Barack Obama – Page 25

Is Obama tacking right?

I sent my column off to The Progressive Populist last night. Its focus: Obama’s economic team and what it means for his governing philosophy. Does his appointment of center-right economic advisors like Lawrence Summers mean he will govern from the center-right on economic issues? I don’t think so, but there is a need for progressives to keep the pressure on.

That said, I just read this post on Open Left, which makes some of the same points. The poster, Paul Rosenberg, correctly points out that, without progressives at the policy table, “the idea of creating equity among the beneficiaries of large-scale investments will not even be raised in a rigorous fashion.”

This is one very concrete reason why it matters whether or not you have progressives in the top ranks of Obama advisors. There are very real, very pragmatic consequences to excluding people on the basis of “ideology.” Without such advocates for the economic interests of the broad mass of people, the vast majority of the benefits flowing from Obama’s substantial infrastructure initiatives may be expected to flow to the already wealthy, much the same way that Bush’s tax cuts primarily benefited that same group.

The point, as he says, is not to table infrastructure projects, but to design them in such a way as to share the benefits and the costs.

Of course, the infrastructure will be beneficial in and of itself. But if tens of millions of people will not only pay for it with their taxes, and then pay for it again with higher rents, or costlier mortgages, while a relative handful of wealthy real estate investors, land speculators and the like pocket literally billions of dollars, then it should not be hard to see how this doesn’t exactly qualify as government for the people, of the people and by the people.

Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive (and editor of my work with the Progressive Media Project), adds another name to the economic mix that progressives should be wary about: Peter Orszag, who was named as his new director of the Office of Management and Budget. The reason for concern is that Orszag has bought into the notion that Social Security is in trouble. And while he does not agree with conservative calls for privatization, he has called for “a reduction in benefits, which would apply to all workers age 59 and younger.”

Orszag and Diamond say that there is no free lunch in making sure Social Security remains solvent. So they propose cutting benefits and raising Social Security taxes.

But cutting benefits is unnecessary. The system is not in great peril and may only need minor adjustments to continue providing for American retirees well into the future. Among the tweaks, we could lift the cap on paying into the system, making the tax fairer (the cap makes the Social Security tax regressive, with lower-income wager-earners paying a greater percentage of their salary into Social Security than higher-income wage-earners) and generating more revenue.

In the end, we need to keep Obama honest, so to speak, and remind him that he won because he generated a lot of effort and interest from the young and the liberal wing of the party.

Is Obama taking us back to the future

And so it appears that the dream ticket envisioned back in the spring is going to happen in a different form. Only I’m not sure if this is a dream or a nightmare.

Hillary Clinton, according to The New York Times, is ready to accept an offer from Barack Obama to be his secretary of state.

Her selection is still to be formalized and will not be announced until after Thanksgiving. It would be yet another direction in the unlikely journey of a onetime political spouse in Arkansas who went on to build a political base of her own and become a symbol of achievement to many women.

The role, though a supporting one, would make her one of the most influential players on the international stage, and it would represent at least one more act for one of the nation’s most prominent public families, as former President Bill Clinton would also become an ad hoc member of the Obama team.

From my perspective, as a progressive, a dove, as someone suspicious of the foreign policy establishment, the appointment of Hillary Clinton poses serious dangers to an Obama administration — or at least to progressives’ assumptions about what an Obama administration would be.

Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and has been dangerously hawkish on Iran. But a close read of Obama’s statements on foreign policy raise questions about how far from Clinton he really is — he did, after all, say he would go into Pakistan to chase al Qaeda and is planning a troop surge in Afghanistan.

At the same time, it will be Obama who is setting the policies and Clinton enacting them. While she publicly jabbed at Obama over his willingness to sit down with so-called rogue nations, she will have to do so if that is the policy that the president intends.

So, while a Clinton appointment is certainly a disappoinment, it doesn’t have to become a disaster — especially if Obama controls the appointments of undersecretaries and other lower-level appointments.

