Obama Wooing "Economic Royalists"
Friday 19 November 2010
by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Photo: Pete Souza / whitehouse.gov)
In his first term, President Franklin Roosevelt denounced "the economic royalists." He drew the line against the heartless rich: "They are unanimous in their hate for me - and I welcome their hatred."
What a different Democratic president we have today.
For two years - from putting Wall Street operatives at the top of his economic team to signaling that he'll go along with extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy - Barack Obama has increasingly made a mockery of hopes for a green New Deal.
The news from the White House keeps getting grimmer. Since the midterm election, we're told, Obama has concluded that he must be more conciliatory toward the ascendant Republican leadership in Congress - and must do more to appease big business.
Fifteen days after the election, The Washington Post reported that Obama - seeking a replacement for departing top economic adviser Lawrence Summers - "is eager to recruit someone from the business community for the job to help repair the president's frayed relationship with corporate America."
The last thing we need is further acquiescence to the economic royalists. What we need is exactly the opposite: leadership to push back against the Republican Party's right-wing ideologues and the forces they represent.
We need principled backbones in high places - and much stronger progressive activism at the grassroots.
In moral and electoral terms, the status quo is indefensible. Economic realities include high unemployment, routine home foreclosures, huge tax breaks for large corporations and widening gaps between the wealthy and the rest of us - in tandem with endless war and runaway military spending.
Escalation of warfare in Afghanistan is running parallel to escalation of class war - waged from the top down - in Washington. The presidentially appointed co-chairs of the deficit commission, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, are pushing scenarios that would undermine Social Security.
Let's get a grip on matters of principle.
More and more warfare in Afghanistan? Extending massive tax cuts for the wealthy? Promoting plans to slash Social Security and Medicare? Pretending that "clean coal" is not an oxymoron? Failing to uphold habeas corpus and other precious civil liberties? ...
The best way to fight the Republican Party is to stop giving ground to it.
The best way to defeat right-wing xenophobic "populism" is to build genuine progressive populism. In the process, we can draw on the spirit of the New Deal.
Back in the 1930s, millions of progressive activists - under all sorts of names - fought for economic equity, while FDR became willing to make common cause with them. Today, our scope of understanding has grown to include more dimensions of social justice and ecological imperatives.
These days, progressives have plenty of reasons to feel discouraged. But we have a lot more good reasons to rededicate ourselves to the vital tasks ahead.
A much better world is possible.
Si se puede!
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Comments
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Omits the natural
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 13:11 — Anonymous (not verified)Omits the natural conclusion: Dump Obama in 2012.
he has been with these
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 13:35 — tell the truth (not verified)he has been with these people since the beginning
of his political career at the university of chicago!
he is no johnny come lately. they promised him
this he gave them that!
Obama wooing "economic
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 14:17 — Anonymous (not verified)Obama wooing "economic royalists?" Um, no. Obama as embed with "economic royalists."
The former implies he can be dissuaded from the track he's on. The latter sets the record straight.
This President is and was long, long gone and in the darkened pit of "economic royalists" indoctrination and propaganda from the get go.
Now it is Polosi they hate
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 17:37 — Anonymous (not verified)Now it is Polosi they hate because she had the balls and the guts the rest of the white house and the Dems never seemed to find beyond their open purses and shovel ready money for votes.
If theGOP hate Nancy , Nancy is doing the right thing and the rest of them should get a kick because she did it in heels while they danced in loafers. What a perfect description of them LOAFERS.
Nancy for President would make QUITTER Sarah look like the flake she is.
Like the times of the Viet
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 18:00 — Anonymous (not verified)Like the times of the Viet Nam War and Lyndon Johnson we need to give up on Obama for 2012 and look for a stronger real Progressive, someone who cares about the Middle Class and not just glad to be one of the boys in power. Harvard is good at developing corporate elitists.
I agree with the first
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 18:32 — Robert (not verified)I agree with the first post... time to dump Obama for 2012. Obama will be remembered as the next Herbert Hoover, rather than the next FDR. Like Hoover, he fiddled while Rome burned. Wile Bush will stand out as the worst of Presidents, Obama will merely rate an asterisk in the history books.
