The New Face of Corporatism
A fantastic Huffington Post rant by Miles Mogulescu perfectly enunciates the growing divide between Obama and the movement that brought him to power.
In his piece, Mogulescu, a progressive entertainment attorney, makes the case that Obama, once a historic symbol of reform and progressive values, has taken on a style of governance that is nearly identical to the centrist capitulatism of Bill Clinton.
Moreover, this conciliatory style of leadership is not merely a coalition building strategy of a charismatic diplomat. It is a guise, a means of engineering corporate cooperation by a group historically supportive of consumer protections, trust busting, and union empowerment.
In the words of Mogulescu,
“Democrats are about to pass a bill that uses the coercive power of the federal government to force every American — simply by virtue of being an American — to purchase the products of a private company. At heart, the Democrats’ solution to 48 million uninsured is to force the them to buy inadequate private insurance — with potentially high deductibles and co-pays and no price controls — or be fined by the federal government.
In effect, this represents an historic defeat for the type of liberalism represented by the New Deal and the Great Society and the ascendancy of a new type of corporatist liberalism.”
It’s a must read. I know that in saying this, I do not speak for all the Meppers, but while the Obama presidency represents an incremental improvement to the fatuous Bush years, it does not carry with it the means or even the desire to fundamentally change the nature of corrupt and decaying power structures that would rather profit off of the suffering of Americans than act in the common interest.
I love you like a brother, Russ, but this is nuts.
You do realize, of course, that this same “defeat of liberalism” is actually going to, for the first time, establish the concept of universal health care as a given, right? How about the ten billion dollars slated for community health clinics in this bill, courtesy of Bernie Sanders (and if you don’t think that’s a big deal, go find someone credible who will claim that those clinics are part of the corporate takeover of America. I won’t hold my breath waiting for the result of your search). Social Security was hardly a flawless program when it was implemented, but it established the support of the elderly as a foundational right, and it was then able to be improved from there. As is usually the case with the Huffington Post, which has gone from rational to “Arianna doesn’t like that she’s being ignored, so it’s time to join the teabagger crowd and repeatedly suggest that Obama=Bush” in eleven months flat, the article is laughable–and sadly predictable–in its assumptions. Though I probably should be careful about disagreeing with someone like Mogulescu, whose time at MGM certainly must have prepared him to hold forth on issues concerning healthcare. *rolleyes*
The truth is that for all the sackcloth and ashes and gnashing of teeth from the “give me my pony NOW!” crowd, Obama has literally accomplished more in a year than twenty years of presidents before him: major advances on the economy, on climate change, on nuclear weapon reduction, discrimination in the workplace, international relations and much more. He’s also made his share of mistakes–I don’t agree with the escalation in Afghanistan, and he’s not willing enough to go toe to toe with conservatives on policies that really matter. But claiming that Obama is an “incremental improvement” on George Bush is simply ludicrous.
If you don’t like Huff Post, maybe you should try some (former Brandeis Prof) Robert Reich commentary:
“Slouching Towards Health Care Reform”
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/
Also, a simple question: If Mr. Obama isn’t really a servant of this country’s plutocracy, then why, after one of the worst financial crises in our history do we have ZERO new regulations on how over-leveraged banks, insurance agencies and investment firms can be? Why has there been ZERO regulation of derivatives trading? Why hasn’t Glass-Segal been resurrected, separating commercial savings banks from hedge trading?
If you look carefully out there, nothing has substantively changed. It’s business as usual. What excuses are you making for Obama on that front?
Russ-
You and the Huffington Post are on to something that most Progressives have been feeling in their guts since Obama cravenly caved to the defense establishment on Afghanistan (against the advice of his own ambassador). He is a politician’s politician at heart. You can take the politician out of Illinois, but you can’t take the Illinois out of the politician. You don’t appoint Rahm Emanuel your head henchman by accident.
Obama having seen the face (and mid-term elections,) lost by Clinton post the defeat of his and Hillary’s health care proposals gave Emanuel orders to “pass something,” by which he meant “pass anything.” Well, that is what we got, the lowest common denominator, a bill so bad Joe Lieberman might vote for it. A bill that protects billion dollar drug manufacturers from generic competition, stops consumers from getting cheaper drugs from Canada and Mexico, and doesn’t have a public option???
