Opportunities Keep Coming/Democrats Keep Quashing Them

The Cheney/Bush “vision” (neo-conservatism, untrammeled free marketeering, disrespect for the rule of law, wanton environmental destruction, and so on) and the rank incompetence with which Cheney/Bush policies were implemented created a rare historical opportunity for progressive policy departures and perhaps even for social, political and economic structural transformations. However it has been clear for nearly a year, since even before so-called Super Tuesday, that the Democratic leadership and their media allies were intent on quashing that opportunity – that their standard-bearer would stand far to the right of their base. Thus throughout the spring we had an epoch struggle between two figures with almost identical center-right political views: one the vehicle for an outright Clinton Restoration, the other a Rorschach candidate representing indeterminate “change.”

The Rorschach man won. That was a relief – on the better the devil you don’t know principle. But once his victory was secure, he capitulated. The first sign was the selection of Joe Biden for Vice President. Then, throughout November and December, the indications kept on coming. Clintonism would be restored; even Hillary Clinton would be back – as Secretary of State no less . For anyone not willfully blind, it had always been clear that Obama’s “change” would be, at best, largely cosmetic. It has turned out not even to be that.

But Cheney/Bush and the rest of them are gifts that keep on giving. Once it became clear that the economy was in ruins – that a new Great Depression was a distinct possibility – nearly the entire political class fell in behind a reversal of the anti-affirmative state policies of the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush years. As leaders, Obama and his Clintonite-Wall Street crew could hardly not follow. But will they take full advantage of this new opportunity? There’s little sign of it.

In much the way that Obama empowered the Clintonites he defeated, he and they are now dead set on empowering the Republicans they defeated. They call it “bipartisanship” and the only good thing that could come out of it is that that awful word – and what it represents – will, in time, attract the opprobrium that is now turned against the likes of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. Thus Obama proposes what seems to be far too flimsy a recovery package, one loaded down with all but useless tax cuts – because he wants to lure Republicans into voting with him, and all Republicans want is tax cuts for their corporate benefactors. Making nice with Republicans makes even less sense than making nice with Clintonites, since Republicans are nasty to the core and will turn on you whenever they get the chance. It’s also dead wrong from a policy point of view – unless, of course, the point just is to quash another historic opportunity.

Cheney and Bush et. al. have presented the Democrats with three opportunities, two of which the Democrats have already quashed – one a year ago when they narrowed the race down to Obama v. Clinton, another in the fall when the defeated Clinton camp was handed every consolation prize at Obama’s disposal. The third is about to be quashed by Obama’s vaunted bipartisanship. There won’t be others – soon, to everyone’s relief, Cheney and Bush will be gone!

Meanwhile, outside our borders, there are others hard at work presenting Democrats with yet more historical opportunities. The current, on-going Israeli atrocities in Gaza are a case in point. They offer another chance, perhaps the best ever, for the United States finally to insist that Israel accede to the peace terms upon which there is near universal agreement. The war on Gaza, like Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon, is largely the doing of the Israeli political class. But Cheney and Bush have played an important role too. Indeed, their culpability is on-going. [How sickening it is to watch Condoleezza Rice operate in the United Nations. If only Stanford had let her kill! She might have gotten some of that bloodthirstiness out of her system before she could do so much harm.] Needless to say, the Democratic Party, essentially a political arm of AIPAC, will quash this opportunity as well.

Still, it will be wonderful to see Obama on Inauguration Day, and not just because it spells the end of the dreadful reign of Cheney and Bush. January 20 promises another Grant Park moment. But soon, very soon, Obama will have to shed his Rorschach carapace and the Obamamaniacs , the more lucid ones at least, will have to shed their illusions. By then, though, it may be too late for them to come to their senses enough to make a difference. By the time it becomes impossible to deny that “change we can believe in” has very little to do with democracy (popular empowerment, doing the people’s will) and a great deal to do with forging a center-right/right alliance dedicated to keeping everything pretty much as it is, the Clinton 2.0 agenda will be well underway – with or without “bipartisan” support.

