The Bad Deal (Galbraith)

[Vitruvius]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/08-4 (reprinted by Common Dreams from Deutsche Welle (Germany))

THE BAD DEAL
The debt agreement should finally make clear to Europeans that Barack Obama is not the progressive President they had hoped for. Instead, writes James K. Galbraith, he is a willful player in the Washington politics game.

by James K. Galbraith

Political news travels slowly, and in my casual observation progressive Europeans have held on to the myth of Barack Obama as a good man much longer than most progressive Americans did. How could a young black American from Chicago and Harvard be otherwise? Over here reality has been evident for a while, thanks to the President's pattern of giving way to banks, lobbies, Republicans and right-wing extremists. Whether your prime interest is housing, health care, peace, justice, jobs or climate change, if you are an activist in America you have known for a long time that this President is not your friend.

Still, even on these shores disillusion often took a mildly forgiving form. The President was a “disappointment.” He was weak. He had “bad negotiating skills.” He had a tendency to “deal with hostage-takers,” to “surrender.” All of this fed the image of a man with a noble spirit, a good heart, the best intentions, but trapped by limited ability and the relentless and reckless determination of his foes.

The debt deal will make things clear. The President is not a progressive – he is not what Americans still call a “liberal.” He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result. What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted: a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all.

To see the arc of political strategy, recall that from the beginning Obama handed economic policy to retainers recruited from the stables of Robert Rubin. From the beginning, he touted “fiscal responsibility” and played up the (economically non-existent) “problem” of the budget deficit. From the beginning his team sabotaged economic recovery with optimistic forecasts and inadequate programs – in the clear interest of protecting the banking system from reform. As the presidency moved along, false claims of economic recovery supported a transition toward obsessive focus on debt and deficits, validated by a federal commission and constantly reinforced by a Washington propaganda chorus funded by Peter G. Peterson, for many decades a billionaire campaigner against Social Security and Medicare.

But it wasn't enough. Even with the Republican victory in the 2010 mid-terms there wasn't the political will-power simply to pass the cuts and make them stick. For it wasn't sufficient just to pass them: politicians need cover when they do ugly things. They need an excuse, something that will offer protection from the anger of the victims, or more precisely from other politicians who might exploit that anger. In the well-practiced manner of organized crime, blood needs to be on everyone's hands. That way, no one can defect; no one can turn states' evidence and safely get away with blaming the others.

The debt-ceiling pseudo-crisis created the necessary panic...

More at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/08-4

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I wish Galbraith were wrong, but I fear that he is right.

Vitruvius

[reprehensor]

1. Galbraith has it right.

Sad, but true;

"James K. Galbraith: Obama & the Gang of Six"
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/reprehensor/118

[swilton]

2. 1,000 Recs

[bvar22]

3. This, too, is what I see.

I am STILL haunted by the kid in the bow tie at the Press Conference who Laid it ALL Out LAST DECEMBER,
and the President's reaction to having the SCAM exposed.
The pertinent segment begins at 4:25.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-1-2011/dealageddon----a-compromise-without-revenues


And WHAT can be said for somebody STILL trying to push MORE "Free Trade"? :shrug:
There are no more excuses.


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[Demeter]

4. Excellent! I'm stealing this

If I ever got cable again, it would by for Jon and Rachel and Keith...if I could get a package that ONLY included them.

[pscot]

5. Kicked

I've been criticizing Obama since he tried to put Tom Daschle in charge of health care "reform", but for a long time I resisted the idea that he's a willing tool of the oligarchy. Given what's happened since he reneged on the Bush/Obama tax cuts it's hard to see him as anything but an enabler of the corporate agenda. He provides the cover they need to make it work. They would never have gotten away with this crap if McCain had been elected. We would have been united in opposition. We've been played.

[grasswire]

6. played in the most despicable, humiliating way, no less

Pure Rove. Attack your enemy where he is strong. They took a black man and shoved him into liberal's intense desire for civil rights justice; for success of liberalism at last. Only this black man was a chameleon. Not what he seemed.

[johan helge]

7. I'm a big Galbraith (both father and son) fan, and

the debt deal is obviosly terrible. But Galbraith writes:

"He is a willful player in an epic drama of faux-politics, an operative for the money power, whose job is to neutralize the left with fear and distraction and then to pivot rightward and deliver a conservative result. What Barack Obama got from the debt deal was exactly what his sponsors have wanted: a long-term lock-in of domestic spending cuts, and a path toward severe cuts in the core New Deal and Great Society insurance programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, no tax increases at all."

This gives the impression that the debt deal was not only what Obama's sponsors wanted, but also what Obama wanted (or that Obama does what his sponsors want despite his own misgivings).

Two things:

1 Nobody knows what Obama and his sponsors want and think. Galbraith should have made this uncertainty more clear.

2 My impression is that the truth is somewhat better than this. I don't think Obama wanted the debt deal results. But Obama seems very conventional, bipartisan, etc., so opposing the Repubs the way Galbraith wanted him to do, was out of the question for him.

In short: Obama didn't use unconventional methods even though the Repubs did that. So Obama lost the debt deal.