[R-G] Can We Talk About the Real Obama Now?

[Richard Menec]

<http://prorev.com/2008/11/can-we-talk-about-real-obama-now.html>

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE REAL OBAMA NOW?

Sam Smith

Over the past few weeks I've been a good boy. I've placed everything having 
to do with the real Barack Obama into a futures file and spent my time on 
the far grimmer matter of the real John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Now the party is over and it's time for people to put away their Barack and 
Michelle dolls and start dealing with what has truly happened.

This, I admit, is difficult because the real Obama doesn't exist yet. He 
follows in the footsteps of our first postmodern president, Bill Clinton, 
who observed the principles outlined by scholar Pauline Marie Rosenau:

Post-modernists recognize an infinite number of interpretations . . . of any 
text are possible because, for the skeptical post-modernists, one can never 
say what one intends with language, [thus] ultimately all textual meaning, 
all interpretation is undecipherable.. . . Many diverse meanings are 
possible for any symbol, gesture, word . . . Language has no direct 
relationship to the real world; it is, rather, only symbolic.

As James Krichick wrote in the New Republic, "Obama is, in his own words, 
something of a Rorschach test. In his latest book, The Audacity of Hope, he 
writes, 'I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a 
blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project 
their own views.' "

This is remarkably similar to Ted Koppel's description of Vanna White of 
TV's Wheel of Fortune: "Vanna leaves an intellectual vacuum, which can be 
filled by whatever the predisposition of the viewer happens to be."

Obama has left the same kind of vacuum. His magic, or con, was that voters 
could imagine whatever they wanted and he would do nothing to spoil their 
reverie. He was a handsome actor playing the part of the first black 
president-to-be and, as in films, he was careful not to muck up the role 
with real facts or issues that might harm the fantasy. Hence the enormous 
emphasis on meaningless phrases like hope and change.

Of course, in Obama's postmodern society -- one that rises above the 
purported false teachings of partisanship -- we find ourselves with little 
to steer us save the opinions of whatever non-ideologue happens to be in 
power. In this case, we may really only have progressed from the ideology of 
the many to the ideology of the one or, some might say, from democracy to 
authoritarianism.

The Obama campaign was driven in no small part by a younger generation 
trained to accept brands as a substitute for policies. If the 1960s had 
happened like this, the activists would have spent all their time trying to 
get Martin Luther King or Joan Baez elected president rather than pursing 
ancillary issues like ending segregation and the war in Vietnam.

Obama himself took his vaunted experience in community organizing and turned 
its principles on its head. Instead of empowering the many at the bottom, he 
used the techniques to empower one at the top: himself.

It is historic that a black has been elected president, but we should 
remember that Obama was not running against Bull Connor, George Wallace or 
Strom Thurmond. Putting Obama in the same class as earlier black activists 
discredits the honor of those who died, suffered physical harm or were 
repeatedly jailed to achieve equality. Obama is not a catalyst of change, 
but rather its belated beneficiary. The delay, to be sure, is striking; 
after all, the two white elite sports of tennis and golf were integrated 
long before presidential politics, but Washington - as Phil Hart said of the 
Senate - has always been a place that always does things twenty years after 
it should have.

There is an informative precedent to Obama's rise. Forty-two years ago 
Edward Brooke became the first black senator to be elected with a majority 
of white votes. Brooke was chosen from Massachusetts as a Republican in a 
state that was 97% white.

Jason Sokol, who teaches history at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in 
History News Network:

|||| On Election Day, Brooke triumphed with nearly 60 percent of the vote. 
Newspapers and magazines hummed with approval. The Boston Globe invoked a 
legacy that included the Pilgrims, Daniel Webster, and Charles Sumner, 
offering the Bay State as the nation's racial and political pioneer.

Journalist Carl Rowan was among the unconvinced. For whites, voting for 
Brooke became "a much easier way to wipe out guilt feelings about race than 
letting a Negro family into the neighborhood or shaking up a Jim Crow school 
setup." Polling numbers lent credence to Rowan's unease. They showed that 
only 23 percent of Massachusetts residents approved of a statewide school 
integration law; just 17 percent supported open housing. ||||

That's the problem with change coming from the top, as Obama might have 
heard when he was involved in real community organizing. It also helps to 
explain why there have been no more Catholic presidents since John Kennedy. 
Symbolism is not the change we need.