Yes, it removes limits on coverage benefit maximums and restricts denial for pre-existing conditions, basically helping those who have it the very worst, which obviously, statistically, is going to be very few people. Most American’s will benefit not one bit from this bill. And if costs rise at all or care appears to suffer, Obama and the Democrats will get pounded at the polls, in much the same way as the escalation in Afghanistan now has to work or Obama takes the heat. The health care sell out was taking on an abysmal status quo and attempting to make it minimally better in the most callously pragmatic way possible.
It is awfully soon to give up on Obama. He must be given time to learn from his mistakes. But my gut instinct says Ralph Nader and Ron Paul were right about these people, they are two sides of the same coin. And those of us who love our liberty are much more ill-served by a Democrat constructing these policies, because the reactionary backlash against Democratic failure could be something along the lines of a Palin-Cheney ticket in 2012.
Love the MEP report, keep up the good work!
http://clarioncontent.blogspot.com/
Like lots of progressives, Reich claims to not want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good even when that’s exactly what he’s doing. Nor does he acknowledge how important establishing a foundation of universal health care is, even if the building on top of that foundation is currently unfinished. Yet despite these major issues in his analysis, even he admits in this article that the current bill is better than what we have.
As far as your argument about Obama as servant of the plutocracy: one, we were talking about health care, not the financial sector. Two, I agree that there need to be many more of the financial regulations you mention–but I don’t think Obama is done. He has a hell of a lot to deal with already, and I think after firing up the stimulus package, health care reform, climate change measures, major nuclear disarmament negotiations, reconfiguring the Justice Department to actually uphold the Constitution and not the Executive Branch’s particular agenda, rolling back Bush Administration attacks on the environment on all fronts, and a million other such items that he could be excused for being a little too occupied to demand the resurrection of Glass-Segal.
And see, this is the problem. Everyone on the left has a paragraph like the one Russ has above detailing his/her specific pet issue, and my argument is the same in each case: he’s getting there, and doing so in pretty rapid fashion. And claiming that “nothing has substantively changed…It’s business as usual” is, again, absurd on face–refer to the list of accomplishments I mentioned above and in my first comment. These are actual, important, meaningful changes, the existence of which factually invalidates the “nothing has changed” meme. It’s intellectually dishonest to dismiss them because they don’t address one’s particular pet issue RIGHT NOW.
We’re still not at the year mark, and in my judgment the guy has done a pretty extraordinary job under pretty horrendous circumstances. If he stops and does nothing else for the rest of his term, sure, I’ll be upset, and as I’ve already said I don’t agree with him on every issue. But I agree with him on many of them, and even with the issues where we’re not in sync I at least feel like he’s being rational and thinking about what he’s doing rather than flying by the seat of his pants and the advice of a corrupt vice president with delusions of grandeur and an itchy trigger finger…not that we’ve had any recent examples of such a president, of course.
Oh, and by the way: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_classified_documents. I thought people might be interested in the potentially largest opening of the government to public scrutiny in twenty years, entirely thanks to the current president. I know Obama is exactly like Bush, of course, but just in case you’re not totally caught up in that narrative you might find just a teensy bit more here than an incremental improvement from the “Corporatist-in-Chief.”
By opening of public scrutiny, you mean to historical archives? This all references Cold War Era stuff. That’s a pretty easy symbolic gesture to make without actually making his own administration any more transparent.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/14/obama-secrecy/
Obama has maintained Bush Administration wiretapping guidelines, and its use of executive privilege in refusing to disclose the participants of White House meetings. This is exactly what we used to accuse Dick Cheney of doing.
But you’re right. He opened up a 30 year old archive. What a bold move.
A bold move that not one single president in the past thirty years was willing to make…damn incrementalism. As for the Dec. 14th article, let me know when you find something other than the Washington Times (which has been shilling for the right for years) or the Huffington Post for your sources. Hint: also stay away from Fox News. They’re “incrementally” more biased than some other sources too.
By the way, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Society of Professional Journalists and the ACLU all give Obama good marks for his moves towards a more ethical and transparent government in his first year. But since he hasn’t yet restored the Constitution and resurrected the Warren Court, I know these other things are just pathetic shadow moves. Ah, for a McCain presidency.
