Obama-Vision

Obama has called for cutting the deficit, freezing government salaries, and even, cutting corporate taxes (most large corporations don't pay any), joining a throng of right-wingers, and also the Conservatives who took power in the UK not so long ago. But look what's happening in the UK in the wake of huge cuts to the UK government budget.

"It's not enough just to slam on the spending brakes. Measures that cut spending but killed demand would actually make matters worse," said Sir Richard Lambert, outgoing director-general of the Confederation of British Industry. NYT 01/25/11. In the wake of the Conservative/Lib-Dem budget cuts, the UK suffered a decline in GDP in the fourth quarter, after several rising quarters.

The UK made cuts very much like the ones Rep. Ryan proposed in his Republican response to Obama's State of the Union address. How do you stimulate an economy by cutting the government's budget? Market fundamentalists claim government spending crowds out private spending, so if you cut the government, corporate energy will be "unleashed."

This doesn't make much sense right now. In a boom, excess government spending will crowd out private investment. We are not in a boom. While corporations are realizing fair profits--from overseas sales--and the banks are pocketing huge returns, few are hiring, even when there is increasing demand for their products or services; they are demanding more of their current employees, instead--overtime usually, mandatory unless a union is involved, and at regular, not overtime wages unless a union contract requires otherwise.

That's why we still have over 9.5% unemployment officially; it's estimated to be as high as 19% when discouraged workers and involuntary part-time workers are counted.

At least Obama proposed only a modest freeze to government, and insisted that it should invest in clean energy, etc. He could have made a strong case for the government as employer of last resort to invest in workers, and in addressing our sliding housing crisis, but he didn't: maybe not "centrist" enough.

One of his signature issues is education, which is logical, when talking about the future, but if the US is going to "win" the future, Race to the Top won't do it. Our children are not successfully competing with the rest of the world, but if we are to "win," they have to, not on standardized tests, but in skills and creative thinking: penalizing teachers won't accomplish that. Encouraging good teaching and supporting teachers would have a better chance--in colleges, too.

Obama's proposals, however, won't "win the future." The US must face its decline, withdraw from empire, and focus on its long-term deficits, not only of government, but of infrastructure, education, skills and trade.

That won't happen as long as the elite hold on to the status quo that enriched them. What the US needs is a democratic uprising like the one in Tunisia.

The Politics of Resentment

The Right does resentment really well. They teach their constituents, and fence-sitters, too, that the other side is treacherous, or under-handed, unfair and taking advantage of them, in essence, taking away their American Way of Life. But they don't target the people who are doing this; they target: illegal aliens, unions, big government, regulation. While most people resent bankers and Wall Street, the Right protects them, yet attacks Democrats in Congress for supporting them. It certainly doesn't talk about inequality, or the extravagant salaries and bonuses of the financial elite. Now, it advocates tax-cuts for them!

The left doesn't do resentment well. Yet, a true left-wing populist could use the politics of resentment to good effect. Obama is no populist, nor a true lefty, but he has the potential for populism--in the run-up to the 2012 election--if he sees the electoral potential.

At this point in Roosevelt's first term, his major jobs creation program was the National Recovery Administration (NRA), which looked like Fascist central control of the private economy; it was a failure, and unanimously ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Come the election in 1936, and Roosevelt found his populist calling, campaigning against "the economic royalists of our time."

Can you imagine Obama reaching that point?

But even FDR couldn't persuade Congress to allocate enough money to truly finance a recovery. Only patriotic fervor for war did that.

I wonder what is different now, than it was in 1935. The media was less concentrated, but there were many right-wing media outlets condemning Roosevelt as a Socialist or a Communist at every turn. People of means referred to FDR as "that man in the White House." Obama is that man from Kenya, and--the epithets are legion.

Could a left-wing populist shove Obama aside? If Obama were challenged from the left, he might respond--much the way Roosevelt did, in 1936.

Someone on the left needs to exploit the politics of resentment: resentment of those Wall Street "fat-cats," first of all. They were bailed out, but help themselves to more; resentment of the subsidies oil and coal companies receive, while Americans can't get jobs or unemployment insurance; resentment of huge disparities in salaries between top executives and workers; resentment of the way they are taxed: class resentment.

While people may disagree on abortion or gay marriage, immigration, or the financial overhaul, almost all of them hate Wall Street. For good reason: Wall Street siphons off an increasing share of US wealth for no discernible benefit--except to itself.

Resentment is a negative word, a negative focus, but it has a visceral appeal, and one that could lead to a positive outcome: a more egalitarian and prosperous society.

But to get there, the Left needs to be as cynical as the Right. Is that possible?

The best lack all conviction,
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.