Barack Obama in the Real World of Power
by Tom Barrett
The title you read at the top of this post is actually the subtitle
of a new book that I’m reading called The Empire’s New Clothes, written
by a historian named Paul Street. I met him and heard him speak last Friday
evening at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Springfield, NJ. I think his basic
point is right: the current president is not fundamentally different from his
predecessors, including the rather ludicrous George W. Bush. Mr. Street
commented that essentially what President Obama has done has been to “rebrand”
George W. Bush’s policies, as an advertising agency might do to sell a product.
Indeed, the parallels between the political campaign committees of 2010 and the
advertising agencies of Madison Avenue, New York, are myriad. I just noticed
today that even though “combat operations in Iraq have ended,” an American GI
was killed yesterday in Iraq. I got the information in an e-mail from my friend
Cindy Sheehan, who sarcastically put in her subject line, “This can’t be
happening! The war is over!” Cindy, you will recall, is the woman who attempted
to confront President Bush in Crawford, TX, after her son Casey’s death in
Iraq. She has been working tirelessly for peace and justice ever since, and if
it were up to me, she would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mr. Street went down the list of the Obama administration’s
“accomplishments,” which all include big benefits to big business, most
especially the health care “reform.” I don’t know about you, but this “reform”
may very well bankrupt me. I have health insurance through my job, but it’s
woefully inadequate, and because of “Obamacare” there’s no way that will change
any time soon. He said, “if you like your health insurance the good news is
that you don’t have to make a change.” That was a half truth. The truth is, if your
boss likes your health insurance the bad news is that you don’t get to make
a change.
And then there were the “bailouts,” which began during the last
days of the Bush administration and continued during the first days of the
Obama administration. The corporations have done very well. The unemployment
rate has not noticeably dropped; it may even have gone up. A lot of people,
myself included, in order to cover our expenses, have cashed in a lot of our
retirement accounts. Over $33 billion has been taken out of stock market mutual
funds during the last quarter.
Am I disappointed with President Obama’s performance in office?
Frankly, no, because it’s no worse than I expected. I didn’t vote for him, and
I won’t vote for him in 2012. But a lot of the people who did are feeling
really let down, and even a lot of the people who didn’t are angry. Cindy
Sheehan, whom I mentioned at the beginning, has called him a “war criminal” and
a “fascist.” She also thinks we should agitate for his impeachment. I
understand how she feels. Last November I went to a small demonstration in
Washington organized by a predominantly African American antiwar coalition
called Black is Back. The feeling of anger at being let down was impossible to
ignore. One of the speakers was a journalist named Glen Ford of the Black
Agenda Report. He’s got a good analysis of what Obama’s administration has
meant to the Black community and people who want this country to be at peace. Click here see a video.
If you want to read more about why a lot of us are feeling that Mr.
Obama has let us down, click here for some
excerpts from his new book. Better yet, get the book and read it. But I’ve got
a different point to make. I’m really less interested in what’s wrong with
Barack Obama—I knew that a long time ago—than I am in what to do about it.
What to do about it depends almost entirely on the answer to two
related questions: is Obama the real problem, and would replacing him in the
office of President make things better? According to Paul Street—and Glen
Ford—the answer to both questions is “no,” and I agree.
If you were to shut off your TV, radio, and internet, stop
subscribing to newspapers and magazines—or, if you didn’t want to be so
drastic, just stop paying attention to the news, which is what it seems that a
lot of people do, it’s very likely you wouldn’t be able to tell when a new
President had acceded to office. Things do not change very much for us in our
everyday lives because a different individual holds the highest political
office in the country. Furthermore, the authors of the Constitution intended it
just that way. They were very much concerned about wild swings of public policy
and were even more concerned that massive participation in political activity
by people other than the wealthy and well-educated would lead to “mob rule.” In
1787 one might argue that they had a point, for the French Revolution which
broke out two years later certainly confirmed their worst fears about
“democracy.”
But that was then, and this is now. We have no more property
qualifications for voting; every citizen above the age of eighteen has a right
to vote, regardless of race or gender. Still, a large minority in Presidential
elections—and a majority in non-Presidential elections—don’t bother to go to
the polling place and vote. And why should they? What does it change? Does
anyone in government determine the price of a gallon of gasoline? Does
government determine whether you can qualify for a home mortgage—and what the
interest rate will be? Does government give you a job? Well, the answer to the
last question for too many of our young people who can’t get a job from a
private company is “yes,” but it involves a uniform and a weapon and the
possibility of losing one’s life in a faraway country.
The point I’m making is that most decisions that affect your life
and my life are made by private corporations. Nobody voted for them; they have
to obey laws, or at least not get caught breaking them, but other than that,
there is no governmental control. And those decisions that affect you and me
that are made by government are by and
large made by civil servants who are also not elected. What am I saying here?
Just this: whether or not Barack Obama is re-elected in 2012, you and I won’t
notice a big difference in our daily lives. It’s just not going to make a whole
lot of difference, and that’s why so many of us can’t be bothered going down to
the polling place on Election Day.
Mr. Street, speaking to his audience at the Springfield, NJ, Barnes
& Noble bookstore last Friday, explained the behind-the-scenes vetting that
the big campaign donors carry out long before candidacies are announced and how
there is no chance that anyone who is not committed to working for the best
interests of the corporate elite can be elected to high political office,
including and especially the Presidency. This is something I have known for
literally decades, but it bears repeating: the electoral system in the United
States is designed to prevent change
and to make sure that there is no threat whatsoever to the economic elite in
whose interest the government exists.