I can't say I am
Fri, 11/19/2010 - 18:58 — Robert (not verified)I can't say I am disappointed in Obama because I never had high hopes for him in the first place. As noted by others here, he has always been in bed with the economic royalists. For those of us who were paying attention, he had the chance to win the Democratic nomination because he was able to compete with Hillary Clinton in the money game. But the reason he got to that point was the money he was able to raise early in the game. That money came from the bankers and industrialists. Since all that matters to the media and most voters is the horse race, nothing much else counted.
Obama, like any politician, remembers his debt to the early money. He knows he wouldn't have been able to compete with Hillary early in the race without selling his soul from the beginning. From Day One he, like Hillary, was a corporate Democrat, more conservative even than Hillary. As I mentioned in my previous post, he will be an asterisk in history, little more than the second Herbert Hoover. Anyone who expected an FDR from Obama is a fool.
"he has been with these
Sat, 11/20/2010 - 02:52 — Anonymous (not verified)"he has been with these people since the beginning
of his political career at the university of chicago!"
Don't use a school as the basis for determining political orientation. I went to a smiliarly ranked school in the south and among my economics program was well regarded by my professors; I was also one of very few dissenters to "free market fundamentalist dogma". My points in challenging my peers were clear and salient, and obviously beyond their grasp. Unfortunate so many can't understand that economics is a science to be leveraged toward the human condition, not a biblical declaration of the divine right of kings, that economic currents are cyclical, and they move from bottom to top BEFORE they fall back to the bottom.
Apparently, we are in for a
Sat, 11/20/2010 - 10:01 — Anonymous (not verified)Apparently, we are in for a very difficult time. The President is eager to give ground. The war can be extended to 2014, social security is in the hands of Mr. Simpson who detests the concept, and the poor rich deserve more tax cuts for their yeoman service with the economy and banking system.
Hard to believe that it was only two years ago that we thought we had voted for change. Respecting those who say Obama was always one of them. Then is campaign oratory and speeches were nothing but lies and falsehoods. I do not recall a president who has veered to the degree that he has from is campaign rhetoric.
Obama is a Republican. He's
Sat, 11/20/2010 - 15:31 — Liced-christs (not verified)Obama is a Republican. He's a brainwashed neoliberal. A casualty of his own educational system. And of course, he's really not very bright, given his endless bowing to the assholes on the Right who hate his guts and would like to see him dead as a doornail. But he's one of them and that's why he bows. At the conclusion of his health plan, he stated he was puzzled that Republicans would not vote for his plan - he went on - because it was taken right out of the Republican legislative playbook. Have no doubt: this man is a dyed in the wool Republican in the tradition of Summers from Harvard.
So how about Howard Dean for
Sat, 11/20/2010 - 19:03 — Anonymous (not verified)So how about Howard Dean for 2012? Surely by now conservative Dems have forgotten his laugh. How is it that Repubs can have affairs, even in airport bathrooms try to have one, go after congressional pages, and various other nefarious actions and Howard was ruined with a laugh and a growl?
Bring him back. Intelligent, resourceful and most of the time, truthful.
Dennis Kucinich for VP.
In my younger, more naive
Thu, 12/02/2010 - 18:37 — Frances in California (not verified)In my younger, more naive days, a Dean/Kucinich ticket would've made me . . . well, do something I can't any longer that's really fun. Pause and think, people, about how the rotten, greedy GOP "won" so many House seats in the midterm. Do you really see Dean winning in 2012 with that scenario unbroached? Or would such a candidacy guarantee a President Romney for Rove to play dolls with? Or a (gag! Choke!) Gingrich?
Well, Progressives . . . no,
Thu, 12/02/2010 - 18:47 — Frances in California (not verified)Well, Progressives . . . no, I mean the real ones; the ones who new in January of 2009 that we would have to do most of the heavy lifting ourselves. I'm NOT talking to the Republican Operatives in Disguise who always jump after Norm Solomon's articles like dogs in heat. If their guys take over in 2012, they won't be Democrats; they won't even be Independents. They'll be crypto-fascist economic hitmen and I will no longer be able to afford to live here. Birthright citizenship will be damned! Only the rich will be able to be Americans.