Getting at the reality of Obama is difficult. He performs as the great black 
liberal, but since he is one half white and one half conservative, that 
doesn't leave him a lot of wiggle room.

To be sure, in the Senate he got good ratings from various liberal groups, 
but two things need to be remembered:

First, liberals aren't that liberal any more. Thus getting a 90% score 
merely means that you went along with the best that an extremely 
conservative Democratic Party was willing to risk. This is not a party that 
would, in these times, have passed Social Security, Medicare or minimum 
wage. In fact, many liberals aren't much interested in economic issues at 
all - especially that portion of the constituency that controls the money, 
the media and the message.

Second, politicians reflect their constituency. Obama's constituency is no 
longer Illinois. He has a whole new set of folks to pander to.

There is one story from Chicago, however, that remains relevant. A citizen 
walks into his alderman's office looking for a job. "Who sent you?" he asks. 
"Nobody," he replies. Says the staffer: "We don't want nobody nobody sent."

Who sent Barack Obama remains a mystery. He has risen from an unknown state 
senator to president in exactly four years and that only happens when 
somebody sends for you.

The black liberal image falters on a number of other scores including 
Obama's affection for extreme right wingers like Chuck Hagel and an obvious 
indifference to anybody who votes like, say, a state senator from Hyde Park. 
Think back over the campaign and try to recall a single instance when Obama 
reached out to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party or to the better 
angels of the Congressional Black Caucus. Instead his ads attacked as 
'extreme' the single payer health insurance backed by many of his own 
supporters, he dissed ACORN and Colin Powell was as radical a black as he 
wanted to be seen palling around with.

The key issue that has driven Obama throughout his career has been Obama. He 
has achieved virtually nothing for any other cause. His politics reflects 
whatever elite consensus he gathers around himself. This is why his "post 
partisanship" needs to be watched so carefully. If Bernie Sanders and John 
Conyers don't get to White House meetings as often as Chuck Hagel, Obama 
will glide easily to the right, as every president has done over the past 
thirty years. If liberals, as they did with Clinton, watch without a murmur 
as their president redesigns their party to fit his personal ambitions, then 
the whole country will continue to move to the right as well.

Since the real Obama doesn't exist yet, it is impossible to predict with any 
precision what he will do. But here is some of the evidence gathered over 
the past months that should serve both as a warning and as a prod to 
progressives not to take today's dreams as a reasonable facsimile of 
reality:


Business interests

Advisor Cass Sunstein told Jeffrey Rosen of the NY Times: "I would be 
stunned to find an anti-business [Supreme Court] appointee from either 
[Clinton or Obama]. There's not a strong interest on the part of Obama or 
Clinton in demonizing business, and you wouldn't expect to see that in their 
Supreme Court nominees."

Obama supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts. 
David Sirota in the Nation wrote, "Opposed by most major civil rights and 
consumer watchdog groups, this big business-backed legislation was sold to 
the public as a way to stop 'frivolous' lawsuits. But everyone in Washington 
knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."

He voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill

He voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

He had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

He was even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

He was most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists

In 2003, rightwing Democratic Leadership Council named Obama as one of its 
"100 to Watch." After he was criticized in the black media, Obama 
disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic advisor, Austan 
Goolsbee, is also chief economist of the conservative organization. Writes 
Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, "Goolsbee has written gushingly 
about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage 
foreclosures."

Added Henwood, "Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser 
for him at his Greenwich house last spring, 'The whole of Greenwich is 
backing Obama,' one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund 
industry. They like him because they're socially liberal, up to a point, and 
probably eager for a little less war, and think he's the man to do their 
work. They're also confident he wouldn't undertake any renovations to the 
distribution of wealth."


