One Year Later: Change We Can Barely See?

Live From the Swamp

On Location in Washington, DC

Photo by Ari Cushner

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."

NINE months ago, Barack Obama's inauguration ushered in a new chapter in US history, one that promised to turn a page on both America's "original sin" of slavery and the most recent sins of the Bush-Cheney era. Having electrified much of the nation with his rhetorical skill while campaigning, Obama delivered his first address as president in a lavish ceremony on the steps of the US Capitol, which was built in part through the labor of slaves. In this context, Obama referenced his biracial ancestry and status as a "global citizen" while at the same time asserting himself, in the tradition of all previous presidents, as a champion of Americanism:

And so, to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation, and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity. And we are ready to lead once more.

Beyond this, and despite his stated opposition to the war in Iraq, the new president announced his commitment to upholding US military power, also in the tradition of his predecessors including G. W. Bush:

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken -- you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

At the same time, he often blended the fierce patriotism/jingoism expected of any president, with a strong rebuke of Bush-Cheney policies that seemed to signal a genuine desire to change directions particularly with respect to foreign policy:

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

With such promises in mind, the crowd of perhaps nearly 2 million people who were jammed together on the National Mall celebrated not only the start of what they hoped would be a new beginning, but also the end of what had been, by most accounts, the worst presidency in American history. Bush was booed vociferously when he walked out onto the dais to take his seat. After the speech, when he and Cheney were finally aboard a helicopter en route back to Texas and Wyoming, or Maryland (where both Cheney and Rumsfeld bought homes in the same small town), or a "secure undisclosed location," or...wherever, a jubilant throng chanted the appropriate song lyrics: "Na Na Na-Na, Na Na Na-Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye!"

A SHORT HONEYMOON

Yet after just a week or so, at best, the gravity of what Obama inherited from Bush sank in: two wars--more accurately, the global military edifice of a "war on terror" with two major fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan that spawned unconstitutional surveillance, torture, and detention programs; eight years of denying the existence of climate change; and a trillion dollar deficit coupled with an acute fiscal "crisis" in which Wall Street literally demanded hundreds of billions of dollars to stave off bank closures and a subsequent collapse of the financial sector that would supposedly cripple the global economy. Whether or not the world really would have faced a new Great Depression had the government not intervened, the "banksters" got their way; in a process begun under Bush and continued under Obama, Wall Street institutions were effectively "bailed-out" to the great consternation of many on the Right and Left. This was immediately followed by a massive "stimulus" program designed to address rising unemployment and widespread economic insecurity in so-called "Main Street" America, due in large part to the unraveling of a household debt/mortgage "bubble" created by the greed-driven fraud of financial institutions.

In these and similar economic measures, such as the bailout of General Motors, the Republican Party and its conservative base found an instant rationale for vocal opposition to Obama's agenda as part of a liberal "big-government" spending frenzy, while conveniently neglecting to address the immediate causes of this situation under Bush and presidents before him. Meanwhile, critics on the Left emerged among both those who had not supported Obama to begin with, as well as many who had. For those like progressive economist Paul Krugman, hopes that the stimulus would amount to a New Deal-like jobs/public-works initiative that imposed serious limits on the power of Wall Street were quickly dashed. Many, in fact, thought that Krugman and like-minded progressive economists should have been brought into the administration in order to find durable solutions to the problem of banksters run amok. Yet instead, most members of the Obama economic team were drawn from the pool of "experts" who had orchestrated policy in the Clinton White House on terms highly favorable to Wall Street. For instance Lawrence Summers, the former Clinton Treasury Secretary, became director of Obama's National Economic Council. Summers helped orchestrate the 1999 Congressional repeal of a key provision in the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, designed to separate the activities of commercial and financial lending institutions; this gave Citigroup and other banks the ability to make risky and indeed fraudulent investments--as in the case of "mortgage derivative swaps"--using money from commercial account holders no longer protected by the legislative "firewall." There is no doubt this was a factor in the financial "crisis" that began in September 2008.

Summers, meanwhile, is one of many "neoliberals" who have been at the helm of this nation's economic institutions (in government and industry) since the mid-1970s. Such thinkers are direct or indirect followers of Milton Friedman and his "Chicago School" of economics, while Friedman was himself a disciple of Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek who founded the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. Hayek's "Austrian School" was launched as a challenge to the prevailing theories propounded by British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesianism is based on the notion that maximum employment and industrial productivity drives growth, hence, a social welfare "net" for workers is key to a vital national economy. Implemented throughout Europe during the Great Depression, and in the US through the New Deal, Keynesianism effectively held the power of financial elites in check, albeit modestly, though what have become known as "welfare state" policies. In this context, "neoliberalism" is in fact another name for the extreme laissez faire "classical liberalism" of nineteenth century England, against which Keynes arrayed his talents.

