Print this post.Originally at http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/3993 || ZNet || September 24, 2009
The Mystique of “Free-Market Guy” Obama
If Obama is radical about anything, it’s about NOT rocking corporate boats. That’s why he received more Wall Street funding than any candidate in history and why – before he was a front-runner in early 2007 – he was raising more money from the biggest Wall Street banks than even Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, presidential candidates from New York.
By Jeff Cohen || [print_link]
As he embraces the superrich's agenda, Obama is fulfilling no one's dream, and least of all that of poor African Americans.
Friends helping friends: please forward this to your closest relatives/friends still enthralled by the Obama mystique.
No matter what the facts are, some liberal activists and leaders persist in seeing President Obama as a principled progressive reformer who lives and breathes the campaign rhetoric about “change you can believe in.”
When he compromises, it’s not Obama’s fault – it’s the opposition. Retreat is never a sell-out but a shrewd tactic, part of some secret long-range strategy for triumphant reform.
He’s been in the White House eight months. It’s time for activists to take a harder look at Obama. And a more assertive posture toward him.
Because if Obama believes it’s okay to pass healthcare “reform” that subsidizes insurance firms without a robust public option and he dispatches still more troops to Afghanistan, it could demobilize progressive activists while emboldening the Teabag & Beck crowd to bring the GOP back from the dead in low-turnout congressional elections next year. That would be a rerun of the 1994 rightwing triumph brought on by President Clinton’s weakness (e.g. healthcare reform) and corporatism (e.g. the business-friendly NAFTA).
Some activists still see Obama as a brilliant political superhero who –although maddeningly slow to fight back against his opponents – always manages to win in the end . . . like Muhammad Ali defeating George Foreman.
But watching Obama last weekend on the news shows gave little reason for confidence. It’s hard to win the public toward reform if you accept – as Obama often does – the rightwing terms of debate. The right frames healthcare as a debate over a dangerously over-intrusive government taking away individual freedom. The left says it’s about greedy insurance and drug companies – with CEOs getting paid $10 million or $20 million per year -putting profits above public good.
Last weekend, when he was repeatedly asked to comment on Jimmy Carter’s view about anti-Obama animosity being racially motivated, Obama kept wielding the rightwing frame about big “intrusive” government.
On ABC, Obama talked about people being “more passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right. I think that that’s probably the biggest driver of some of the vitriol.”
On NBC, Obama said: “This debate that’s taking place is not about race, it’s about people being worried about how our government should operate.” He asked: “What’s the right role of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look out for one another?”
The president has a huge bully pulpit, which he’s largely squandered. I’ve heard him discuss healthcare close to ten times in recent weeks without once hearing him rally the public against the corporate greed that leaves our country No. 1 in healthcare spending and 37th in health outcomes, on par with Serbia. Without a populist challenge to corporate profiteering, what’s left is either a bloodless debate about “cost containment” or a rightwing debate about “big government.” Neither mobilizes the public toward progressive change.
Recent U.S. history shows that you can’t serve corporate interests at the same time you’re seeking reform – of healthcare or Wall Street or any other sector. Not when big corporations are the problem . . . and the major obstacles to change.
Placating big business en route to social reform is like downing a flask of whiskey en route to kicking alcoholism.
Yet there was the Obama White House this summer entering into secret deals with the pharmaceutical lobby protecting that industry’s outsized profits.
If Obama is radical about anything, it’s about NOT rocking corporate boats. That’s why he received more Wall Street funding than any candidate in history and why – before he was a front-runner in early 2007 – he was raising more money from the biggest Wall Street banks than even Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, presidential candidates from New York.
That’s why – as soon as Hillary left the race – he went on CNBC and assured big business: “Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”
That’s why he declared to the New York Times last March that his economic policies were absolutely not socialist, but rather “entirely consistent with free market principles.”
That’s why during his 2008 “I love the market” interview on CNBC, he shunned the “populist” label.
President Franklin Roosevelt showed in the 1930s that major reform is possible if a populist upsurge of ordinary people is mobilized to overcome the entrenched opposition of business interests – derided by FDR as the “economic royalists.”
The problem today is that Obama doesn’t seem to have a populist bone in his body. A smart guy, he should know that it’s absurd – in an era when a shrinking number of ever-larger corporations dominate Congress and regulators as they deform markets in industries like banking and healthcare – to keep believing we have a “free market.” Yet he waxes on about being a “free-market guy.”
I guess he’s smart enough NOT to call himself “a corporate guy.” Liberal activists need to be smart enough to see Obama for the status quo politician he is – and to act accordingly.
JEFF COHEN www.jeffcohen.org is an associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of America.
