Given what Trump has done to our country and world, it’s no wonder that many Americans long for Obama. He was not a bigot or insult artist. His administration was not rocked by major scandal, with top aides off to prison. He was level-headed:“No Drama Obama.” He didn’t deny science. President Obama was smart, with a vocabulary clearly exceeding that of a 4th-grade child. He was hip.
That’s what millions of people remember.
I, too, remember all that. But we should also recall the political substance beyond the pleasant image.
We need to remember the vacillation – and worse, the opportunism and corporatism. As well as cause and effect: that Obama’s tenure paved the way for the rise of Trump.
Progressive analyst Matt Stoller made that case in a well-documented Washington Post column on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, headlined “Democrats can’t win until they recognize how bad Obama’s financial policies were: He had opportunities to help the working class, and he passed them up.” Stoller wrote of the Obama administration enabling nine million home foreclosures and anti-consumer corporate mergers, including dangerous consolidation in health care, partly caused by Obamacare’s “lack of a public option for health coverage.” Noting that most new jobs in the Obama years were temporary or part-time, along with the decline in lifespans among whites, Stoller concluded: “When Democratic leaders don’t protect the people, the people get poorer, they get angry . . .”
Back in 2008, I was delighted when Obama defeated the Clinton machine, seemingly for good. (If only!) But I wasn’t taken in by his “hope” and “change” rhetoric.
Obama’s first presidential run offered reasons to be skeptical—for example, how he broke records in pocketing Wall Street donations. Once in office, those ties hamstrung his economic policies.
I remember the opportunism of that campaign: How Obama and his team sought the endorsements of antiwar celebrities in 2007/2008 by saying, “All of our advisers opposed the Iraq invasion and all of Hillary’s supported it. Why are you on the fence?” And I remember that, as soon as Hillary was out of the race, Obama chose one pro-war associate after another, including running mate Joe Biden, probably the single most important Democrat in enabling the Iraq invasion.
Those hawkish appointees ultimately included Hillary Clinton at the State Department; they steered Obama to continue — and in some actions, areas and powers, expand – the ineffective and immoral “War on Terror” inherited from Bush, and passed on to Trump.
Two days after Obama’s 2008 election, I remember how even my small sliver of hope evaporated when he selected Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff—a stridently pro-corporate, pro-war Democrat despised by progressives since he worked in the Clinton White House and helped lead legislative campaigns that pushed through the NAFTA trade pact, the 1994 crime bill, and welfare “reform.”
Like Emanuel, Obama’s next two chiefs of staff also came out of big finance: William Daley from JPMorgan Chase and Jacob Lew from Citigroup.
It’s well-documented that Obama loaded his team of economic advisers with Wall Streeters. So it’s no accident that Wall Street was bailed out rather than underwater homeowners during the biggest foreclosure wave in U.S. history. The inside story of Obama’s semi-regular capitulation to economic elites is told in Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President. Largely with GOP support – and over the objections of most Democrats in Congress – Obama kept pushing the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal until his last months in office.
Obama appointed Monsanto executives and allies to key food and agriculture jobs. While he acknowledged the science of climate change and talked of the need for action, Obama’s tenure coincided with a boom in U.S. oil production and lethal infrastructure, and his administration fervently promoted fracking worldwide.
His health care reform, which originated with the conservative Heritage Foundation, expanded health coverage largely by enriching private insurance firms and Big Pharma, whose lobbyists were allowed to obstruct cost controls. Obamacare did expand Medicaid and increase coverage in poor and rural communities and to young people, but it still left millions uninsured.
In one lengthy, link-filled sentence, journalist Nathan J. Robinson summarized the progressive critique of Obama:
He deported staggering numbers of immigrants, let Wall Street criminals off the hook, failed to take on (and now proudly boasts of support for) the fossil fuel industry, sold over $100 billion in arms to the brutal Saudi government, killed American citizens with drones (and then made sickening jokes about it), killed lots more non-American citizens with drones (including Yemenis going to a wedding) and then misled the public about it, promised “the most transparent administration ever” and then was “worse than Nixon” in his paranoia about leakers, pushed a market-friendly health care plan based on conservative premises instead of aiming for single-payer, and showered Israel with both public support and military aid even as it systematically violated the human rights of Palestinians.
Yes, Obama faced intense Republican obstruction in Congress. But it wasn’t Mitch McConnell who stacked the Obama administration with corporatist appointees and policies.
In pure math, Obama’s tenure was a boon to the GOP – Democrats lost their big majorities in the U.S. House and Senate and nearly 1,000 state legislative seats, while the 50 governorships shifted from a sizable Democratic margin to strong Republican majority.
My point is simple: It’s not good enough to “restore” Obama-ism. Look at the recent pattern of presidential history: When corporate-beholden Democrats win the White House and implement cautious, status-quo policies while inequality worsens, two things happen: 1) Right-wing Republicans quickly take back Congress, and 2) An even more dangerous GOP president follows.
– Jeff Cohen
Excerpted from “Let’s Not Whitewash
or Mythologize Obama”
TruthDig
March 22, 2019
Excerpted from “Let’s Not Whitewash
or Mythologize Obama”
TruthDig
March 22, 2019
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Progressives and Obama (Part 1)
• Progressives and Obama (Part 2)
• Progressives and Obama (Part 3)
• Progressives and Obama (Part 4)
• Progressives and Obama (Part 5)
• Progressives and Obama (Part 6)
• Progressives and Obama (Part 7)
• Historic (and Wild)!
• Reality Check
• One of Those Moments
• Obama, Ayers, the “S” Word, and the “Most Politically Backward Layers in America”
• Obama a Socialist? Hardly
• Thoughts on Tomorrow’s Presidential Election (2008)
• “Change Has Come to America”
• A Night of Celebration
• The Challenge for Progressives with an Obama Presidency
• Progressive Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump
• Progressive Perspectives on the Election of Donald Trump as President
Related Off-site Links:
Obama’s Drone Warfare Is Something We Need to Talk About – Azmia Magane (Teen Vogue, June 2, 2017).
Why We Shouldn’t Mourn the Obamas’ Departure from the White House – Zeba Blay (The Huffington Post, January 19, 2017).
How President Obama Solidified the Transition to Perpetual War – The Takeaway (January 18, 2016).
How America’s Thinking Changed Under Obama – Reuben Fischer-Baum and Dhrumil Mehta (FiveThirtyEight, January 18, 2017).
Why Obama Nostalgia Matters – Neal Gabler (BillMoyers.com, January 18, 2017).
“We Were Heard for the First Time”: President Obama Leaves an Incredible Legacy on LGBTQ Rights – German Lopez (Vox, January 17, 2017).
The Issue is Not Trump, It’s Us – John Pilger (teleSUR, January 16, 2017).
Democrats Can’t Win Until They Recognize How Bad Obama’s Financial Policies Were – Matt Stoller (The Washington Post, January 12, 2017).
From Torture to Drone Strikes: The Disturbing Legal Legacy Obama is Leaving for Trump – Jennifer Williams (Vox, January 10, 2017).
Image: Former President Barack Obama speaks at the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance Summit in Oakland, California in 2019. (Photo: Jeff Chiu / AP)
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