Nothing New Here
Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them. ~Ryan Lizza
After reading his ridiculous Rolling Stone article on Obama’s “sell-out” to Wall Street, I am persuaded that Matt Taibbi should be forced to write these two Ryan Lizza sentences a few thousand times by hand until he has absorbed their message. The problem is not Taibbi’s reporting on the administration’s actions and personnel, but with the overall interpretation he gives to the facts. No one believed that Obama was “standing up to Wall Street” when Tim Geithner and Larry Summers were appointed to top economic Cabinet and advisory posts, and everything that has happened since then is consistent with the modern Democratic Party’s accommodation with Wall Street that has been steadily intensifying for the last fifteen years or so. Obama’s support for the financial bailout last fall was just one more instance of this.
As far as Washington pundits and most of the political class are concerned, Obama has taken the “responsible” positions in response to the financial crisis, because he has embraced the solutions offered by the very people from Wall Street, the central bank and the Treasury who contributed greatly to the causes of the crisis. It is very important to understand that Obama campaigned on these “responsible” positions, and he made no promises to challenge the government’s collusion with financial interests. His supporters have exactly what they voted for as far as these things are concerned. He had no mandate “to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy,” because he never really proposed to do either of these things. If he had, he probably would not have voted for the financial sector bailout. It is a bit rich for Taibbi to complain about the Citigroup deal as if it represented something different from the bailout passed earlier in the fall. None of this is to say that Taibbi is wrong in finding the deal outrageous, but it was hardly a sharp break with the things Obama had already supported.
Some progressives are just as invested in the idea that Obama has “sold out” to corporate and financial interests as neoconservatives are committed to the fantasy that Obama’s foreign policy has recently undergone dramatic change. The reality is that Obama never had to “sell out” to these interests, because he never challenged them in any serious way in his national political career before he became President. We are not witnessing “one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history.” We are seeing Obama do pretty much exactly what he did during the general election and the months before his Inauguration: he has been careful to position himself squarely as a conventional center-left politician, and he has done this most of all as far as it concerns the financial sector.
As for trade policy, he has not pushed for new trade agreements, but neither has he actively tried to change any existing agreements. The primary candidate who raised the possibility of re-negotiating NAFTA vanished even before the nomination was his. Even Austan Goolsbee, whom Taibbi makes out to be one of the good, banished economic advisors, effectively admitted in the spring of 2008 that, as Taibbi puts it, “Obama had only been posturing when he promised crowds of struggling Midwesterners during the campaign that he would renegotiate NAFTA.” Taibbi may not want to remember, but at one time it was Goolsbee’s presence on the Obama campaign that served as the kind of reassuring signal to corporate and financial interests that the Furman and Geithner appointments were later on. The idea of re-negotiating NAFTA had been dead for months by the time Furman came on board. Furman’s appointment confirmed a policy view that already existed. It did not represent a change or a departure on trade policy. Taibbi writes as if he didn’t know that Obama was a committed free-trade globalist. Nowhere can Taibbi provide any of Obama’s statements or legislation to support the idea that his embrace of the policies and personnel of Rubinism and globalization as President is any way different from the policies he favored before his election. Instead we are treated to a lot of hand-waving like this:
A president elected on a platform of change was announcing, in so many words, that he planned to change nothing fundamental when it came to the economy.
Obama didn’t run on a platform of “fundamental” change of the economy. He was very careful not to scare anyone with anything as dramatic or interesting as that. He didn’t run on a platform of “fundamental” change in foreign policy, either. The man isn’t interested in fundamental change. My guess is that this is not just because this kind of change is far more difficult and risky, but because he really thinks it is undesirable. This is how he has gone from political obscurity to the White House in a decade. That was Lizza’s point all along.
Daniel,
I’m not sure how familiar you are with Taibbi’s work as a whole. He’s generally fairly cynical and I mostly got the feeling that he wasn’t expecting Obama to actually be realistic change. The article is framed in that fashion partially for hyperbole (a pretty consistent aspect of his work) and partially as a response to the “progressives” who have generally been his main audience over the last couple of years, and who also bought into the “hope and change” nonsense. So I didn’t really find it ridiculous.
While Obama certainly did not propose any “fundamental” changes, he skillfully conflated his overall message of “hope and change” with policies of the previous administration and a new direction (much in the same rhetorical way that the Bush administration purposefully conflated Al Qaeda, Saddam, and the GWOT). In fact, considering the few substantial policy differences between him and Hillary, it’s not a stretch to say that his skill in talking up revolution without actually rocking the boat in substance is what got him elected. Weather he wanted them or not, that is the constituency he got, and it’s perfectly reasonable to point out the many instances in which he abandons them.
I wish I didn’t, but I have to agree with you, Dan.
During the primaries, I was an Edwards guy (at least, I supported his proposed policies; I never warmed to the guy personally). I had Obama down as not nearly liberal enough on health care and economics. Once Obama became the nominee I hoped, and almost convinced myself, that he was less centrist / mainstream than he is. Live and learn, I guess.
