Howard Zinn# (see notes), distinguished historian, political scientist, social critic, activist and playwright, is best known as author of the bestseller "A People's History of the United States" with over a million sales. It's still #351 in sales at Amazon.com. He has written something like 20 books and teaches and writes as Professor Emeritus in the Political Science Department at Boston University. Zinn has an article up over at The Progessive website (the Progressive, by the way, is celebrating its 100th year) where Zinn is a frequent contributor. The same article can be found at alternet.org at http://www.alternet.org/...
As with anything that Zinn writes, he has some very perceptive looks at Obama beginning with this:
"We are citizens, and Obama is a politician. You might not like that word. But the fact is he’s a politician."
SOURCE: http://www.progressive.org/...
(same source throughout unless otherwise noted)
Nor is this a bashing of Obama, whom Zinn calls "a very sensitive and intelligent and thoughtful and promising" person. But Zinn trained as a historian with one of the greatest ever analysts of the presidency (Richard Hofstadter* at Columbia) and Zinn subjects Obama to the same rigorous kind of analysis that he would any other person or politician. And isn't that to be welcomed? Here's how Zinn himself puts it:
From the beginning, I liked Obama. But the first time it suddenly struck me that he was a politician was early on, when Joe Lieberman was running for the Democratic nomination for his Senate seat in 2006.
Lieberman—who, as you know, was and is a war lover—was running for the Democratic nomination, and his opponent was a man named Ned Lamont, who was the peace candidate. And Obama went to Connecticut to support Lieberman against Lamont.
It took me aback. I say that to indicate that, yes, Obama was and is a politician. So we must not be swept away into an unthinking and unquestioning acceptance of what Obama does.
Our job is not to give him a blank check or simply be cheerleaders.
The Hofstadter** influence on Zinn is obvious and acknowledged by Zinn himself. Here is Zinn in more detail on Hofstadter, who not only wrote perceptively but beautifully:
"I had a teacher at Columbia University named Richard Hofstadter, who wrote a book called The American Political Tradition, and in it, he examined presidents from the Founding Fathers down through Franklin Roosevelt. There were liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. And there were differences between them. But he found that the so-called liberals were not as liberal as people thought—and that the difference between the liberals and the conservatives, and between Republicans and Democrats, was not a polar difference. There was a common thread that ran through all American history, and all of the presidents—Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative—followed this thread.
The thread consisted of two elements: one, nationalism; and two, capitalism. And Obama is not yet free of that powerful double heritage."
Given Zinn's progressive background, is it any wonder that he has found Obama's position on the Wall St. bailout troubling? Here is what he writes about this subject:
What was one of the first things that happened when the Bush Administration saw that the economy was in trouble? A $700 billion bailout, and who did we give the $700 billion to? To the financial institutions that caused this crisis.
This was when the Presidential campaign was still going on, and it pained me to see Obama standing there, endorsing this huge bailout to the corporations.
What Obama should have been saying was: Hey, wait a while. The banks aren’t poverty stricken. The CEOs aren’t poverty stricken. But there are people who are out of work. There are people who can’t pay their mortgages. Let’s take $700 billion and give it directly to the people who need it. Let’s take $1 trillion, let’s take $2 trillion.
Or take the subject of Iraq where Zinn pays a good deal of tribute to Obama's intelligence and instincts but also criticizes him:
In the course of his campaign, Obama said something that struck me as very wise... Obama was talking about the war in Iraq, and he said, "It’s not just that we have to get out of Iraq." He said "get out of Iraq," and we mustn’t forget it. We must keep reminding him: Out of Iraq, out of Iraq, out of Iraq—not next year, not two years from now, but out of Iraq now.
But listen to the second part, too. His whole sentence was: "It’s not enough to get out of Iraq; we have to get out of the mindset that led us into Iraq."
What is the mindset that got us into Iraq?
It’s the mindset that says force will do the trick. Violence, war, bombers—that they will bring democracy and liberty to the people.
It’s the mindset that says America has some God-given right to invade other countries for their own benefit. We will bring civilization to the Mexicans in 1846. We will bring freedom to the Cubans in 1898. We will bring democracy to the Filipinos in 1900. You know how successful we’ve been at bringing democracy all over the world.
Obama has not gotten out of this militaristic missionary mindset. ..."
The Zinn article is quite long and I will not go into more depth here but suggest that readers have a look at it in full. For Howard Zinn enthusiasts, Amy Goodman did an excellent interview (as usual) with him too on her Democracynow.org program. Here is a tidbit from that:
"I think we ought to hold Obama to his promise to be different and
bold and to make change. So far, he hasn’t come through on that promise."
SOURCE: http://www.democracynow.org/...
NOTES:
# Howard Zinn at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/...
*Richard Hofstader:
*Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916–October 24, 1970) was an American historian and DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. One of the leading public intellectuals of the 1950s, his works include The Age of Reform (1955) and Anti-intellectualism in American Life (1963), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize—the former for History and the latter for General Non-Fiction—as well as Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (1944), The American Political Tradition (1948), and The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). Hofstadter became the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus" and 21st century scholars continue to admire his books and essays for the grace of his writing, the depth of his insight, his use of the past to illuminate contemporary issues, and his ability to simultaneously engage a scholarly and a popular audience.
Source: Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/...
**Richard Hofstadter at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/...