Some thoughts on Barack Obama뭩 Presidential Candidacy

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Tue Feb-27-07 01:18 AM
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Some thoughts on Barack Obama뭩 Presidential Candidacy

My purpose in describing my thoughts about Barack Obama is neither to push his candidacy nor to impair it. Rather, I simply feel that, having read his book, �The Audacity of Hope�, I have something to add to the discussion. I do have some mixed feelings about him, as you will see if you read this, and I am interested to hear what others think about some of my concerns.

First, I should describe where I뭢 coming from on this issue: I am a liberal, as I describe in this post. What is a 뱇iberal�? As we all know, it has been defined differently at different times, as well as by different people at any given time. Here is a brief summary of how I defined it in the above noted post:

Liberals believe in the sacredness of human beings, regardless of their race, gender, nationality, religious beliefs, sexual preference, etc. They therefore believe that all people should have the opportunity for a good life, and they are willing to question and challenge the status quo if they believe that is necessary in order to afford people that opportunity

These sentiments are very similar to those expressed in our Declaration of Independence. And our Constitution, especially including its first ten amendments (Bill of Rights), as well as amendments XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XIX, and XXIV, represents the attempt to provide the safeguards of individual liberty that are necessary to make a reality out of the opportunities espoused in our Declaration of Independence.

Probably most conservatives would say, if asked, that they believe in these documents that proclaim the American dream. And perhaps there was a time when many conservatives could truthfully claim that to be the case. Not any longer � at least not those conservatives who belong to the Republican Party. After supporting the Bush administration for several years as it has attempted to subvert our Constitution and otherwise negate the opportunities that Americans have fought for and accumulated over more than two centuries, few if any of today뭩 Republicans have the right to claim that.

So that뭩 where I뭢 coming from. I뭢 a staunch liberal, and the liberalness of the Democratic Presidential candidates will be an extremely important consideration as I decide whom to vote for next November.

As I stated above, I have some mixed feelings about Barack Obama � and most of my ambivalence about him has to do with the question of how liberal he really is. In many respects he seems to be quite liberal. For the good majority of Senate votes where Democrats and Republicans have voted differently, Obama voted with the Democrats. Yet, many actions and statements of his make me feel that he leans too much towards the center.

Of course, leaning towards the center could be considered good political strategy for someone running for President of the United States. Maybe it뭩 even essential for a Black man running for President of our country today. Hey, even Abraham Lincoln occasionally made what would be considered racist remarks in today뭩 world, in order to maintain viability for his Presidential aspirations. Therefore, I am willing to give a candidate a pass on a certain amount of posturing. The most important question is, what will the candidate do if elected to the Presidency? Will his/her agenda be ruled primarily by political considerations? Or will s/he be willing to take some political risks in order to do what is best for the people of our country?

What I will do here is discuss first some things that cause me to have some doubts that an Obama Presidency will be conducted largely in accordance with my liberal values. And next I will discuss things that cause me to believe that an Obama Presidency will be conducted largely in accordance with my values. There is a considerable amount of evidence for both possibilities. And while it is still possible that I may vote for him in the Democratic primaries (depending on what transpires between now and then and who is still running when the Maryland primaries are held), at this time I am not very likely to vote for him, given that the doubts I have about him exceed those I have about some of the other candidates.

Some reasons for doubts I have about Obama

Alexander Cockburn concludes in his article in The Nation: �Obama: As He Rises, He Falls�, that 밢bama is concerned with the task of reassuring the masters of the Democratic Party, and beyond that the politico-corporate establishment, that he is safe.� That may well be true, but so what? Don뭪 all national politicians do that to some extent? The more important question is to what extent his efforts to 뱑eassure the politico-corporate establishment that he is safe� will prevent him from acting on behalf of the American people if he gets elected. That뭩 what I뭢 most worried about.

I found the first chapter of Obama뭩 book, which he titled 밨epublicans and Democrats�, and in which he establishes his moderate political credentials, to be very irritating. Much of it reads almost as if he뭩 some sort of TV journalist who has to make every effort to be fair to both sides � and in the process I felt that he was at many points unfair to his own Democratic Party in his attempt to cast them as too liberal. I was especially unhappy with this part of his book because it was released just as our country was in the midst of a crucially important election campaign for the control of Congress. Here are some examples of what I consider Obama뭩 unfair yet subtle criticisms of Democrats or liberals, with my editorial comments in parentheses in red:

I also think my party can be smug, detached, and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs (He뭩 obviously referring to liberal programs here) don뭪 work as advertised...