Hayek, Friedman, and their followers began a systematic assault on the Keynesian welfare state that finally gained traction in the US, for various reasons, towards the end of the Carter administration when Paul Volcker was installed as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979. Volcker was replaced in 1987 by Alan Greenspan, under whose reign neoliberal "free-market" ideology ascended to dominance and formed the basis of Reagan's "trickle-down" economics. Although current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke does not necessarily adhere to neoliberalism as religiously as his immediate predecessors, he has done nothing of significance since being appointed by Bush in 2006 that would suggest he prefers Keynes to Friedman. Volcker, meanwhile, is back in the fold as chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Likewise, Obama's Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is not as clearly connected to Wall Street as was Bush's appointee Henry Paulson, who had previously been the CEO of Goldman Sachs just like Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now associated with Citigroup (both Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been among the chief beneficiaries of recent government intervention, along with insurance giant AIG). But it's hards to see how Geithner is more a part of the solution than part of the problem.

There are a few members of the administration, like Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer (pictured above next to Obama and sandwiched in between Geithner on the left and Summers on the right), who have a record of at lest being sympathetic to Keynesian principals. Other progressives on Obama's economic team include Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Elizabeth Warren, who now oversees the Congressional Oversight Committee that keeps track of the bank bailouts, euphemistically titled the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Warren is interviewed in Michael Moore's latest film, Capitalism: A Love Story, and when asked how the $700 billion of TARP money has been spent, she responds: "I don't know." Elaborating on this further in an interview with the Washington Post's Lois Romano, Warren bluntly explains: "we don't know where the $700 billion is because the system was initially designed [under Bush/Paulson] to make sure that we didn't know."

So while the current crisis in the US financial system was over three decades in the making, and came crashing to a head as a result of Bush-Cheney economic policy, most of the people brought in to clean up the mess are those who bore responsibility for it in the first place; hence, financial institutions have received hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars, yet have thus far not been forced to pay any real price for having run their companies into the ground through "ponzi schemes" that included the deliberate price inflation of otherwise bad mortgages sold and resold for what amounted to fictional profit. Meaningful regulation of the financial system will only be possible through the further empowerment of people like Elizabeth Warren, who has proposed the creation of a Consumer Protection Agency that is now being vehemently opposed by Wall Street. Yet given how tightly financial elites still dominate both the White House and Congress, through campaign contributions as well as control over key cabinet positions, such reforms seem unlikely any time soon.

BIRTHERS, DEATH-PANELISTS, & TEA PARTIERS! OH MY!

This situation has led to a palpable sense of anger directed at those who continue to rake in massive sums of money while unemployment has risen to almost ten percent, its highest since the 1930s, and home foreclosures are skyrocketing; people are suffering and they can't believe that the CEOs of companies now benefiting handsomely from government assistance, and in some cases making record profits, are still receiving multimillion dollar bonuses. Since the minute Obama won the election, demagogues of the conservative movement and their Republican allies have exploited the populist outrage among their constituency through ridiculous yet effective charges that the bailouts of banks and auto manufactures amount to a "nationalization" of the economy. Radio and television personalities including Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have rejuvenated their careers as political entertainers by feeding their followers' fears over economic hardship along with deeply ingrained skepticism over all things Obama ("isn't he actually a Muslim socialist born in Kenya, or maybe Indonesia, who secretly hates America?"). Paranoid as they may be, these cultural and political anxieties are particularly explosive when mixed together in this country's tremendously durable racial/ethno-religious powder keg--a historical force so entrenched that the election of the first black American president has offered a glimpse into the pervasiveness of such violent hatred as much as it has signaled its moment in the twilight.

Therefore layered atop the quite uninformed accusations that Obama's economic policies are somehow Marxist, socialist, or communist (take your pick), the underlying threat he represents is captured by so-called "Birthers" who question the authenticity of his Hawaii birth certificate and thus not only his legitimacy as president, but his actual status as a legal citizen of the United States. From there it is but one simple step to identify Obama as some type of foreign agent. Glenn Beck in particular helps to fuel these delusions nightly on FOX News, for instance by placing pictures of the President on a large chalkboard together with the likenesses of Mao, Stalin, and Fidel Castro alongside whichever White House allies happen to be his target at the moment; more often than not, such targets are African-American.

