I remember being a kid and being caught in a lie and creating a bigger lie to cover. I kept upping the ante, adding more details and making the fib more outrageous in the hope that my accuser would finally think, “Well, no one would make up a story that wildly absurd and expect to be believed, so it must be true. Truth must be stranger than fiction!”
I’m reminded of that every time I hear the claim that President Obama is a socialist or pursuing a socialist agenda. My first impulse is angry frustration, but I temper that reaction with the understanding that there are a great many things our educational system fails to teach, and both the definition of socialism and our nation’s own political history are among them.
So — stepping back and taking a deep breath — let’s take a look at how well the “Obama is a socialist” assertion fits with the real world.
(Cross posted at Talking Points Memo and my own Filtered News)
Perhaps the easiest way to dismiss such nonsense is to point to the Obamacans, the Republicans who support Barack Obama. Republicans with names like Eisenhower, Goldwater, Nixon and Powell.
Lesser known, but still influential, Republicans also supported Obama:
* Ken Adelman, campaigned for Goldwater, worked for Rumsfeld under Nixon, Ford and Bush, and served as Reagan’s director of arms control;
* Wick Alison, former publisher of the National Review;
* Jack Antaramian, Florida real estate developer and Bush fundraiser;
* former State Sen. Phil Arthurhultz and majority leader (R-MI);
* Timothy Ashby, worked for Reagan and Bush 41;
* Andrew Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University;
* John Perry Barlow, former Dick Cheney Campaign Manager;
* Tom Bernstein, Yale classmate of Bush 43, co-owner or the Texas Rangers baseball team with Bush 43,
donated $2,000 to the Bush’s reelection campaign and $50,000 to the Republican National Committee;
* Robert R. Bowie, worked for Eisenhower;
* Christopher Buckley, son of National Review founder William F. Buckley and former National Review columnist;
* John Canning, raised more than $100,000 for Bush 43;
* David Caprara, worked for Bush 43;
* former Gov. Arne Carslon (R-MN);
* Dorothy Danforth Burlin, daughter of former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO);
* William Donaldson, former Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission under George W. Bush;
* Ken Duberstein, Reagan’s White House Chief of Staff;
* former Sen. David Durenberger (R-MN);
* former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-OK);
* former Rep. Robert F. Ellsworth (R-KS), Nixon’s Deputy Secretary of Defense and United States Permanent Representative to NATO;
* William B. Ewald, Jr., worked for Eisenhower;
* former Rep. Harris Fawell (R-IL.);
* Charles Fried, Solicitor General for Reagan;
* David Friedman, economist and son of Milton Friedman;
* former Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD);
* Lilibet Hagel, wife of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (NE);
* Jeffrey Hart, senior editor, National Review;
* Rita Hauser, a New York philanthropist who raised money for both Bush 41 and Bush 43, was a member of 43’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board;
* former Gov. Linwood Holton (R-VA);
* Dennis Hopper, actor and former Bush supporter;
* Larry Hunter, policy advisor to Reagan and Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation and Chief Economist for the Free Enterprise Fund;
* Rear Admiral John Hutson, USN (ret.), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy and the current dean and president of Franklin Pierce Law Center;
* Jarold Kieffer, worked for Eisenhower;
* Dorothy King, archeologist, author, and conservative blogger;
* Douglas Kmiec, head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Reagan and Bush 41;
* former Rep. Jim Leach (R-IA);
* George C. Lodge, worked for Eisenhower;
* John Martin, Afghan war veteran and founder of the website Republicans for Obama;
* Scott McConnell, editor of the American Conservative;
* former Rep. and Sen. Charles Mathias (R-MD);
* Scott McClellan, former spokesman for George W. Bush;
* former Gov. William Milliken (R-MI);
* Tricia Moseley, former member of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond’s staff;
* Paul O’Neill, United States Secretary of the Treasury for Bush 43;
* John Patrick Diggins, distinguished professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York;
* Roswell B. Perkins, worked for Eisenhower;
* former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD);
* Bruce Rabb, worked for Nixon;
* Bill Ruckelshaus, worked for Nixon and Reagan;
* David Ruder, Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission under President Ronald Reagan;
* Frank Schaeffer, pro-life advocate and the son of evangelist Francis Schaeffer.
