Chait’s Interview of Obama
These are my quick comments on Jonathan Chait’s “In Conversation With Barack Obama,” in the New York Magazine.
In this interview, Obama continues his exercise in apologetics. He pretends that the split within the Democratic Party, between its conservative centrist wing and the Bernie/AOC left wing, hinges on tactics. “Aspirationally,” he says, the Democrats are united. Not really! The seemingly tactical difference reveals an altogether different attitude toward progressive social change and, therefore, a fundamental conflict of economic and political interests.
The mastodon in the room, which Obama pretends not to see, is the Democratic Party’s dependence on corporate cash and sponsorship. The root of this dependence lies, of course, in the overriding rule that big capital exercises on the political and social life of the country.
By corporate, big capital I mean the digital and media giants, Wall Street, the private health care and pharmaceutical industries, the military industrial complex, etc. Resting on these rigid structures of economic power, and on the establishment’s political machinery, one finds the ideological grip that the neoliberal doctrine — which Obama says he already found inadequate back in 2008, even if such realization prompted him to take no consequent action — has in the minds of large segments of the professional class, from which politicians and functionaries are picked.
Obama alludes to the experimental, fits-and-starts traits of FDR’s New Deal to disqualify it. If FDR had to factor in his political calculus the pressures from what he called “business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, and war profiteering,” whose hatred he welcomed, Obama now feels completely justified for having surrendered himself to these “old enemies of peace.”
As an example, he mentions that, in 1937, FDR had to pacify the right by tightening spending, a policy slip that led to a nasty second dip of the economy, thus turning the debacle into a true Great Depression. But Obama’s two-term administration came 70 years later. If he knew of FDR’s futile attempt to placate the liquidationists, in the midst of an intensifying class conflict, at the expense of a steady recovery, then why in hell did he go even further in his appeasing the right? What’s history for if not to learn from it? Was Obama not in a position at least comparable to FDR’s to use the bully pulpit and warn the nation about the dire consequences of a tepid fiscal response to the crisis? If he doesn’t attune to facts like these, then he’s never going to admit that Trump 2016 was no accident.
And this leads me to Obama’s temperament as it relates to his political stance. He says that, aspirationally, he wanted a trillionaire fiscal stimulus package, a public option in his health care reform (though no single payer), etc. Why didn’t he push for them? His recurrent alibi is that the ideological and political climate in 2008 was such that demanding more vigor in the fiscal response was a nonstarter, because of Republican hostility. But the alibi is unacceptable. The left objection on fiscal stimulus, health care reform, etc. was not to the outcomes per se, but rather that Obama never staked a starting negotiating position proportionate to what he claims his aspirations were.
Obama yielded to the health care insurers, big pharma, and the right before fighting them seriously or at all, perhaps because fight for him (and his ilk) only means punching down and left. The left views compromises as acceptable outcomes of a hard-fought struggle, but compromising to preempt a fight is a form of surrender. Aspirations without courage to sustain them mean nothing.
The depth of the crisis screamed for a Lincoln or FDR type of transformational (even if reluctant) president. Obama fell short. In fact, daring to psychoanalyze him a little, one can conclude reasonably that the true reason for his barely contained anger at Bernie, AOC, and the whole progressive wing of the party is not that they are tactically wrong, but rather that their ideas had the potential to change the country for good. Obama had to know that, with a serious effort behind them, the sheer boldness of the demands for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, etc. would eclipse his legacy of tepid incrementalism.
Similarly revealing is Obama’s take on education. He defends his “Race to the Top” program, offering again excuses, defending the technocratic inclinations of his administration, which — in fairness — is supported by the centrist liberal crowd of NPR listeners and New York Times readers. His “solution” to America’s school crisis requires “a sense of accountability,” he lectures. But accountability to whom? To federal, state, or local bureaucracies? To government officials? As if these bureaucracies represented the public interest, rather than being intimately intertwined with profiteers who push magical technological fixes to educational challenges — challenges that can only be addressed viably by means of organized, democratically sanctioned, bottom-up mass initiatives.
So, the teachers’ unions did good in pushing back on Obama’s scheme. Neoliberal type of school programs turn into Kafkian nightmares for children, parents, and teachers — with plethora of paper-pushing, forcing teachers to sacrifice humanistic approaches at the altar of standardized tests and other vehicles of class reproduction. This, when all successful experiments in schooling (e.g. Scandinavia) show that what works is relieving the academic pressure on young kids to permit their smoother emotional development, allowing their curiosity to flow via play, physical activity, story telling, and organic intellectual exertions. In brief, “Race to the Top” was crap — it was a “No Child Left Behind” version 2 with some tweaks.
The idea that schools will be better for children, parents, and society if only the government imposes “higher standards” turns everything upside down. The chief role of the federal, state, and — to a large extent — local governments in public education is that of providing generous funding (so, no excuse for charter schools and other types of profiteering) proportional to need and not to political and economic clout. But for disbursing funds, it is the government that needs to be schooled by children, parents, and communities.
