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Great Trauma As a Great Teacher: Peering Into the New Year
By Bernard Weiner (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
Based on President-Elect Obama's recent statements, it's likely that he and his economic advisors foresee a desperate future unless they act boldly and swiftly. And so they are, as I write this and as you read this, working like crazy to step in on Day One with their massive infrastructure-works programs and other momentum-changing plans. If President Obama does indeed act quickly and confidently on his economic recovery plans, he will bring some calm and hope to a nation, a world, terrified of the ramifications of an American and a global Depression.
But even under the best of circumstances, he clearly is not going to get a free ride forward. He may not even be permitted to enjoy a brief "honeymoon."
The Republicans, devoid of a program that is acceptable to the majority of Americans, have returned to the only thing they know how to do, a position recently propounded by Karl Rove and his minions in Congress and the mass-media: try to tarnish Obama's reputation and obstruct any positive developments and momentum initiated by the Democrats. (So far, that strategy seems not to be working, as Obama overwhelmingly is given high marks for his behavior in the transition period.)
OBSTRUCTION AS POLICY
GOP leadership in the House and Senate apparently refuse to learn the lesson of the November election, when the voters -- except in the Plains states and in a segment of the Old Confederacy in the Deep South -- clearly rejected their presidential standard-bearer and their party in favor of Obama and mostly middle-left Democrats in Congress. With crazy logic, and with a straight face, they claim that Obama, who took the Electoral College vote by more than two-to-one and bested McCain by more than 9,000,000 popular votes, has "no mandate" but must rule from the center-right if he wants to get anything done. (Scarily, there are a good many Democrats who buy into that distorted view.)
The Republicans can't do much effective damage in the House, where they are overwhelmed by the Democratic majority. So they will carry out their obstructionism in the Senate, since the Democrats can't easily get the 60 votes required to end GOP filibusters. The first public act of obstructionism was, since they couldn't bust the autoworkers unions, to deny a bailout loan to the Big Three carmakers.
Outright obstructionism is a daring strategy by the Republicans, since the overwhelming sentiment of Americans right now is for positive, major change. If the GOP continually blocks the changes desired by the citizenry, the odds increase that the voters may turn the Republicans into a permanent minority party in 2010.
THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN
The Obama strategy to combat the Republican dead-enders is to use what worked in the campaign: build (or more correctly re-build) its popular mass movement of active supporters to lobby representatives and senators to approve policies being pushed by the Obama Administration. In other words, turn the volunteers who worked and gave money to the campaign into permanent foot soldiers in the neighborhoods, congressional districts, and states.
There is no guarantee that the same energy and passion that infused the Obama campaign at the grassroots will be there for the much harder, permanent work of lobbying and nitty-gritty political action. We'll see how effectively the Obama campaign succeeds in this regard, probably starting out on the issue of reforming the disfunctional health-care system.
Also yet to be seen is how much energy, time and money the progressive Democratic base will kick in. Many are extremely suspicious of Obama, given that he's given progressives virtually nothing but the back of his hand in selecting his all-important foreign-policy and national-security teams.
And it's not clear how transparent this new grassroots Obama campaign will be, and whether it will allow for democratic input from the bottom up to the top leadership, especially when local chapters disagree with an Obama policy proposal. ( www.techpresident.com/blog/entry/33404/ofa_2_0_still_a_work_in_hidden_progress )
My guess is that the progressive base in the next few months will, as it should, be organizing itself as a lobby within the lobby being established by the Obama camp. Unless they make their voices heard in attempting to keep Obama from being sucked even further into the Beltway middle-right black hole, they realize they will have precious little influence on the major decisions that are about to be made with regard to America's, and thus the world's, future.
Happy New Year! #
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .
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