We Democrats are just, well, confused. There are those who still champion the old-time religion, defending every New Deal and Great Society program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent from the liberal interest groups (Liberal interest groups?!) �

Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems� We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. (Who the hell is he talking about?) �

Yet our debate on education seems stuck between those who want to dismantle the public school system and those who would defend an indefensible status quo, between those who say money makes no difference in education and those who want more money without any demonstration that it will be put to good use (i.e., Democrats just want to throw money towards education, without worrying about whether it will be put to good use) �

We know that the battle against international terrorism is at once an armed struggle and a contest of ideas� But follow most of our foreign policy debates, and you might believe that we have only two choices � belligerence or isolationism (i.e., most Democrats who think we should get out of Iraq are isolationists) �.

Yet publicly it뭩 difficult to find much soul-searching or introspection on either side of the divide, or even the slightest admission of responsibility for the gridlock (i.e., Democrats are equally to blame for the incompetence of the Republican Congress prior to 2007) �.

I began silently registering � the point at which the denunciations of capitalism or American imperialism came too easily, and the freedom from the constraints of monogamy or religion was proclaimed without fully understanding the value of such constraints, and the role of victim was too readily embraced as a means of shedding responsibility, or asserting entitlement� All of which may explain why, as disturbed as I might have been by Ronald Reagan뭩 election in 1980꿢nd his gratuitous assaults on the poor, I understood his appeal. That Reagan뭩 message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government� For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money� A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities� Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster (sigh) �.

To be fair to him, he does criticize Republicans just as much or maybe even a little bit more than Democrats in the first chapter of his book. And he does provide some disclaimers, like:

This telling of the story is too neat, I know�

I know of very few elected Democrats who neatly fit the liberal caricature�

I won뭪 deny my preference for the story the Democrats tell, nor my belief that the arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact.

Still, I don뭪 feel that the disclaimers excuse the way he cuts down his own party right before a crucial election, in his attempt to establish himself as a centrist.

And I felt that this statement showed a kind of insensitivity to the seriousness of our election problems:

I found myself casting my first vote, along with seventy-three of the seventy-four others voting that day, to install George W. Bush for a second term as president of the United States. I would get my first big batch of phone calls and negative mail after this vote. I called back some of my disgruntled Democratic supporters, assuring them that yes, I was familiar with the problems in Ohio, and yes, I thought an investigation was in order, but yes, I still believed George Bush had won the election�

And an insensitivity to our country뭩 drift (or march) towards fascism as well:

When Democrats rush up to me at events and insist that we live in the worst of political times, that a creeping fascism is closing its grip around our throats, I may mention the internment of Japanese Americans under FDR, the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams �

Some of his actions have demonstrated the same tendency. For example, when his fellow Senator from Illinois courageously exposed our torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and accurately added:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in the gulags, or some mad regime � Pol Pot or others � that had no concern for human beings�.

Obama managed to respond to that with a centrist approach as well. Although he 밺efended� his colleague and even drew some criticism from the rabid right for doing so, I don뭪 think that it was much of a defense. Obama said:

We have a tendency to demonize and jump on and make mockery of each other across the aisle, and that is particularly pronounced when we make mistakes. Each and every one of us is going to make a mistake once in a while...and what we hope is that our track record of service, the scope of how we've operated and interacted with people, will override whatever particular mistake we make.

Richard Durbin did not make a mistake (Note that Obama uses that word three times in his 밺efense� of Durbin) by courageously exposing the sordid manner in which the Bush administration treats its prisoners. If he made a mistake at all, his mistake was in apologizing for his statements.

Nor do I feel all the comfortable with Obama뭩 voting record. Though his votes in general establish him as a liberal, there have been some notable exceptions.

For example, in 2006 the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy produced a report card on how often Congresspersons voted on major issues with the middle class vs. with the wealthy. Obama was given a 밅� by them for voting with the middle class six out of eight times. That compares with two Bs (Biden and Dodd) and an A (Clinton) for his Senate colleagues who are candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2008. Obama voted for the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which provided massive subsidies to the energy industry, deregulated the oil and gas industry with respect to some important environmental safeguards, and facilitated consolidation of public utilities by deregulating them. The Class Action Fairness Act that Obama voted for primarily provided a big boon to corporate malfeasance by making class action suits against them nearly impossible. I am not aware that Obama has explained either of those votes.

I am aware that Obama maintains that he has been against the Iraq War from the start, and he has even introduced a plan to remove combat troops from Iraq by March 2008. But then why did he vote against a plan (which 13 Democrats voted for) in June 2006 to withdraw our troops within twelve months? Perhaps it has something to do with his statements to the effect that it would be irresponsible to leave Iraq too precipitously. But why? I would love to hear him explain why that would be irresponsible, given that we have never accomplished anything remotely beneficial there since our invasion in 2003.

