| There are lots of ways people express disappointment with Barack Obama on lots of different subjects. There's a similar diversity of responses defending him, on the one hand, as well as those deriding people for ever having expected anything more. Without denying any of this diversity, I'd like to argue non-exclusively a case for disappointment, and what should be done about it. This case goes back to several statements, and the overall tone conveyed in David's 2006 piece on Obama for The Nation, "Mr. Obama Goes to Washington".
The general outlines of my argument are these:
(1) There many defenders who still insist that Obama is a great progressive leader, and anyone who doesn't see that unrealistic, rigid, and/or an ideologue.
(2) There are many detractors who say that anyone who ever thought Obama was a progressive was delusional.
(3) My position has always been that Obama's conciliatory, risk-averse style was inherently problematic, but not necessarily fatally so, particularly since he showed signs, and gave verbal assurances that he was capable of a much more confrontational approach, if that should prove necessary. Thus both (1) and (2) were plausibly defensible positions at one time, before Obama took office. But that time has now passed.
(4) The case for legitimate disappointment now rests on the fact that Obama has not lived up to the promise of taking a harder line, if necessary--quite the opposite, he has been conciliatory in ways that undermine the prospects for even the sorts of change that he himself still advocates for.
(5) The proper response should not depend on trying to figure out "what Obama really thinks" or "how he feels" or anything else to do with his personal disposition. The response should have to do with changing the overall political situation in which he's acting. (The disposition/situation dichotomy is a major theme this weekend, up to and including the extensive theoretical work of Harvard law professor Jon D. Hanson on the situationist perspective.) This does mean making one judgment about his disposition: he's a whole let less proactive in changing the political landscape than a lot of his supporters took him to be. Which is why I've repeatedly said that he reminds me of JFK. In the long run, JFK's relatively timid disposition was overwhelmed by the changing situation. So may it be again. |
| Here are two key passages from David's article where Obama makes his case for a flexible progressivism that's non-confrontational in preference, but not rigidly so.
In the first passage, Obama even goes so far as to reject the "non-confrontational" perception. The issue is not confrontational vs. non-confrontational, he argues, but whether one lets confrontation emerge organically:
Many progressives wonder whether Obama will show that an outsider can force real change in government, or that the Senate club has become so insulated that Mr. Smith can no longer go to Washington. But that question brings another one: whether Obama wants to challenge the club in the first place. "There's no doubt that I will be staking out more public positions on more issues as time goes on," Obama said cryptically. Does that mean he is going to be more confrontational? "The question is not whether you end up being confrontational," he said in a tone that made clear he had been pondering that idea long before I brought it up. "The question is, Do you let confrontations arise as a consequence of your putting forward a positive vision of what needs to happen and letting the confrontation organically emerge, or do you go out of your way for it?"
Now, I want to make very clear that I have no problem whatsoever with the position Obama stakes out in the bolded passage above. In fact, more than that, I heartily endorse it--despite, or even because of the fact that I'm at least two orders of magnitude to the left of Obama. Indeed, I see this exact same philosophy regarding confrontation in the politics of many figures whom I most admire. It was certainly there in Martin Luther King's philosophy, as spelled out quite explicitly in his Letter From Birmingham Jail, as I discussed in my December 2007 diary "Martin Luther King and The Moral Imperative For Polarization". And it was there in elected political figures like Ron Dellums and Paul Wellstone.
It's just common sense, really. If your politics is both morally-based and reality-based, then the firmest possible foundation for success is to focus on advancing what you stand for, rather than throwing yourself off-balance by picking fights based on strategy or tactics divorced from your core vision. Heck, forget progressive politics. This is just martial arts 101. (And my sister's the black belt in our family.)
But how has this promise worked out in practice? Not very well, it would seem.
On issue after issue where naturally allowing confrontation to unfold would have both advanced the cause of justice and put a solid majority of the American people on his side, Obama has ducked--and actually weakened his political position. He's done this most notably on the stimulus, reducing its size and effectiveness in a fruitless effort to gain more GOP support, on the issue of torture, where a clear majority of American people wants either criminal or general fact-finding investigations.
His bottom line rationale in both these cases seems to be that conflict on these issues would make progress on other "more important" issues more difficult. But this rationale effectively contradicts the heart of what the bolded passage above. Indeed, Obama's actions indicate that he's quite willing to avoid confrontation, despite the fact that doing so weakens his position overall. Of course, I'm sure he doesn't see it that way. But that's largely because his governing style shows a distinct bias to over-value the power of Versailles insiders--in direct contradiction of his campaigning style and strategy. Forget "having the courage of his convictions". Obama seems utterly oblivious to the primary source of his own political power. It's like Sampson insisting on a daily haircut--a buzz-cut at that.