To justify denying better pay to teachers, smaller classes, and better schools overall, Obama repeats the shibboleth that “money alone” is not the solution. Duh. The fact is that “money alone,” but much more of that which year in and year out flows to military contractors, if allocated in strict proportion to need, would be in and by itself a tremendous progressive step in building schools of, by, and for children, parents, teachers, and society.
Obama pays lip service to social movements, Black Lives Matter, environmentalists, the political sensibilities of the youth, and claims that he is fine with their pushing for more urgent action. Yet, he worked diligently to derail Bernie’s campaign. We judge him not for what he writes but for what he does. In fact, what sealed the fate of his administration from the first time was his decision to deactivate the organizational structures that (circunventing the DNC) got him elected in the first place. That, and his choice of a Wall Street cabinet, revealed the real Obama. In practice, he belongs to the liberal technocratic school of “Just vote for me, and I will take it from there.”
In this light, though stylistic differences matter, Obama’s temperament communes in substance with even that of Trump: Stick it to the poor and weak. Only fear and submit to the rich and powerful. In doing this, Obama may be much more charming and charismatic than an orange ghoul whose name need not be mentioned repeatedly, but considering his potential, much more had to be expected of Obama.
The main beef of democratic socialists with Obama has to be that, judged by his practice, he is a technocratic neoliberal, which means that his view of political change is narrow and top down. The charge of elitism that the right throws at the left does apply to his breed. It is an arrogant attitude, fostered by the Ivy League experience, inspired by the social-Darwinist belief that people are naturally smart or dumb, which grants the former a natural right to rule to latter. Smart, perhaps, but abjectly submissive to the powers that be, which they then gladly contribute to reproduce and milk. Such attitude is, of course, antithetical to democratic socialism — which seeks the self education and self liberation of the direct producers through their organized struggle.
Obama is adept at taking credit for things that he verbally, “aspirationally,” claims to support while, practically, with actions, he does his best to torpedo. While his stance has now soften, did he not — adding insult to injury — come out waging his finger at black men, blaming them for parental neglect, broken families, and the effects of criminalizing poverty? If his insulting moral sermonizing — a la Bill Cosby — had been accompanied by practical measures aimed at improving the employment, working, and living conditions of African American working families, then one could give him a pass. But he cannot now get to say that change comes from a “larger conversation” about race. No, sir, change is coming from a mass movement. We would not see any changing without mostly young people marching on the streets, risking repression, relentlessly demanding an end to cop savagery against blacks, and that increasingly militarized police forces and the traditional prison system be defunded so that resources be switched to more humane communal functions and priorities.
Clearly, Obama views outright class conflict (in its ideological, political, and economic dimensions) as a nuisance. The real problem, in his political worldview, is “polarization,” though in the demo-cultural and moral sense. However, polarization is not preeminently a cultural and moral phenomenon. It is fundamentally an issue of economic inequality that finds transport and expression in political and ideological vehicles. In fact, class conflict is the only way to viable solutions to our social problems, because — as Frederick Douglas put it — “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” The struggle is the way. To Obama, the class struggle may be fine, but only if the top is winning, not when the bottom raises up.
Obama views the moral and cultural cleavage as a feature of the rural-urban dIvide, and the difficulty of communicating across so distinct cultural sensibilities, a problem that he thinks media segregation compounds. This serves as an excuse to surrender to the powers that be before even firing them a salvo. Leave alone the fact that the niche positioning of the media giants follows the logic of profit making, Bernie has already shown that it is entirely possible to communicate a coherent progressive economic, social, and environmental program in rural, urban, and suburban settings alike, as long as the focus is on the needs and interests of working people. Obama knows well that he is covering with a fig leaf the true source of polarization: economic inequality. The old dirty economic secret of American politics is to be kept secret.
Most offensive in his interview is his attempt to appropriate the political radicalization of the younger generation, claiming it as an endorsement of his brand of politics. He dares to construe the anti-Trump youth vote as a pro-Biden vote and, therefore, as a confirmation of his own stance! But, what was Biden’s economic message? To restore the beautiful ineffable and spotless soul of America? Give us a break! No, sir, the youth is already turning their back on neoliberalism, embracing a more ambitious agenda. You cannot take credit for the youth’s involvement in politics, other than by saying that your policies led to Trump, government cruelty, blatant corruption, and criminal neglect, and thereby to mass indignation and a high vote turnout.
“My general attitude is that I want the next generation to push harder,” says Obama, trying to hijack AOC’s response to those who blamed BLM (“Defund the police”) for the fiasco of centrist and conservative Democrats losing their seats in the House. Screw you, Obama! You don’t want your legacy government, the Joe-Kamala show, to be pressured pushed to the left. You bask in your glory as the darling of the economic establishment. You were and remain a sellout!