Just saw Aaron’s comment, and I have to say–although I admire your passion here, and it reflects what some (not most) progressives do think, I’m afraid most of your arguments are really, really off base.
“Yes, it removes limits on coverage benefit maximums and restricts denial for pre-existing conditions, basically helping those who have it the very worst, which obviously, statistically, is going to be very few people. Most American’s will benefit not one bit from this bill.”
This is flat wrong. In fact, thirty million Americans will be insured that weren’t before, including those who would have been denied because of pre-existing conditions. Such pre-existing clauses are now gone, and as anyone with family members with serious health problems can attest this is a big, BIG deal–a sea change in the way health insurance is handled in this country. The bill would be worth it for this alone.
“But my gut instinct says Ralph Nader and Ron Paul were right about these people, they are two sides of the same coin.”
It’s precisely this kind of absurd equivalency that got us Bush in 2000, and if you think Al Gore–with whom I disagree on multiple issues, and who is far from a progressive–would have trumped up charges to get us into war in Iraq, would have pulled out of Kyoto, would have gutted the Constitution, and all the numerous other things Bush did as the worst president in American history, then I’m not sure what to say. Nader has rendered himself irrelevant and set the third party movement back twenty years, while his ego hasn’t allowed him to recognize the damage he’s done; while Paul, who moonlights as a white supremacist when he isn’t pretending to be a libertarian, isn’t a quality standard bearer for the progressive movement either.
“Greg- Your list of “accomplishments” so far is hollow rhetoric.”
Sigh. This is the last refuge, of course, an echo of the PUMAS in the Democratic primary: “He’s just SAYING nice things, not actually DOING anything!” Then as now, the criticism doesn’t hold water:
“The stimulus package unaccompanied by regulatory change for the banks or a massive works program, has been a pebble in an ocean.”
The issue we’re discussing is absolutely enormous, and these things don’t change overnight. I’d like to ask who you think you could elect–anyone who is electable, remember, not Dennis Kucinich–who could actually wave a magic wand and fix everything, by himself, without legislative input or public support. Until you find such a person, I’d suggest you give Obama more than eleven months to singlehandedly part the Red Sea of financial entanglements which took a century to form.
“The climate change discussion has been no more than that, talk.”
Talk which had NO CHANCE OF HAPPENING under any other president. McCain, once he was in bed with the teabaggers and their subtle, complex thinking on policy, was on record as saying he would have pulled even MORE out of any such climate discussions. Talk is important, and can lead to more things. Without such talk you go nowhere. For a reference, see Bush, George W.
“Start treaty nuclear negotiations with the Russians were happening no matter who was president, the treaty expired.”
Again, flat wrong. McCain was on record saying he would not renegotiate START until the Russians essentially fell on their swords for him. His comments on the crisis in Georgia last year made a bad situation worse; heaven help us if he had been in charge of negotiating with the Russians, which based on all available evidence would have resembled Bolton’s “give us what we want, you Red bastards” method of “diplomacy.”
“Reconfiguring the justice department, again, what more than pretty speech making has happened here? Guantanamo is still open. Military commissions haven’t been abolished.”
Because you can’t close something which took years to create in a day. The point is that Guantanamo is now well on its way to being closed, and military commissions well on their way to be far reduced in scope and power (look at the decision to try the terror suspects in federal courts in NYC, by the way. If this really isn’t a substantive change, why is every conservative to the right of Rudy Giuliani savaging Obama and Holder about it?). No president, no person in the world, can fix these problems instantaneously; but Obama has already begun the process of fixing them, despite the political risks in doing so.
“McCain took an equally strong rhetorical stance and probably would have accomplished at least this much (ie. very little).”
What? What strong stance did McCain take on any of these issues, except as a polar opposite to Obama? And this is the same argument Nader made in saying it was okay for Bush to be elected–“oh, he won’t be able to do anything anyway.” How much did he, ahem, “accomplish”? A hell of a lot, if you believe in obliterating civil rights, committing war crimes couched as policy and declaring war against the environment. As I’ve said above, creating a false equivalency between the two candidates is ludicrous. But don’t take my word for it: go ask the ACLU, the People for the American Way, MoveOn, or any left organization not run by Jane Hamsher who they’d rather have as president. I promise it won’t be a split decision.
