Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion by St. Clair Jeffrey & Frank Joshua

Author:St. Clair, Jeffrey & Frank, Joshua [Frank, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781849351119
Publisher: Perseus Books Group
Published: 2012-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Obama the Deregulationist

By ANDREW LEVINE

“Ask Not What Capitalism Can Do For You; Ask What You Can Do For Capitalists.” That was the gist of Barack Obama’s “State of the Union” address. It is useful to state his point in a Kennedyesque way since it might otherwise be lost amidst all the soporific invocations of “moderation” and “centrism.” There was more going on in that speech than the absence of substance. Obama used the occasion to reveal more plainly than ever before what his underlying political philosophy is. It is not what is widely supposed. Obama is a libertarian, and therefore not, according to the most pertinent sense of the term in our political discourse today, a liberal.

Gone are the days when Obama’s vacuities functioned like Rorschach tests, empty vessels upon which the gullible could project their dreams. Gone too is the illusion that Obama is a wily progressive, faking right the better to steer the ship of state leftward. And does anyone still think that it was “f…ing retard” advisors that made milquetoast out of his health care and financial reforms or that kept his foreign policy, along with almost everything else, glued to the track George Bush set? By now only the willfully blind can deny that our current president is as dedicated a steward of ruling class interests as his predecessor was. The difference is that he is more capable—who wouldn’t be?—and that, as a Democrat, he is better placed for bringing capitalism’s victims along.

Unlike a Republican or a Blue Dog Democrat, Obama is not just a toady; and, unlike a true Clintonite, there’s more to his governance than crass opportunism. It is plain too that there is more going on with him than just a pathological need, never requited, to work with, rather than against, the most pernicious elements of our political class. Obama holds convictions that conventional liberals do not share, libertarian convictions. Let me explain.

Partisans of order, tradition, family and faith—in other words, men (with women in tow) of conservative dispositions have always been with us; we have always had a political right, opposed to the enlightened ideals of our revolutionary founders and of many, probably most, Americans since. But, outside barely assimilated Catholic circles, genuine philosophical conservatism has always been rare on our shores. This is mainly a consequence of America’s colonial past. Already in the throes of capitalist development, seventeenth and eighteenth century Protestant England was problematic territory for conservative political philosophy, and it was in that milieu that what Americans now call “conservatism” took shape.

This is why our self-described conservatives seldom appeal to the (purported) depravity of human nature, and seldom defend established institutions on the grounds that they are necessary for saving ourselves from its free expression. The most important strain of conservative political philosophy in the Western tradition takes sin (human imperfection) seriously. It has been largely a continental European phenomenon; and usually, it is theologically driven. But this strain of political philosophy was not unknown in the British Isles, and it can take on a secular guise.

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