In late August and early September, Beck led the charge against Van Jones, a longtime community organizer and grassroots activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area who had been hired in mid-March by Nancy Sutley, head of the White House Environmental Council, as her "special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation." To be sure, Jones does have somewhat of a "radical" background from a mainstream perspective (though he's fairly mainstream relative to the political spectrum in the Bay Area and Northern California more generally). Yet despite his past statements and associations having really nothing to do with his current work on building a "green-collar economy," Beck seized upon every detail of Jones' past in order to vilify him and use him as an example of the supposed radicalism of Obama's White House (never mind that Jones was nowhere near the President's inner-circle). Beck's vitriolic publicity campaign eventually led to Jones' resignation in the middle of the night on Saturday, September 5. Fresh off this victory, which amounted to ridding the administration of perhaps it's only true progressive voice, Beck acted as the ringleader for a nationwide day of protest marches among angry conservatives who throughout the summer began organizing what they described as "tea-parties," a la that famous event in colonial Boston that helped spark the Revolutionary War.

While the so-called "9/12 movement" was largely a product of Beck and his FOX News platform, it did mobilize up to tens of thousands of conservative and rightwing libertarian tea-partiers for its main event on the National Mall. Laying claim to the spirit of American patriotism in 1773, and in some cases even wearing colonial-style "three-cornered" hats, the 9/12 movement represents a quasi-populist, corporate-sponsored (see: Americans for Prosperity) anti-Obama uprising among people who fear his "big government," i.e. socialist agenda. At the same time, while Beck has gone so far as to call Obama "racist," most if not all of the tea-partiers are middle or working class whites who clearly do not believe the President is "one of them" because of his biracial, mixed-ethnic heritage; these are primarily people who have been largely, though not completely manipulated into thinking they abhor his policies, while genuinely fearing the reality of his difference.

Indeed the 9/12 protests were the culmination of a process that gathered steam over the summer, as members of Congress returned to their home districts and held "town hall" meetings to discuss health care reform. Fueling this fire was a cynical manipulation in which Republican lawmakers pretended as though a provision to pay for consultations on end-of-life care would establish "death panels" comprised of government bureaucrats deciding when an elderly person was too costly to keep alive. This myth was launched in large part by a facebook posting of the newly-resigned Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, from whence it ricocheted through FOX News and the rest of the conservative echo-chamber. And then, there was the ACORN controversy, which signifies the manner in which this "astroturfed" rightwing populism now surging amid a deep recession has elements of both a class and race war not too far removed from the climate surrounding the rise of fascism in 1930s Italy and Germany. Indeed, political violence in the summer of 2009 featured both the assassination of an abortion provider and the murder of a black D.C. Holocaust Museum security guard at the hands of a white-supremacist "Birther" who wrote that "Obama was created by the Jews"; a number of protesters also turned up at Obama health care town-halls with loaded firearms.

This analogy might be frighteningly apt if one considers the nature of the center-left/social-democratic Wiemar Republic that was in power during Hitler's rise. Criticized from the far left as being weak and ineffectual, this type of opposition is in line with the sentiments of those who lambaste Obama from a direction opposite that of the "Birthers." Both on the radical left, as well as among disillusioned supporters of the President, charges of incompetence and/or betrayal are mounting. There is palpable and legitimate anger over the slow pace of promised changes such as closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camps, ending the ban on gays in the military, withdrawing from Iraq, and investigating Bush-Cheney torture practices while ceasing their secret surveillance and "extraordinary rendition" programs. Meanwhile there is frustration over his initial tepidness in pursuing financial regulation, and willingness to compromise with the health insurance industry over the scope of proposed reforms, i.e. substituting a a severely watered down "public option" in place of a truly universal single-payer program (Medicare for all). Beyond this, there is dismay among many progressives over the apparent lack of direction in his central foreign policy agenda: navigating the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan, negotiating with Iran, and restarting the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Nine months into Barack Obama's first term: is this "change we can believe in," change we can barely see, or no change at all? The next installment in this series will address these questions, along with the issue of war and peace and the prospects for a revitalized progressive social movement. Stay tuned...

P.S. I was critical of Ralph Nader during the campaign, but check out his interview with MSNBC's Ed Shultz where he discusses his new book Only the Super-rich Can Save Us! It's quite interesting, and it's a pleasant surprise to see Nader still thinking creatively about effective solutions.