Robert Johnson — not the blues singer — makes a compelling case that the failure of the Obama administration to stand up to the banks and Wall Streeters in the administration’s earliest months is costing him dearly now, as he tries to pass major healthcare legislation and could cost him greatly down the road.
He writes that the bailout of the financial sector, a bailout that lacked any strings, may have “made sense in isolation,” but lacked “an awareness of the historic context and opportunity” that called out for bolder action.
Free markets had profoundly failed. Government had been given another chance by the electorate that was inspired by candidate Obama. A chance to do some good
for the general interest and regain the reputation of a productive public sector after thirty years of disparagement. Yet by refusing to stand up to the oligarchs and set proper boundaries in defense of society, they fed the cynics and dissipated the magic that Obama had created for real change. The Administration seemed closer to Jamie (Dimon) and Goldman Sachs than to us. The lesson: if you fail to defend society once, people lose faith. The loss of faith carries a high price, and we’re paying that price now in the arena of healthcare reform.
The point is, Johnson says, that we are in times of “great danger”; the Obama administration needs to act decisively or risk losing the moment.
Today, the new US administration can disown responsibility for its inheritance; tomorrow, it will own it. Today, it can offer solutions; tomorrow it will have become the problem. Today, it is in control of events; tomorrow, events will take control of it. Doing too little is now far riskier than doing too much. If he fails to act decisively, the president risks being overwhelmed, like his predecessor. The costs to the US and the world of another failed presidency do not bear contemplating.
It is still early, of course, but we already are witnessing the seeds of a new narrative being born, with elections in Virginia and New Jersey that are turning on state issues being recast by the national media as referenda on the president. This is absurd, of course. The New Jersey vote will be about Gov. Jon Corzine and not about the president, who remains popular here.
But Obama’s decision to buy into the financial status quo — Summers, Geithner and Bernanke — and his raising of bipartisanship above policy on healthcare and the stimulus (not to mention his selling out of workers on card check and the auto bailout) are making it that much harder to generate the kind of change we thought we could believe in.
Hank Kalet 