Another way to phrase it is that ‘hope’ has become ‘don’t get your hopes up’, ‘change’ has become ‘most of the Bush changes are now permanent; we did add some competancy’, and ‘yes we can’ has become “no we can’t (to any liberal ideas)”.
I appreciate that he has obstacles (like a Senate which *might* have an actual Democratic majory in the low 50′s, on a day when they’re feeling unusually liberal).
However his appointments are not only ‘establishment’, they’re the sort of appointment one would make if one had no problem at all with the Wall St crash. And if he felt that the only hazard from the bailout was that too many Americans would get ridiculous ideas like they too should be bailed out.
Obama is long beyond ‘realism’ or compromise.
I admire Tabibi’s journalism, but of course he has his limitations which are not hard to see. At this point I’m grateful that articles like his AND Lizza’s are still making it into print, and one can always put two and two together without having any one commentator connecting the dots. My impression of the bailout is that it is really a continuation of our financial and political oligarchy’s long-term abandonment of real economic activity in this country. Most of the longstanding gripes of the electorate with immigration policy, gutting domestic manufacturing and shipping jobs overseas, financier rapine of the middle and lower classes, etc. are best explained as a lack of confidence in America’s future. I suspect that many of these favored ones really do think they can live in some kind of protected “island” (literal or figurative), protected by their connections to the powerful, while the rest of the nation drowns in debt, inflation, poverty, and economic stagnation. It is hard not to believe that the United States is finished as a living political body when its own parasitic leadership just wants to abandon ship as soon as the bank account is fat enough.
nothing to disagree with here. i would only quibble with your narrowing of the accommodation of wall street to the democratic party. a bit churlish of you to omit the party which has been under the sheets with the money boys for much longer than my 60 years.
“i would only quibble with your narrowing of the accommodation of wall street to the democratic party.”
Hold on a minute. This may have been a little while ago and before you started reading my posts, but I have written pretty extensively on how the GOP has historically been the party of corporations and finance and continues to be this today, and I have stressed how detrimental this has been for all those things conservatives value. Instead of broad distribution of wealth and power, the GOP has been the ally of those who want to concentrate both in fewer hands. This means that the interests of their present-day voters are neglected and harmed. I referred here to the “modern Democratic Party” to make the point that this accommodation is a relatively new development in the last 15-18 years.
[...] might have linked to this already, but I think that Larison’s sum-up of the Taibbi/Fernholz/whoever smackdown was [...]
As far as Washington pundits and most of the political class are concerned, Obama has taken the “responsible” positions in response to the financial crisis, because he has embraced the solutions offered by the very people from Wall Street, the central bank and the Treasury who contributed greatly to the causes of the crisis.
For the record, preventing bank collapses was probably the correct action. Allowing the banks to continue on as though nothing had happened was wrong. Bush carried out the first item. Obama said he wouldn’t allow the bankers to get away with it. THEN he was elected and turned around and picked Larry Summers & Geithner. He didn’t say he was going to do that before the election. Had he done so I would have withdrawn my vote. That goes down in my book as a lie and (at best) an obfustication. Likewise did he say he would back off the whole surveillance police state Bush put in motion, and so far he has accelerated it. Likewise he has appointed a lot of Republicans (or quasi-Republicans) to powerful postions. He didn’t say he was going to that either of those, and if he had, I would not have voted for him
and everything that has happened since then is consistent with the modern Democratic Party’s accommodation with Wall Street that has been steadily intensifying for the last fifteen years or so.
Yes, I agree. And I have been opposed to this for quite some time. 15 years ago was 1994 and I had been unhappy with things for quite some time before that – I voted for Ross Perot in 1992.
The man isn’t interested in fundamental change. My guess is that this is not just because this kind of change is far more difficult and risky, but because he really thinks it is undesirable.
No, I can get that the man was trying to be some kind of moderate pragmatist. The question was, what kind of moderate pragmatist. Someone who not supports bailing out Citi & etc., AND who continues kissing their butts afterwards is… well, Bush. And Bush is not, in my book, a moderate pragmatist. Continuing his policies (hell, his administration) is not moderate pragmatism, excepting in the sense that it isn’t a change from the recently established policies. It isn’t exactly bipartisan, either. It’s Republican. (No? Would a President Dukakis, Technocrat par excellence have gone this route? President Gore? Kerry? If they would have, it seems to me they have been clearly acting deceptively.)
I would have been fine with compromises. I see comprises that having McCain as President would have engendered. What appears to have happened instead of a liberal compromising is that a Republican (not a conservative, mind) ran in the D primaries as the anti-establishment liberal and won. Whereupon he has reverted to being a Republican.
And I must decline to shut up and take it.
max
['If he has to play the hand he's dealt, then so do I.']