Appointments/Disappointments

I never thought I’d be pleased that Obama appointed yet another Clintonite to high office, but I am pleased that he decided to make Leon Panetta CIA Director. Obama had the wits not to appoint someone tainted by torture, illegal wiretaps, dark ops and who knows what other criminal mischief the Cheney/Bush CIA has been up to. Who cares if Panetta has no “intelligence” experience! So long as he’s able to ride herd over the miscreants in his charge, that’s a plus in my book. And, to top it off, it pisses of off one of the most noxious Democrats in Washington, Dianne Feinstein, Chair (stool) of the Senate Committee on Intelligence. Not having been consulted, she’s already mouthing off. Panetta’s appointment also keeps Feinstein’s noxious House counterpart, Jane Harman, from getting the post. So – one and a half cheers for Obama. That’s the most he deserves for anything he’s done so far.

But what gives will Bill Richardson? Time will tell if there’s more there than they’re letting on. But whatever there is (or isn’t), Richardson’s withdrawal from the Commerce Secretary appointment is disappointing. Of all the candidates running in the Democratic primary, he was the best – excluding, of course, Dennis Kucinich, whose politics was too good for a party led by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed, Mike Gravel, my personal favorite because he wasn’t afraid to tell the others how full of shit they are, and John Edwards. [The ones even worse than Obama were the one’s he’s empowered – Joe Biden and, worst of all, Hillary Clinton. Chris Dodd was better than Obama too, but Richardson was better than Dodd on Bush’s wars and on getting out of Iraq.]

Edwards’ disappearance into the memory hole remains a mystery. Even before his “zipper” problem was exposed, he was as marginalized by the media as could be, given his electoral strength. Evidently, his “populism” was just too much for our meida moguls. [Admittedly, on foreign policy, he was probably no better than the others.] It’s too bad that he’s gone missing; he’d be a better cabinet appointment than any of the Clintonites Obama has reempowered. It’s also hard to understand, inasmuch as the Clintonite-in-Chief has a zipper problem that Edwards has only in his dreams. But such is life in the Party of Pusillanimity.

Hillary Redux

It’s time to remind ourselves again that, in contrast to most other “democracies,” our institutions force politicians to betray their constituencies even before they take power. Barack Obama is well on his way: his appointment of Rahm Emanuel as Major Domo and Official Pit Bull (sans lipstick) positively stinks; a bellicose partisan of Wall Street and the Israeli Right will be Obama’s gatekeeper. But bringing Hillary into the new administration is over the top. As I wrote many times in the long ago days of late winter and early spring, if Obama, already running to the center-right of the Democratic base, was good for anything, it was for knocking Hillary out – and sending the Clintons into political oblivion (inasmuch as prison for Bill, though richly deserved, is unlikely). He did knock Hillary out of the race – eventually – but that should only have been the first (and least important) step. Now it’s looking like Obama is intent on bringing the Clintons back in – even to the extent of making Bill’s official wife his Secretary of State.

Needless to say, media speculations can be wrong. They were wrong, it seems, about Sam Nunn and Warren Christopher. Perhaps they are wrong on this too, though they’ve created so much buzz that Hillary’s appointment may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is worrisome too that at least one part of the story they’re telling seems credible: that Obama is impressed by the argument pop historian and talk show stalwart Doris Kearns Goodwin makes in her best-seller Team of Rivals – and therefore that he’d like to do what Lincoln did when he appointed his antagonist, William Seward, Secretary of State. It’s that first time as tragedy (or, in this case, serious mistake), second time as farce thing all over again.

On the plus side, though, at least we know the Secretary of State won’t be Joe Biden -- though, in terms of what counts as “qualifications” in Washington today, Biden is infinitely more qualified than Hillary, whose foreign affairs expertise consists mainly in having visited eighty plus countries, mostly as an official wife (aka First Lady), and, in that capacity, having entertained many an international malefactor (aka World Leader) at the White House.