* former Rep. Claudine Schneider (R-RI);
* Richard S. Seline, Finance Director, Republican Party of Texas;
* Andrew Sullivan, columnist for the Atlantic Monthly, commentator and author of The Conservative Soul;
* Michael Smerconish, columnist for the Philadelphia Enquirer and conservative radio host;
* Mayor Lou Thieblemont, (R) Camp Hill, PA;
* Tag Tognalli, White House Staff under Reagan and Connecticut McCain Delegate to 2000 Republican National Convention;
* former Gov. and Sen. Lowell Weicker (R-CT);
* former Gov. William Weld (R-MA); and
* Mayor Jim Whitaker, (R) Fairbanks, AK.
This wave of endorsements led The Economist to publish an in-depth examination of “The Rise of the Obamacons” and their influence:
The biggest brigade in the Obamacon army consists of libertarians, furious with Mr Bush’s big-government conservatism, worried about his commitment to an open-ended “war on terror,” and disgusted by his cavalier way with civil rights…. For many conservatives, Mr. Obama embodies qualities that their party has abandoned: pragmatism, competence and respect for the head rather than the heart. Mr. Obama’s calm and collected response to the turmoil on Wall Street contrasted sharply with Mr. McCain’s grandstanding…. How much do these Obamacons matter? More than Mr. McCain would like to think. The Obamacons are manifestations of a deeper turmoil in the Republican rank-and-file, as the old coalition of small-government activists, social conservatives and business Republicans falls apart. They also influence opinion…. The more tantalising question is whether the rise of the Obamacons signals a lasting political realignment…. If the Republican Party continues to think that the problem lies with the rats, rather than the seaworthiness of the ship, then the Obamacons are here to stay.
These are respected, educated, generally rational conservatives who are neither easily mislead nor likely to endorse a “far Lefty,” much less a socialist. Given their support of Obama, Newt Gingrich should have been laughed off the national stage when he called the president “the most radical president in American history” and urged his partisan audience to stop Obama’s “secular, socialist machine.”
In addition to these conservatives of fame and influence, there were multiple millions of rank and file conservatives who voted for Obama in the presidential election. The Economist cited a poll in late October 2008 that indicated Obama was “winning 22% of self-described conservatives, a higher proportion than any Democratic nominee since 1980.”
Meanwhile, the American Left has expressed deep displeasure with the president’s policies. There’s even talk about some Democrats running a candidate against their own president because Obama isn’t liberal enough and is too eager to seek compromises with conservatives.
Defining “socialism”
Beyond the logistical problem of reconciling massive conservative support for Obama with the partisan rhetorical ploy of calling him a “radical” or a “socialist” lies a definitional problem: Obama’s policies and goals do not fit the definition of socialism. Different socialists define socialism in different ways, but Princeton’s definition boils it down to its philosophical essence: “a political theory advocating state ownership of industry” and “an economic system based on state ownership of capital.”
The Socialist Party USA defines itself thusly:
Socialism will establish a new social and economic order in which workers and community members will take responsibility for and control of their interpersonal relationships, their neighborhoods, their local government, and the production and distribution of all goods and services.
For these reasons we call for social ownership and democratic control of productive resources, for a guarantee to all of the right to participate in societal production, and to a fair share of society’s product, in accordance with individual needs.
No rational, honest and informed analysis of Obama’s political and economic theory or practice can conclude that they fit that definition. As Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, wrote in a Washington Postcolumn: “To one outside the partisan and ideological wars, charges of radicalism, socialism, retreat and surrender are, frankly, bizarre.”
Ornstein demonstrated that most of Obama’s policies, from health care to the “stimulus” and foreign policy, are based on ideas proposed by conservatives or Republicans, or passed with their cooperation or approval. “This president,” he wrote, “is a mainstream, pragmatic moderate, operating in the center of American politics; center-left, perhaps, but not left of center.”
Traits of socialist nations
Beyond the problems of conservative support for Obama and the bad fit between Obama’s polices and goals and those of socialism, there is the problem of real-world results: America under Obama does not share the most characteristic traits of developed socialist nations. In fact, we’re farther away than almost everyone else.