“You and all the other apologists out there have to face that the one big issue Obama took a action based stand on so far was Afghanistan, and he ESCALATED!”
Which is exactly what he said he’d do during the campaign, so this shouldn’t come as the huge shock progressives seem to think it is. But I agree with you that this is a mistake, one I hope he’ll rectify.
“Now I will grant you that year one hasn’t ended yet, but if Afghanistan escalation and a corporatist health care plan are the big accomplishments of Obama’s first year, there is nothing to celebrate.”
Fortunately they aren’t–he’s done way more, as I’ve already outlined, and we haven’t even touched the different way he’s framed the American image abroad, which is enormously important and radically different from what our last leader tried. And the health care plan IS a big, big accomplishment even with its flaws, because as I said before, it establishes the foundation of universal health care as a right. Go look at Social Security when it was first enacted; you’ll be surprised how many people it didn’t help. But it helped some, and established the foundation to help others; and over the years, that foundation was built upon until we had what we recognize as a critical contract between younger and older generations. Neither that, nor Medicare nor Medicaid, would have existed if progressives in the early twentieth century had been screaming about how the bill needed to be killed because it didn’t cover everyone right that very second.
(Also, the ten billion dollars for increased access to community health care is another enormous part of the bill you haven’t yet addressed.)
“If the health care plan becomes the template for policy change, expect an environmental policy that big corporations can get along with because their lobbyists will have played a major part in writing it. Real green change is not cap and trade, it is high speed trains,”
Supported by Obama.
“a smart grid,”
Supported by Obama.
“alternative energy minimums,”
Supported by Obama.
In general, I think the progressive objections are being made not about our current president, but about someone we don’t have in office–a superman, a god, who with his beatific smile can radically alter the political landscape and remove all bad while ushering in the good. Obama isn’t a god; he’s a man, a good one, and a good president. He’s got an incredible amount on his plate, and thus far he’s done an exceptional job in handling all of it. He has much more to do; but damning him for not fixing the world in seven days is an absurd path to take. He’s far from perfect, but also far from Bush and his ilk, and that by itself is a huge step forward.
“Love the MEP report, keep up the good work!”
Thanks for contributing, and thanks for the passion! 🙂
Greg-
I would love to respond to your argument in full at some time, but I just have time to isolate a sub-point of the health care bill issue.
“In fact, thirty million Americans will be insured that weren’t before, including those who would have been denied because of pre-existing conditions.”
Yes, the bill helps people who have pre-existing conditions enormously. But out of the 30 million you and all the other Obama apologists are so proud to claim, how many of those are healthy, young males who simply elect not to buy their own coverage?
These folks will be forced under this corporatist bill to buy health care from private insurance companies. It is not just Ron Paul who thinks that is an infringement of our civil liberties. It is the polar opposite of a public option.
Public Option, “I am an American citizen who pays taxes to the government ergo I receive minimum level of health care free from the government.”
Corporatist Plan, “I am an American citizen who pays taxes to the government. The government also mandates that I buy insurance from a private entity which has substantial leeway to determine the cost to me the consumer nee taxpayer.”
This is like arguing extra H-1B visas solve the immigration problem in America or that affirmative action can solve racism. Helping only the exceptional cases (in this health care bill the sickest people) and defending it as better than nothing is the kind of incrementalism that destroys the possibility for real change while inflaming the enemies of change. Real change requires a shift in mindset. Obama’s election could have presaged that, but he wasted his political capital on health care. He had to prove his metal elsewhere with some (any) other accomplishment before he took on the behemoth of health care policy.
He could have withdrawn from Afghanistan and focused on America’s infrastructure. Instead he put our money in Afghanistan, and he put his rhetorical support behind high speed trains, a smart grid and alternative energy minimums. Is this rhetoric better than the Bush rhetoric? Yes, especially because it occasionally comes with a modicum of financial support. Is Biden a better veep than Cheney? Yes. Is he a huge step forward? Or symbol of mostly business as usual?
Look forward to engaging again later…
I have reams of complaint about Obama’s Russia policy or lack thereof.
It must wait for now.
Thanks for the stimulating response.
Aaron