So what should we do? What should we not do? Mr. Street suggests that we “open new and exciting
possibilities for a kind of progressive politics that can bring about real,
grassroots ‘change from the bottom up’—something very different from the
corporate-crafted, candidate-centered, narrow-spectrum, and ‘two-party’
‘quadrennial electoral extravaganzas’ that have for too long passed as the only
politics that really matter in the United States.” I like it. Now what does it
mean?
It means nothing unless those of us who are at the grassroots and
at the “bottom,” from where the “up” is going to come, are organized. That means talking together, meeting together, taking
action together.
There are two ways we can organize, and both of them are valid: one
is by constituency, that is, getting
together based on who we are. Trade unions are a good example of this kind of
organization: we get together because we work at a particular trade, and we’re
trying to win better wages and working conditions through collective bargaining
with the employers. Another good example would be civil rights organizations in
the Communities of Color. The oldest one still in business is the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and it does a lot of
good work still. The National Organization for Women is another constituency
organization, which is very important. I could go on, but you all get the idea.
Another way to organize is by cause,
that is, we get together based on what we think about a particular problem or
issue. That might be the desire to end the Afghanistan war or to dismantle the
arsenal of nuclear weapons. It might be to reduce the consumption of fossil
fuels in order to reduce the production of greenhouse gases which threaten
catastrophic climate change. Peace groups such as the National Assembly to End
the Wars and Occupations, Peace Action, and International ANSWER (Act Now to
Stop War and End Racism) are three examples of groups organized around the
cause of ending war or a particular war. There are in some cases groups that
combine constituency and cause, such as Veterans for Peace or United States
Labor Against War. As far as I’m concerned, all God’s critters got a place in
the choir. What we need to do is (1) work together, and (2) get more people
involved.
The first thing that we need in order to work together is a job to
do. The Service Employees International Union and the NAACP have proposed a job
to do, and the American Federation of Labor–Congress of Industrial
Organizations (AFL-CIO), to which most trade unions belong, agrees with it.
They’re proposing that we participate in a march and rally on Washington, DC,
on October 2 of this year. They have set up a coalition of groups called “One
Nation Working Together.” They say: “We believe everyone deserves the
opportunity to achieve the American Dream — a secure job, a safe home, and a
quality education. ONE NATION seeks to transcend our superficial differences
and bring us together in a common quest for equal opportunity and justice for
all.…March with us in Washington, DC, on 10-2-10 to create millions of good
jobs, repair our immigration system, and reform Wall Street! Your voice is essential
to demanding the change we voted for.” Good! This is a start. I’m going to go.
So should you.
The National Assembly to End the Wars and Occupations got several
groups together to organize a United National Antiwar Conference in July of
2010 in Albany, New York. I was there. It agreed to organize marches and
rallies in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, on April 9, 2011. They say:
Our love of
humanity, opposition to expanding wars and occupations unleashed by the
Pentagon, and respect for the right of self-determination for all peoples
require that we demand of the U.S. government:
•
The allocation
of the trillions spent on wars and corporate bailouts to massive programs for
jobs, education, health care, housing and the environment. Compensation to be
paid to the peoples whose countries the U.S. attacked and occupied for the loss
of lives and massive destruction they suffered.
•
The immediate,
total and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries and
contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and the immediate closing of
all U.S. bases in those countries. Bring all the Troops and War Dollars Home
Now!
•
Reverse and end
all foreclosures. Stop the government attacks on trade unions, civil and
democratic rights, and immigrant communities.
This makes perfect sense to me. I plan to go to New York City on
that date. You should plan to go there or to Los Angeles or San Francisco, whichever
works for you.
Neither the October 2 nor April 9 demonstrations are going to end
these wars or create the thousands of jobs that working people so desperately
need. They might not even convince the people in power to do it. What these
demonstrations will do is to help us get
organized and get us working together. When we have the strength to take
action that might have a more direct effect, we will know it.
For right now, there’s a couple of things we should not do,
I think. You’ll notice that the AFL-CIO and NAACP are taking action, and these
organizations represent quite literally millions of people. They’re taking
action to fight for better living standards and simple fairness for working
people, for African Americans, for immigrant workers, for women and children. I
think that’s a worthwhile thing to do. What they are not ready to do is
to go into opposition to Barack Obama. I think what the people organizing the
October 2 march are for is more important than the President that they
are not against.
What that means is that we should not, for example, demand
that Congress impeach Obama. It will get in the way of working with the labor
movement and the African American community, and impeaching Obama and replacing
him with Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi will hardly represent a great advance for
us. I understand that a good case can be made that Obama is guilty of war
crimes and of lying to the people about the purported withdrawal from Iraq or
about his motivations for escalating the Afghanistan war. I know for certain
that, in the eyes of the members of Congress, these kinds of crimes do not rise
to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that warrant impeachment. That
would require some kind of sexual encounter, and in any case, the last thing I
want to talk about is the standard of ethical behavior set by the members of
the Senate and House of Representatives.
No, for us the issue has to be, what helps us organize at the
grassroots level, from the bottom up? It’s true that there’s no substitute for
one-on-one interaction, but it doesn’t hurt when you can connect with
organizations that represent millions. If the price for that is not talking
about impeaching Obama—which wouldn’t accomplish much anyway—well, then, that’s
a price I am willing to pay, and it’s relatively inexpensive at that.
The question for me is not, for
or against Barack Obama? Rather, it is what’s the best way to defeat his
agenda? And sometimes less is more:
right now less strident denunciation
of Obama will enable more unity in action against Barack Obama’s Big
Business agenda. That’s what we need. Unity
in action.