Some reasons I have for confidence in Obama

If the rest of his book was like the first chapter, I would simply write Barack Obama off as a DINO. But after the first chapter it gets much better, and he sounds like a real Democrat and a real liberal. And not only that, but his discussions of numerous issues are very well thought out and explained in substantial detail, with an eloquence and an apparent sincerity that match his oratorical eloquence. I was very impressed � which I hadn뭪 thought possible after reading the first chapter.

In his excellent chapter about our Constitution, Obama has this to say about the abuse of power by today뭩 Republicans:

What troubled me was the process � or lack of process � by which the White House and its congressional allies disposed of opposing views; the sense that the rules of governing no longer applied, and that there were no fixed meanings or standards to which we could appeal. I was as if those in power had decided that habeas corpus and separation of powers were niceties that only got in the way� and could therefore be disregarded�

On special interests:

I뭭e never been entirely comfortable with the term 뱒pecial interests,� which lumps together ExxonMobil and bricklayers, the pharmaceutical lobby and the parents of special-ed kids� to my mind, there뭩 a difference between a corporate lobby whose clout is based on money alone, and a group of like-minded individuals� coming together to promote their interests; between those who use their economic power to magnify their political influence far beyond what their numbers might justify, and those who are simply seeking to pool their votes to sway their representatives. The former subvert the very idea of democracy. The latter are its essence.

On the corporate media:

� corrosive aspect of modern media � how a particular narrative, repeated over and over again and hurled through cyberspace at the speed of light, eventually becomes a hard particle of reality how political caricatures and nuggets of conventional wisdom lodge themselves in our brain without us ever taking the time to examine them� Bush is 밺ecisive� no matter how often he changes his mind. A vote or speech by Hillary Clinton that runs against type is immediately labeled calculating; the same move by John McCain burnishes his maverick credentials.

On his acknowledgement of the effects of globalization:

The result has been the emergence of what some call a 뱖inner-take-all economy, in which a rising tide doesn뭪 necessarily lift all boats. Over the past decade, we뭭e seen strong economic growth but anemic job growth; big leaps in productivity but flat lining wages; hefty corporate profits, but a shrinking share of those profits going to workers� the effects ca be dire � a future in the ever-growing pool of low-wage service work, with few benefits, the risk of financial ruin in the event of an illness�

On energy and the environment:

Just about every scientist outside the White House believes climate change is real, is serious, and is accelerated by the continued release of carbon dioxide� If the prospect of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, changing weather patterns, more frequent hurricanes� if all that doesn뭪 constitute a serious threat,, I don뭪 know what does.

So far, the Bush Administration뭩 energy policy has been focused on subsidies to big oil companies and expanded drilling� What we can do is create renewable, cleaner energy sources for the twenty-first century. Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, we should end every single tax break the industry currently receives and demand that 1 percent of the revenues from oil companies with over $1 billion in quarterly profits go toward financing alternative energy research and the necessary infrastructure�

There뭩 lots more, but I think you get the picture. Beyond the first chapter, the book is for the most part excellent, discussing intelligently and in much detail most of the important issues of our day. Anyone who says that Barack Obama hasn뭪 expressed his views to the American people hasn뭪 read his book.

Conclusion

I see no reason to believe that Barack Obama wouldn뭪 make as good a President as most of our post World War II Democratic Presidents, and a much better President than all of our Republican Presidents of the past several decades, with the possible exception of Eisenhower.

But given the current state of affairs in our country, my opinion is that we now need a great President, not just a good one. We now need a President who is able to recognize the many serious problems facing us and who will not be afraid to go against the grain � against the powerful corporate interests who exert disproportionate power in our country today � to solve those problems.

In particular, we need a President who recognizes the sorry state of our election system; who considers the corrupting influence of money in politics as a major threat to our democracy; who recognizes the monopolization of our news media by a handful of corporate giants as a major threat to our democracy; who recognizes international cooperation and international law as essential to the well being of our country and our world; who recognizes government secrecy as a major threat to democracy; who recognizes a 431 to one ratio of CEO to worker wages as a threat to democracy and the well being of our citizens; and who will courageously take action to address all of these major threats.

A great President, when faced with problems of the magnitude that we currently face, is not an overly cautious President. A great Presidential candidate would not look at today뭩 Bush/Cheney regime and be content to say, 밢h, don뭪 worry, there has been worse� � rather s/he would recognize the need to challenge that regime and move to do so.