4 comments
I voted for him, because the alternative was good for nothing but a great saturday night live satire. Now I’m wondering, for the first time in my life if voting in this country really does matter at all. I know in principle it does but in reality, there was no choice in this past election, both the bubble headed bimbo from alaska and mr “change” or freakishly good at linguistics obama were bought and paid for way ahead of time. The proof is in his actions now. Don’t listen to what they say, look at what they do. Obama has done virtually nothing to help the people of this country who have voted for him and f*&%^king EVERYTHING to help the huge corporate interests, least of all the military industrial complex which he kisses arse to immensely. So the big question is what do we do now that were stuck with this fake/pretend mr change. And sorry to those that hoped he really would be different because of his color. Unfortunately A. holes can come in any race, color, sex, height, shoe size or whatever.. Just because someone is a woman (look at Palin) or a man or a particular creed doesnt make them good, bad or anthing else. First spread the word, so people wake up instead of seeing him through rosy colored glasses and second, well in a democracy it’s the public’s right and more importantly “responsibility” to make the changes we want someone else to do for us. We need to consistently put pressure on Mr Obama to do whats right for US not the damned insurance companies. And put the pressure on our other elected representatives and in the future look at who sponsors a candidate and screw the commercials on TV, do the homework on candidates look at what they have actually done not just the soothing words we all want to hear like the mantra “change” . Talk is easy but so far obama aint walkin the walk! Its as easy as giving up a couple of hours of television and doing a google search. Wake up and smell the coffee!
I’m thinking that voting Republican might even be a good thing in this situation, as it will usher in the death of Amerikkka. Democrats are telling us to remain calm on the Titanic; Republicans pull a Space Invaders and gleefully shoot holes in the hull to take a shot at the ice berg.
Put another way, Democrats are more willing to patch up holes in capitalism, to keep us a capitalist society with vascillating levels of weak-ass social democracy, while Republicans refuse to admit that there are any holes or cracks developing at all.
COMMENT BY THE EDITOR
Zac in VA is indeed very astute in his evaluation of the political situation. The Democrats–experts at creating the illusion of Hope (and change!) delay the inevitable and keep on putting cynical patches on a criminal and rotten edifice that should have been replaced by authentic democracy and a healthy form of general culture–call it what you will, socialism, communitarianism, etc.–a long time ago. The reason for Obama’s victory, besides his support among the tycoon-owned media, to whom he remains indebted and subservient, was Bush’s extreme “GOPism”. The man and his camarilla showed the country what the GOP was really about, how cynical, REACTIONARY, thieving and brutal it could be, and many didn’t like it. In that sense, Bush & Co. were a salutary lesson for the nation, a reminder that the common citizen counts for little or nothing in Washington. In sum, Bush II helped to open the eyes of the masses–at least those with a functioning brain–to the fact that there was something quite wrong at the center of American governance. not just this or that individual. With Obama–a smooth demagogue–the masses’ agitation has been diverted to a non-existent “change instrument”. This is not to deny that in some very minor (and perhaps unwitting ways) Obama and his crew are slightly different and perhaps better than Bush, but that’s an empty compliment because Bush didn’t just lower the bar, he pushed the bar of excellence into the ground.
Today, Obama and the Democrats, and the obsession with elections, remain the chief obstacle to an awakening and reinvigoration of the struggle to retire the outrageous plutocracy that is choking this nation.
To the EDITOR,
instead of “blaming” democrats or republicans, I suggest that constructive criticism would go farther in fixing our problem. I agree with some of what you said, however if just Blaming a particular group is the only choice to fix things, nothing positive is going to happen because it takes US the people to do something positive versus playing the name calling game. The system we have is dysfunctional and the only way it will get fixed is if we the people fix it. Just waiting for some magical political party to do it for us wont work, because there isn’t one. If the citizen counts for little or nothing, there would be no political party’s to begin with or united states of America. It is and always has been individual common citizens that have made differences in our past and just giving up, will make those that want to keep their power have a really easy time in doing it. Your statement that its democrats and obsession with elections that are the the main obstacle to fixing this country just alienates people. Are you suggesting we get rid of elections instead of being obsessed with them? We won’t win back our country is if we allow ourselves to be divided with blanket labels for everyone we think we don’t agree with i.e. democrats or blacks or women or muslems, ect…. Stick to the issues that need to be addressed, stop criticizing your neighbors, it’s counter productive. In the old adage “divided we fall”… so lets stick to doing what works, taking action by putting pressure on our elected officials locally and nationally and not falling back on the behavior that bush incorporated and the rush Limbaugh crowd use with labels and name calling.