Socialist countries typically have high taxes, but America, under Obama, had its lowest tax bill since 1950. Our taxes as a share of GDP — 28% — is nearly the lowest among the 31 nations in the OECD. Obama’s 2009 tax cut for 95% of Americans is the opposite of what you’d expect from a socialist (and puts the lie to some of his most vocal critics on the Right).
Socialist countries also typically redistribute significant portions of the income of their most wealthy citizens, but according to the “Gini coefficient”(which gauges inequality and can be used for, among other things, comparing how redistributive various economies are) the United States has greater income inequality, among “developed” nations, than all other countries except Brazil and Mexico. Put simply, that means America is farther away than almost all of its peers from socialist redistribution.
According to the CIA (a decidedly conservative agency):
The US has the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, with a per capita GDP of $46,400. In this market-oriented economy, private individuals and business firms make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace. US business firms enjoy greater flexibility than their counterparts in Western Europe and Japan in decisions to expand capital plant, to lay off surplus workers, and to develop new products…. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households. (emphasis added)
In short, the CIA is saying America fits neither the definition of socialism (state-owned industry) nor the real-world traits of socialism (redistribution).
Obama’s buddies
For all the false furor raised during the campaign over who Obama “pals around” with or is influenced by, his record of appointments to important and powerful posts tells a much different story.
Robert Gates, secretary of defense in Bush 43’s cabinet, is also secretary of defense in Obama’s cabinet. (Retired Marine Corps Four-star General James Jones was Bush 43’s special envoy for Middle East security and chair of the Atlantic Council of the United States, and now he’s Obama’s national security adviser.)
Obama’s choice of Timothy Geithner for the cabinet post of treasury secretary made Wall Street very happy, resulting in one of the largest two day gain for some time. Socialists and socialism don’t typically get warm receptions from Wall Street.
Ray LaHood (R-IL), Obama’s cabinet choice for secretary of transportation, is was Republican member of Congress.
Arne Duncan, secretary of education in Obama’s cabinet, has launched initiatives that echo those of Bush 43 – such as the Race to the Top, which pits state against state for federal education dollars that are won by submitting proposals that include “reforms” like expanding charter schools and judging teachers partly on how well their students do on standardized tests. He was, in fact, professional vested in charter schools before becoming head of Chicago’s public school system. Critics of his tenure in Chicagocome from the Left and they say Duncan was too eager to close neighborhood public schools and replacement by charter schools. They also don’t like what they call his “militarization” of the schools. Socialists don’t favor charter schools over private schools.
Tom Vilsack, Obama’s cabinet pick for secretary of agriculture, was greeted with high praise from the big agribusiness groups, including endorsements from the Corn Refiners Association, the National Grain and Feed Association, the National Farmers Union, and the American Farm Bureau Federation. His only real opposition came from the Left, where some said Vilsack repeatedly demonstrated a preference for large industrial farms and genetically modified crops, that as Iowa’s governor blocked local communities from regulating where genetically engineered crops would be grown, and that was the founder and former chair of the Governor’s Biotechnology Partnership, and was named Governor of the Year by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, an industry lobbying group. Socialists and big business don’t typically love each other so much.
Lisa Jackson, secretary of EPA in Obama’s cabinet, has been sharply criticized for being too close to industry and for dragging her feet when cleaning up New Jersey’s numerous toxic waste sites. As noted above, socialists and big business aren’t usually so close.
Ken Salazar, Obama’s secretary of the interior, is a right-of-center Democrat with strong ties to the coal and mining industries and who often favors industry and big agriculture in battles over global warming, fuel efficiency and endangered species. His nomination won high praise from Bush 43’s interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne.
Gary Locke, Obama’s pick for commerce secretary, was mightily criticized by fellow Democrats when he was Washington’s governor for embracing the no-new-taxes approach to dealing with the state’s budget problems and for proposing to: lay off thousands of state employees; cut health coverage; freezing most state pay; and cutting funding for nursing homes and programs for the developmentally disabled. Locke suspended two voter-passed, pro-school initiatives while cutting state education funding, but allocating record-high amounts for construction projects. What sort of socialist, what sort of “far Left” leader, approaches budgets this way? No sort.
Ron Kirk, Obama’s pick for US trade representative, took heat from the Left for his strong support of NAFTA, championed tax cuts for businesses, negotiated a World Trade Organization (WTO) proposal that was so objectionable to the public interest it needed to be kept a secret – he had shown ACTA text to dozens of corporate lobbyists and all of its trading partners in the ACTA negotiation, and the text was only secret from the public — and worked to meet industries demands at the WTO.
