
Vanity Fair that Obama was elected president of the Harvard Law Review
on the 19th ballot, as the overtly compromise candidate. This compromise
law student would grow into a man who would promise to put right-wingers
like Chuck Hagel in his cabinet, notably without similar promises to
Democratic progressives or members of the Green Party. Compromise is
clearly his safe haven; he is far more concerned with not doing wrong
than with doing right.
And he is a lawyer. It is popular to consider that an asset for a
politician, even though nearly half the members of our dysfunctional
legislatures are lawyers, a job otherwise held by less than one percent
of our population.
Observers as far back as de Tocqueville have railed against the American
tendency to overload its politics with attorneys. And if you look at the
record of lawyer presidents it's pretty mixed. We've had 26 of them.
With the exception of four founding fathers, Abraham Lincoln and FDR,
the list also includes Millard Fillmore, James Garfield, Chester Arthur,
William McKinley, William Howard Taft, Calvin Coolidge, Richard Nixon,
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Hardly an argument you want to present
to the jury.
My view is that lawyers in politics tend to be okay if they are clearly
on your side. Otherwise they can be a pain in the butt. When people
complained to me that John Edwards was a trial lawyer, I would respond,
"Yeah, but he would be our trial lawyer."
The other good lawyers are those for whom the law is simply a part of
their life, informing it but not inspiring or guiding it, as in the case
of FDR and Lincoln.
But Obama appears to be a lawyer through and through, which is why, for
example, his healthcare plan is so awful. A pointlessly complex miasma
designed for no higher purpose than to keep the insurance industry off
his back. If you watched that recent debate in which attorneys Obama and
Clinton spent a half hour trying to wriggle around the politics of the
issue, you'd had little idea that they were actually talking about a
large number of ill people not being able to afford to be ill because of
the insurance industry.
In short, lawyers like Obama are great for handling divorces and
settling disputes at the Harvard Law Review - perhaps even in the Mid
East - but you don't want them to lead movements. Their minds are too
weighed down with caveats.
So if you want anything really good to happen in an Obama administration
you will have break through the infinite subsections and footnotes of
his brain and convince him that it is, on balance, better and easier to
do the right thing.
Obama is an empty vessel. If liberals and progressives are as
pathetically obsequious towards Obama as they were towards Clinton, that
vessel will be filled with the desires of large financial institutions,
health insurance oligopolies and foreign policy experts attempting to
compensate for hormonal insecurities by invading this or that. And Obama
will end his term with the status of Reid or Pelosi rather than of JFK.
It could be happen differently if liberals and progressives were to
follow the techniques of the civil rights movement with the Democrats or
the contemporary GOP right, a politically sophisticated blend of
intramural pressure and cooperation.
It could begin with a list of no more than a half dozen demands that
would become as familiar to the media and the public as have such
rightwing nemeses as abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research.
Single-payer healthcare and an end to American military invasions should
be top contenders for the list because they already have sizable
constituencies, media attention and are embarrassing to the Democratic
Party establishment.
But first, an awful lot of people have to get their heads straight,
starting with the poodle libs who have done so much damage to the cause
of positive change by their loyalty to deceptive hustlers and their
indifference to political substance.
We need a movement in which Obama is a key target, a healthy ally or a
major opponent based not on warm and cuddly feelings but on the reality
of his reaction to, and participation in, progressive change.
In short, the Obamania needs to die on Inauguration Day, replaced by a
movement to end American imperialism, restore the Constitution, unravel
the evils of neo-capitalism and instill some eco-sanity. It will be the
strength of such a movement, and not the new president's virtues, that
will largely determine whether he does the right thing and whether the
right things happens.
If, on the other hand, we just wait for Obama, we will wake up one
morning and the words on our lips will not be "Yes, we can" but "Why the
hell didn't we?"
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