Civil liberties

He supports the war on drugs

He supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity

He supports Real ID

He supports the PATRIOT Act

He supports the death penalty

He opposes lowering the drinking age to 18

He supported amnesty for telecoms engaged in illegal spying on Americans


Conservatives

He went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary against Ned 
Lamont

Wrote Paul Street in Z Magazine, "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. . . 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."

Writes the London Times, "Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to 
his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an 
opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on 
the Senate foreign relations committee. Senior advisers confirmed that 
Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain's closest 
friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defense 
secretary.

Richard Lugar was rated 0% by SANE. . . rated 0% by AFL-CIO. . . rated 0% BY 
NARAL. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 0% by 
Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 27% by the National Education 
Association. . . rated 5% by League of Conservation Voters. . . He voted no 
on implementing the 9/11 Commission report. . . Vote against providing 
habeas corpus for Gitmo prisoners. . .voted no on comprehensive test ban 
treaty. . .voted against same sex marriage. . . strongly anti-abortion. . . 
opposed to more federal funding for healthcare. . .voted for 
unconstitutional wiretapping. . .voted to increase penalties for drug 
violations

Chuck Hagel was rated 0% by NARAL. . . rated 11% by NAACP. . . rated 0% by 
Human Rights Coalition. . . rated 100% by Christian Coalition. . . rated 12% 
by American Public Health Association. . . rated 22% by Alliance for Retired 
Americans. . . rated 36% by the National Education Association. . . rated 0% 
by League of Conservation Voters. . . rated 8% by AFL-CIO. . . He is 
strongly anti-abortion. . .voted for anti-flag desecration amendment. . 
.voted to increase penalties for drug violations. . . favors privatizing 
Social Security


Ecology

Obama voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster 
bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

He supports federally funded ethanol and is unusually close to the ethanol 
industry.

He led his party's reversal of a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling


Education

Obama has promised to double funding for private charter schools, part of a 
national effort undermining public education.

He supports the No Child Left Behind Act albeit expressing reservations 
about its emphasis on testing. Writes Cory Mattson, "Despite NCLB''s loss of 
credibility among educators and the deadlock surrounding its attempted 
reauthorization in 2007, Barack Obama still offers his support. Even the two 
unions representing teachers, both which for years supported reform of the 
policy to avoid embarrassing their Democratic Party 'friends,' declared in 
2008 that the policy is too fundamentally flawed to be reformed and should 
be eliminated."


Fiscal policy

Obama rejected moratoriums on foreclosures and a freeze on rates, measures 
supported by his primary opponents John Edwards and Hillary Clinton

He was a strong supporter of the $700 billion cash-for-trash banker bailout 
plan.

Two of his top advisors are former Goldman Sachs chair Robert Rubin and 
Lawrence Summers. Noted Glen Ford of black Agenda Report, "In February 1999, 
Rubin and Summers flanked Fed Chief Alan Greenspan on the cover of Time 
magazine, heralded as, 'The Committee to Save the World.' Summers was then 
Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton, having succeeded his mentor, 
Rubin, in that office. Together with Greenspan, the trio had in the previous 
year labored successfully to safeguard derivatives, the exotic 'ticking time 
bomb' financial instruments, from federal regulation."

Robert Scheer notes that "Rubin, who pocketed tens of millions running 
Goldman Sachs before becoming treasury secretary, is the man who got 
President Clinton to back legislation by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, to 
unleash banking greed on an unprecedented scale."

Obama's fund-raising machine has been headed by Penny Prtizker former chair 
of the Superior Bank, one of the first to get into subprime mortgages. While 
she resigned as chair of the family business in 1994, as late as 2001 she 
was still on the board and wrote a letter saying that her family was 
recapitalizing the bank and pledging to "once again restore Superior's 
leadership position in subprime lending." The bank shut down two months 
later and the Pritzker family would pay $460 million in a settlement with 
the government.


Foreign policy

Obama endorsed US involvement in the failed drug war in Colombia: "When I am 
president, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug Program."

He has expressed a willingness to bomb Iran and won't rule out a first 
strike nuclear attack.