I think John Nichols at The Nation makes the most obvious point:

Clinton has many strengths — she really does know the world, she really is respected by key players in international hotspots, she really does care about poverty issues that have been too long neglected. Obama recognizes these strengths, and he has made the team-of-rivals calculation that they will benefit his presidency. He may be right. But neither he, nor his nominee for Secretary of State, should ever forget that Obama prevailed over Clinton and McCain because he was seen as someone who would be more rational, more responsible and, yes, more conciliatory in his relations with the rest of the world.

Transitions blues, Part 2

I wrote earlier today that the Obama transition has been disappointing for progressives and I still believe this. But I also should have said that we remain two months from Day 1 of the Obama administration and that, regardless of who he places around him, it is still his team and the players will be expected to play on his terms.

Plus, President-elect Obama has offered some crumbs — the appointment of Tom Daschle, the former Senate Minority Leader, as Health and Human Services secretary with a mandate to shepherd health care reform through Congress.

Dean of conventional wisdom questions Clinton choice

Even David Broder has serious concerns about Hillary Clinton as secretary of state:

Clinton is the wrong person for that job in this administration. It’s not the best use of her talents, and it’s certainly not the best fit for this new president.

What Obama needs in the person running the State Department is a diplomat who will carry out his foreign policy. He does not need someone who will tell him how to approach the world or be his mentor in international relations. One of the principal reasons he was elected was that, relying on his instincts, he came to the correct conclusion that war with Iraq was not in America’s interest. He was more right about that than most of us in Washington, including Hillary Clinton.

Of course, he will benefit from the counsel and the contacts that his secretary of state can offer. But remember, he provided another and probably more expert source of that wisdom when he picked Joe Biden, the veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as his running mate. The last thing Obama needs is a secretary of state carving out an independently based foreign policy. He needs an agent, not an author.

Then there is the senator’s famous ex-president husband, Bill Clinton:

The former president has, through the Clinton Global Initiative and his own extensive foreign travels and worldwide contacts, made himself a force in international affairs. It would be unfair, and unlikely, for him to shut down his own private foreign policy actions because they might conflict with his wife’s responsibilities. But foreign leaders would inevitably see Bill Clinton as an alternative route toward influencing American policy. And he would be unlikely to remain silent.

Obama’s disappointing transition

At the moment, I am willing to give President-elect Barack Obama some leeway on his cabinet selections, even going so far as to not criticize the potential that Hillary Clinton could end up as secretary of state.

But the sum total of the names we’ve been seeing have not exactly been reassuring, from a progressive standpoint.

Matt Rothschild, my editor at the Progressive Media Project, offers a somewhat harsher — but deserved — assessment of the Obama transition:

When is Obama going to appoint someone who reflects the progressive base that brought him to the White House?

He won the crucial Iowa caucuses on the strength of his anti-Iraq War stance, and many progressive peace and justice activists worked hard for him against John McCain.

So why in the world is he choosing Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State when she was one of the loudest hawks on Iraq and threatened to obliterate 75 million Iranians?

And it’s not just Hillary.

He has alternatives, he says, including Joseph Stiglitz for Treasury and Russ Feingold for attorney general, but he’s stayed away from the more progressive choices, raising some questions about how much change he really is offering.

There are some excuses — if he wants executive branch experience, he needs to bring in some Clintonites — but the question remains why the plum assignments have to go to the Clinton folks. Admittedly, AG pick Eric Holder was an early supporter, but so wer many others who haven’t defended Chiquita in “a case in which Colombian plaintiffs seek damages for the murders carried out by the AUC paramilitaries – a designated terrorist organization.”

Rothschild’s boldest suggestion — which he says would “honor progressives who backed him early on and then did the grunt work against McCain” — would be to “nominate Dennis Kucinich as Secretary of State.”

That sure would indicate a welcome departure from empire as usual.

But at this point, progressives are getting absolutely nothing from Obama.