In short, what I'm pointing to here is that Obama's failure to deliver is quite plausibly explicable in terms of his perception of his political situation, and the radical disjuncture between that and what we might reasonably take for granted given both his campaign rhetoric and his campaign practice of grassroots mobilization.
This is where Obama's relative lack of political experience comes into focus as genuinely problematic--not because he it means he's political incapable (the standard argument), but because it means we have had an inadequate track record on which to judge how he might perceive his own situation, and therefore how he might act within it.
This is further reinforced, and given added specificity by the following passage:
Shifting back to how he sees himself in the Senate, Obama seemed to amend his previous statement about what kind of leadership progressives can expect from him. "I am agnostic in terms of the models that solve these problems," he said. "If the only way to solve a problem is structural, institutional change, then I will be for structural, institutional change. If I think we can achieve those same goals within the existing institutions, then I am going to try to do that, because I think it's going to be easier to do and less disruptive and less costly and less painful.... I think everybody in this country should have basic healthcare. And what I'm trying to figure out is how to get from here to there." He went on to tell me about his support for other structural changes such as public financing of elections, forcing broadcasters to offer free airtime for candidates, adding strong labor protections to trade pacts and major efforts to create a more just tax system.
It's important to note that the bolded passage above referred to Obama describing his outlook within a two-fold framework: (1) that of being a senator, and (2) that of working for change in a fundamentally stable situation, where there is demonstrably less pain in the present situation than there would be in the process of structural change. Given that framework, there's a certain inherent pragmatic logic that one might philosophically disagree with, but would still have to respect as having legitimacy, especially if it comports with his basic temperament, and is held in good faith.
However, that two-fold framework no longer obtains for a number of the most important issues that Obama confronts. Equally importantly, some of his political timidity doesn't even involve matters of "structural, institutional change," about which he seems disturbingly unclear.
For example, on the promisory side, "forcing broadcasters to offer free airtime for candidates," is not a "structural, institutional change." It's a rather modest functional reform. It might face fierce special interest opposition, but that fact alone does nothing to alter the nature of the proposed reform itself. Full public financing of elections--with free public airtime as part of the package--now that's "structural, institutional change."
On the delivery side, Obama appears to regard EFCA--which he has barely even given lip-service to since taking office--as another example of "structural, institutional change." But that's utterly mistaken. Indeed, part of the beauty of EFCA is precisely that it's not that sort of change, but rather an example of procedural change with the potential for vast and sweeping changes over time, but ones that will necessarily unfold in a relatively organic, gradualist fashion. One might even argue that EFCA is an ideal example of a Cass Sunstein Nudge, in the best possible sense.
Again, it seems quite likely that Obama just doesn't see things this way, else his actions would be quite different. One doesn't have to believe there's some flaw in his character, causing him not to deliver. It's quite sufficient to posit that he simply perceives his political situation in very different terms, and is responding consistently, given that perception.
What all the above implies is two-fold: First, that progressives need to focus on the political situation, more than on Obama disposition. Second, in a somewhat contradictory manner, that progressives need to focus on Obama's perception of his political situation. The apparent contradiction is lessened, however--though not resolved--by observing that Obama's perception appears to be highly dependent on his social surround: bring pressure to alter the consensus around him, and his perception will change as well.
Easier said than done, of course. But it does at least afford some conceptual clarity of what we are up against, and some guide as to how we might strategize to make him act differently. If the goal is to "make him do it" ala FDR, then we need an accurate understanding of what that would entail. This analysis in a attempt to improve that understanding, and advance the discussion so that others might improve it further.
A Final Word On Confronting Hegemony
The above analysis also provides some insight into one of the benefits of a hegemonic analysis. The more that background assumptions are made problematic--which is one of the key components of hegemonic analysis--the greater the possibility for a shift in Obama's perception of his political situation. This is not the only purpose for a hegemonic analysis, nor is hegemonic analysis all that's needed to move Obama. It's merely an indication of how the two are related--and not necessarily the only way they are related, either.
With that in mind, the majority of my diaries this weekend will revolve around confronting hegemony on three fronts:
(1) Supreme Court nominations & conservative hegemony in law.
(2) The military, the media and the war.
(3) The meltdown and economics.
In the spirit of the above discussion, Obama and his policies are not the prime targets of these forthcoming diaries, but they are not unrelated, either, even when they are not directly implicated. |