He has endorsed bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda in 
violation of international law. He has called Pakistan "the right 
battlefield ... in the war on terrorism."

He supports Israeli aggression and apartheid. Obama has deserted previous 
support for two-state solution to Mid East situation and refuses to 
negotiate with Hamas.

He has supported Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, saying "it must remain 
undivided."

He favors expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Although he claims to want to get out of Iraq, his top Iraq advisor wrote 
that America should keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq. Obama, in 
his appearances, blurred the difference between combat soldiers and other 
troops.

He indicated to Amy Goodman that he would leave 140,000 private contractors 
and mercenaries in Iraq because "we don't have the troops to replace them."

He has called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States 
and urged sanctions against him.

He claimed "one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn't get 
enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped 
negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us 
$20 billion dollars. That's all it cost. It was extremely successful. I 
think there were a lot of very wise people."

He has hawkish foreign policy advisors who have been involved in past US 
misdeeds and failures. These include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, 
General Merrill McPeak, and Dennis Ross.

It has been reported that he might well retain as secretary of defense 
Robert Gates who supports actions in violation of international law against 
countries merely suspected of being unwilling or unable to halt threats by 
militant groups.


Gays

Obama opposes gay marriage. He wouldn't have photo taken with San Francisco 
mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported gay marriage


Health

Obama opposes single payer healthcare or Medicare for all.


Military

Obama would expand the size of the military.

National Service

Obama favors a national service plan that appears to be in sync with one 
being promoted by a new coalition that would make national service mandatory 
by 2020, and with a bill requiring such mandatory national service 
introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel.

He announced in Colorado Springs last July, "We cannot continue to rely on 
our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. 
We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as 
powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

On another occasion he said, "It's also important that a president speaks to 
military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I 
traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small 
towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has 
tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not 
always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I 
think it's important for the president to say, this is an important 
obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some." 
Some have seen this as a call for reviving the draft.

He has attacked the exclusion of ROTC on some college campuses


Presidential crimes

Obama aggressively opposed impeachment actions against Bush. One of his key 
advisors, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said 
prosecuting government officials risks a "cycle" of criminalizing public 
service.


Progressives

Unlike his deferential treatment of right wing conservatives, Obama's 
treatment of the left has been dismissive to insulting. He dissed Nader for 
daring to run for president again. And he called the late Paul Wellstone 
"something of a gadfly"


Public Campaign Financing

Obama's retreat from public campaign financing has endangered the whole 
concept.


Social welfare

Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social 
welfare,


Social Security

Early in the campaign, Obama said, "everything is on the table" with Social 
Security.

....................

As things now stand, the election primarily represents the extremist center 
seizing power back from the extremist right. We have moved from the prospect 
of disasters to the relative comfort of mere crises.

Using the word 'extreme' alongside the term 'center' is no exaggeration. 
Nearly all major damage to the United States in recent years - a rare 
exception being 9/11 - has been the result of decisions made not by right or 
left but by the post partisan middle: Vietnam, Iraq, the assault on 
constitutional liberties, the huge damage to the environment, and the 
collapse of the economy - to name a few. Go back further in history and 
you'll find, for example, the KKK riddled with members of the establishment 
including - in Colorado - a future governor, senator and mayor after whom 
Denver's airport is named. The center, to which Obama pays such homage, has 
always been where most of the trouble lies.

The only thing that will make Obama the president pictured in the campaign 
fantasy is unapologetic, unswerving and unendingly pressure on him in a 
progressive and moral direction, for he will not go there on his own. But 
what, say, gave the New Deal its progressive nature was pressure from the 
left of a sort that simply doesn't exist today.

Above are listed nearly three dozen things that Obama supports or opposes 
with which no good liberal or progressive would agree. Unfortunately, what's 
out there now, however, looks more like a rock concert crowd or evangelical 
tent meeting than a determined and directed political constituency. Which 
isn't so surprising given how successful our system has been at getting 
people to accept sights, sounds, symbols and semiotics as substitutes for 
reality. Once again, it looks like we'll have to learn the hard way.

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