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Because if Obama believes it's okay to pass healthcare
"reform" that subsidizes insurance firms without a robust
public option and he dispatches still more troops to Afghanistan, it
could demobilize progressive activists while emboldening the Teabag &
Beck crowd to bring the GOP back from the dead in low-turnout
congressional elections next year. That would be a rerun of the 1994
rightwing triumph brought on by President Clinton's weakness (e.g.
healthcare reform) and corporatism (e.g. the business-friendly
NAFTA).
Some activists still see Obama as a brilliant political
superhero who - although maddeningly slow to fight back against his
opponents - always manages to win in the end . . . like Muhammad Ali
defeating George Foreman.
But watching Obama last weekend on the news shows gave little
reason for confidence. It's hard to win the public toward reform if
you accept - as Obama often does - the rightwing terms of debate. The
right frames healthcare as a debate over a dangerously over-intrusive
government taking away individual freedom. The left says it's about
greedy insurance and drug companies - with CEOs getting paid $10 million or $20 million per
year - putting profits above public good.
Last weekend, when he was repeatedly asked to comment on Jimmy
Carter's view about anti-Obama animosity being racially motivated,
Obama kept wielding the rightwing frame about big "intrusive"
government. On ABC, Obama talked about people being "more
passionate about the idea of whether government can do anything right.
I think that that's probably the biggest driver of some of the
vitriol."
On NBC, Obama said: "This debate that's taking place is
not about race, it's about people being worried about how our
government should operate." He asked: "What's the right role
of government? How do we balance freedom with our need to look out for
one another?"
The president has a huge bully pulpit, which he's largely
squandered. I've heard him discuss healthcare close to ten times in
recent weeks without once hearing him rally the public against the
corporate greed that leaves our country No. 1 in healthcare spending
and 37th in health outcomes, on par with Serbia. Without a populist
challenge to corporate profiteering, what's left is either a bloodless
debate about "cost containment" or a rightwing debate about
"big government." Neither mobilizes the public toward
progressive change.
Recent U.S. history shows that you can't serve corporate interests at the same time you're seeking reform - of healthcare or Wall Street or any other sector. Not when big corporations are the problem . . . and the major obstacles to change.
Recent U.S. history shows that you can't serve corporate interests at the same time you're seeking reform - of healthcare or Wall Street or any other sector. Not when big corporations are the problem . . . and the major obstacles to change.
Placating big business en route to social reform is like
downing a flask of whiskey en route to kicking alcoholism.
Yet there was the Obama White House this summer entering
into secret deals with the pharmaceutical lobby
protecting that industry's outsized profits.
If Obama is radical about anything, it's about NOT rocking
corporate boats.
That's why he received more Wall Street funding than any
candidate in history and why - before he was a front-runner in early
2007 - he was raising more money from the biggest Wall Street banks
than even Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, presidential candidates
from New York.
That's why - as soon as Hillary left the race - he went on
CNBC and assured big business: "Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy.
I love the market."
That's why he declared to the New York Times last March that his economic
policies were absolutely not socialist, but rather "entirely
consistent with free market principles."
That's why during his 2008 "I love the market"
interview on CNBC, he shunned the "populist" label.
President Franklin Roosevelt showed in the 1930s that major
reform is possible if a populist upsurge of ordinary people is
mobilized to overcome the entrenched opposition of business interests
- derided by FDR as the "economic royalists."
The problem today is that Obama doesn't seem to have a
populist bone in his body. A smart guy, he should know that it's
absurd - in an era when a shrinking number of ever-larger corporations
dominate Congress and regulators as they deform markets in industries
like banking and healthcare - to keep believing we have a "free
market." Yet he waxes on about being a "free-market
guy."
I guess he's smart enough NOT to call himself "a
corporate guy."
Liberal activists need to be smart enough to see Obama for the
status quo politician he is - and to act accordingly.
Jeff
Cohen is an associate professor of journalism
and the director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca
College, founder of the media watch group FAIR, and former board member of Progressive Democrats of
America. In 2002, he was a producer and pundit
at MSNBC (overseen by NBC News). His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate
Media.
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