Personal digression: I relate to this. When I was elected Texas ag commissioner in 1982, I knew I wanted to help small farmers, workers, consumers and the environment. But I needed people who actually knew what to do to make a real-life difference for this broad constituency. So we brought together a diverse staff, ranging from corporate food marketers to community organizers, and I gave them the same mandate that Franklin Roosevelt gave his team in 1933: Do something. If it works, do it some more. If it doesn't work, do something else.
Here are a few of the Obama people:
· Jason Furman. Because of his pro-corporate connections and comments, Furman is the guy who most alarms labor, fair trade activists and other progressives (like me). Recently designated Obama's top economic aide, this 37-year-old Harvard-educated academic has found nice things to say about the Wal-Mart business model, has supported the corporate trade agenda, and most recently has headed a policy research outfit founded by Rubin. Yet, it turns out that Furman is not quite the corporate snake that some would make him. His background also includes an important stint with the highly progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where he churned out hard-hitting, influential policy papers on the rising danger of income inequality, the need to raise the minimum wage, the disaster of Bush's tax cuts, and the necessity of stopping the privatization of Social Security. He's no populist, but neither is he a sneaky Rubinaut, and his selection has been warmly endorsed by liberal economist Joseph Stiglitz (with whom Furman has worked), labor economist Jared Bernstein, and populist economist James Galbraith -- all three of whom are also on the Obama team.
· Austan Goolsbee. An economics professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, this 38-year-old has been a top Obama adviser since the 2004 U.S. senate campaign. A centrist, Goolsbee has been senior economist to the Democratic Leadership Council, the party's corporate wing, which gave us Bill Clinton. He popped into public view this spring when a Canadian memo suggested that he had a backdoor (and unauthorized) meeting with officials there to assure them that Obama's tough campaign talk about the disaster of NAFTA had more to do with politics than policy. Obama disavowed Goolsbee's approach, and the adviser's star has since faded, but the matter of who's influencing the senator's trade policy has caused activists to be "very concerned," as one put it.
Another Obama trade aide, Daniel Tarullo of Georgetown University, was part of the Clinton team that produced NAFTA and the WTO, so this is an area where grassroots forces will have to buck up Obama. But we should also note that one of the best labor leaders on trade policy, Bruce Raynor of UNITE HERE, says the senator "has been with us from day one." Moreover, Obama himself says that while he supports the idea of trade agreements, he is determined to find new ways to make them work for labor, farmers and others who are now paying a "devastating" cost for corporate deals.
· Dan Carol. A recent addition and a big plus, this 50-year-old Oregonian is a longtime progressive strategist, a pioneer in Internet organizing, a proponent of grassroots-based policy development, a believer in the politics of big ideas, and an unabashed advocate of making political action fun. (Disclosure: Carol is a friend of mine and was a key organizer of our Rolling Thunder Downhome Democracy Tour a few years ago). He has been a strategist for MoveOn, True Majority and the Oregon Bus Project, among other innovative grassroots efforts, and he has now been brought onto the O-team as "director of content and issues."
That's a fuzzy title, but I do know that he'll be a major force in pushing one of Obama's signature ideas: a "Green Deal" that would enlist the American people themselves to build a green infrastructure all across America, creating millions of new conservation and renewable energy jobs, reviving our grassroots economy and achieving energy independence. This would be a multibillion-dollar national effort derived from the successful community-based projects already under way through the Apollo Alliance (see Lowdown, January 2002). Such solid, progressive thinkers and activists as Van Jones of California and Joel Rogers of Wisconsin are also enlisted in this exciting aspect of Obama's campaign.
· Lawrence Lessig. A Stanford law professor, Lessig specializes in Internet law. Until now, an "Internet adviser" hasn't been at the center of any presidential campaign, much less played a central role on a White House staff, but the Web is a political and governmental tool that Obama has elevated to heights unimagined even four years ago. We know about the dramatic fundraising and organizing advances his campaign has made through the Web, but his tech initiative doesn't stop there. He intends to use the power of cyberspace to advance some of his biggest goals, ranging from lowering heath care costs to increasing citizens' direct input into governance. To help guide this transformation, the campaign has enlisted Lessig, a visionary advocate for free public access to the Internet and a renowned defender of the people's online rights against the grasp of corporate control. He serves on the boards of such forward-looking groups as Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, and his presence in the campaign signals Obama's seriousness about advancing the democratic potential of this technology.
· Lee Hamilton. A moderate internationalist (as opposed to a corporate globalist), this former Democratic House member from Indiana has no formal role in the campaign, but his realist foreign policy outlook and his nonideological, often-contrarian approach to foreign policy issues predominate in Obama's camp. The senator frequently seeks Hamilton's counsel, and four former Hamilton aides have taken top foreign policy spots in the campaign.
Obama Slip-Sliding Away?
When Obama shocked Washington's conventional wisdom this spring by saying that he would be willing as president to talk with such declared U.S. enemies as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this "radical" idea was right in line with Hamilton's own pragmatic view. Other key advisers on foreign issues include Susan Rice, Richard Danzig and Tony Lake, all alumnae of the Clinton presidency. They, too, are pragmatists -- for example, they considered Bush's rationalization for invading and occupying Iraq to be nonsense, leading them to oppose it from the start. This pitted them directly against senior Clintonites who were cowed by Bush's warmongering, fearing that Democratic opposition to the war was bad politics. Also on Obama's team are two foreign policy mavericks: Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan who has since become a vocal proponent of slashing the waste and fraud in the Pentagon budget, and Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism insider who blew the whistle on the Bushites' disastrous war fantasies and failures.
There are, of course, many more players who would mold Obama's White House agenda -- including the very smart, very passionate and very progressive Michelle Obama. There would also be the usual forces of caution, inertia and recalcitrance dragging him down, ranging from don't-rock-the-boat Democratic elders to Washington's army of corporate lobbyists. Generally speaking, though, he has brought together a crew that is youthful (both in age and perspective), highly knowledgeable, freethinking and imbued with progressive ideals.
The substance of an Obama presidency -- and its degree of progressivity -- will not be determined by these advisers. They are mostly implementers, who will be guided by his own idealism and willingness to be bold. And that will ultimately be determined by the insistent demands and steady involvement of the energized grassroots constituency that has propelled him this far.
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