Dead man's poodle: The Obama-Reagan connections--a few obvious truths now openly admitted

by: Paul Rosenberg

Fri Jan 28, 2011 at 10:30

As Mark Matson says:

The Theory Into Practice section starts to sound more like the president we all know and ... well, know:

In Obama's mind, his election was not an endorsement of the outsize government role that Reagan battled - bureaucratic, ever expanding, self-interested - but a cry for government that could carry out its basic missions more effectively. "I think what you're seeing is a correction to the correction," Obama explained.

That one quote sums up Obama perfectly.  The "correction to the correction" fundamentally assumes that Reagan was correct, but just overshot.  The writers use of words sounds resonant with Obama as well, as it limits government to its "basic missions" but only asks to be more effective.

That's neoliberalism defined, right there.

To this, I would only add that this didn't have to be so.  The neo-liberals are not so much a "correction to the correction" in the way they think they are--guided by pragmatism--as they are guided by an anti-leftist ideology that shares far more in common with the right than they can ever admit. Indeed, one can distinguish between the two by looking at welfare reform, and contrasting Clinton's original intent with what he ended up signing onto.  The original intent was somewhat of a concession to rightwing attacks on welfare, but it was also (1) a recognition that with women's role in workforce drastically expanded the underlying assumption of welfare that mothers did not work was no longer valid and (2) an attempt to make the transition in a relatively non-punitive way that had a genuine interest in empowering women to successfully move out of poverty. This is not what Clinton ended up signing, although his vast expansion of the earned income tax credit and the writing of the implementation rules after the law was passed both served to mitigate some of the harsher effects, as did the relatively strong economy.

If all of Clinton's policies had been similarly conceived in terms of realistic considerations, if they had not been compromised with conservatives, and if they had been modified over time to correct shortcomings as they became obvious, then this sort of "correction to the correction" could have genuinely claimed to be pragmatic. But of course, it was not.  The failings of NAFTA, for example, never got corrected--and they were pretty much all foreseen in advance by its opponents and critics.  The same for financial deregulation. The reality of neo-liberalism--as opposed to its PR-assured that it would be so. In comments yesterday, I was asked to define neo-liberalism, and after quoting from I quoted from a Wikileaks for a basic definition:

Neoliberalism describes a market-driven[1] approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that stresses the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state.

The term "neoliberalism" has also come into wide use in cultural studies to describe an internationally prevailing ideological paradigm that leads to social, cultural, and political practices and policies that use the language of markets, efficiency, consumer choice, transactional thinking and individual autonomy to shift risk from governments and corporations onto individuals and to extend this kind of market logic into the realm of social and affective relationships

I went on to flesh it out by quoting from Corpwatch:
 

The main points of neo-liberalism include:
THE RULE OF THE MARKET. Liberating "free" enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds imposed by the government (the state) no matter how much social damage this causes. Greater openness to international trade and investment, as in NAFTA. Reduce wages by de-unionizing workers and eliminating workers' rights that had been won over many years of struggle. No more price controls. All in all, total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. To convince us this is good for us, they say "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone." It's like Reagan's "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics -- but somehow the wealth didn't trickle down very much.

CUTTING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE FOR SOCIAL SERVICES like education and health care. REDUCING THE SAFETY-NET FOR THE POOR, and even maintenance of roads, bridges, water supply -- again in the name of reducing government's role. Of course, they don't oppose government subsidies and tax benefits for business.

DEREGULATION. Reduce government regulation of everything that could diminsh profits, including protecting the environmentand safety on the job.

PRIVATIZATION. Sell state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. This includes banks, key industries, railroads, toll highways, electricity, schools, hospitals and even fresh water. Although usually done in the name of greater efficiency, which is often needed, privatization has mainly had the effect of concentrating wealth even more in a few hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.

ELIMINATING THE CONCEPT OF "THE PUBLIC GOOD" or "COMMUNITY" and replacing it with "individual responsibility." Pressuring the poorest people in a society to find solutions to their lack of health care, education and social security all by themselves -- then blaming them, if they fail, as "lazy."

As can be clearly seen, there is nothing inherently pragmatic about any of this, particularly if one realizes that it does much more to favor non-competitive oligopolies than it does to support the actual free market in which most small businesses compete.

While this ideology is clearly justified in terms defined within the framework of traditional liberalism, it does so in a comparatively abstract manner that ignores empirically-discovered shortfalls of early-19th Century liberalism in Britain, which were first recognized by the "New Liberals" in Britain in the 1870s, and formed the foundations of New Deal liberalism in the US six decades later.

Further Obvious Points

There are a couple of other passages in the Time article that give rather obvious points away.  For example:

In late 2006, his top strategist, David Axelrod, laid out an Obama-as-Reagan theory of the race. "I remember talking about the fact that this had the potential to be one of those big-change elections like 1980," Axelrod says now. "The Republican project seemed to have run out of gas." Axelrod believed the political pendulum, which had swung left with the New Deal and had been reversed by Reagan, was once again reaching the end of its arc.

Gosh, ya think?  These guys is geniuses, I tells ya!

Among Obama loyalists, the Reagan theory was received wisdom, and for political reasons it was closely held. In January 2008, Obama broke cover. "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama told a newspaper editorial board in Nevada. "He tapped into what people were already feeling, which is, We want clarity, we want optimism." Obama's comments inflamed the Democratic left (not to mention the Clinton operation), but his aides thought little of it at the time. "I basically told headquarters, 'Sorry I didn't call this in,'" remembers Gibbs, who was traveling with Obama at the time. "I had just heard him say this so many times."

So, it was totally taken for granted by Obama and his team, yet came as a shock to the rest of America--and was fairly successfully "walked back" by his team--especially among the faithful.  Now, however, it's deemed safe to finally admit.  Of course this is all bullpucky, but it's Obama's bullpucky.

Then there's this little bit of obviousness, that one would have thought Obama would have grasped about Reagan long before he even first ran for office:

Duberstein, Reagan's chief of staff, believes that Obama and Reagan share some traits: both loners more than backslappers, both heavily reliant on their spouses, both more trusting of their instincts than their advisers. But the 44th President has some ways to go before matching the 40th in the communications department. "Obama for the first two years has tried to forge a consensus in Washington," Duberstein says. "He needs to take a page from Reagan and forge a consensus in America. Let his aides worry about the back and forth in D.C. He needs to be communicating with the American people."

A two-word commentary:  Well, duh!