Hillary Clinton’s selection by Obama for secretary of state won praise from most conservatives because she’s long been known as a hawk who seems to be the sort of person who enjoys eating rusty nails for breakfast.
Many of Obama’s picks for non-cabinet posts also appear to be far removed from both socialism and the “far Left.”
Gil Kerlikowske, Obama’s director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, is an Army veteran, a graduate of the FBI academy and the former chief of police in Seattle.
Dennis Ross, Obama’s pick for special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, worked in both Reagan’s and Bush 41’s state departments. He co-authored a study recommending greater U.S. intervention in “the Persian Gulf Region because of our need for Persian Gulf oil…” and wrote another paper that called for appointment of a “non-Arabist Special Middle East envoy” who would “not feel guilty about our relationship with Israel.” Ross was a noted supporter of the Iraq war. If he’s a liberal – much less a member of the “far Left” or a socialist – he’s also a master of disguise.
Gary Samore, Obama’s pick for White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction, proliferation, and terrorism, doesn’t have much of a “lefty” footprint either: after working for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the RAND Corporation, he joined the State Department and worked for Reagan.
Austen Goolsbee, Obama’s top economics adviser, is from the very conservative University of Chicago and has argued against a single payer solution in America. Obama’s health plan was the only one of the major three to not even attempt universality, failing even to include a public option for those who wish to buy in (more on this later).
Much earlier, labor and some liberal activists were boiling mad over Obama’s choice of centrist economist Jason Furman as the top economic advisor for his presidential campaign. Furman, the Left charges, has overstated the potential benefits of globalization, Social Security private accounts and the low prices offered by Wal-Mart — considered a corporate abomination by much of the Left.
As Frank Schaeffer noted, America’s Left was not pleased. Here is Cris Hayes, writing in The Nation (Nov. 21, 2008):
“Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one.”
and William Greider, also in the The Nation ( Nov. 25, 2008):
”A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page, his campaign declaration seemed to promise a fresh start for Washington. I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward… Obama’s [cabinet] selections seem designed to sustain the failing policies of George W. Bush.”
and Noam Chomsky, posting on Alternet (Nov. 28, 2008):
“Rhetoric we know, but what are [Obama's] actions?… The first choice was the Vice President, Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq… The first post-election appointment was for Chief of Staff, which is a crucial appointment; determines a large part of the president’s agenda. That was Rahm Emanuel… again, a longtime Washington insider. Also, one of the leading recipients in congress of funding from the financial institutions hedge funds… Obama’s choices… [include] Robert Rubin and Larry Summers… among the people who are substantially responsible for the crisis. One leading economist, one of the few economists who has been right all along in predicting what’s happening, Dean Baker, pointed out that selecting them is like selecting Osama Bin Laden to run the war on terror…”
The Obama agenda and socialism
I suppose it’s possible that the president has included so many conservatives in his inner circle and still be a socialist leading, as Sarah Palin charges, the nation toward socialism. If this were the case, Obama’s socialism – at minimum, his far Left liberalism – would show up in his agenda and actions. Except it doesn’t.
The Exhibit A “proof” of Obama’s socialism – the one that causes the most hyperbolic, vein-popping, spittle-flecked rants — was his reform of our health insurance industry. The irony is that when Kaiser Health News compared the Democrats’ 2003 bill with the Republican’s 1993 health care reform bill, it found that they shared 12 of the 17 most significant aspects. As the Washington Post noted:
I don’t think it’s well understood how many of the GOP’s central health-care policy ideas have already been included as compromises in the health-care bill. But one good way is to look at the GOP’s “Solutions for America” homepage, which lays out its health-care plan in some detail. It has four planks. All of them — yes, you read that right — are in the Senate health-care bill.
…And finally, we shouldn’t forget the compromises that have been the most painful for Democrats, and the most substantive. This is a private-market plan. Not only is single-payer off the table, but at this point, so too is the public option. The thing that liberals want most in the world has been compromised away. (emphasis added)
Richard Nixon, were he alive, would be surprised to hear his health care reform ideas described as Armageddon, as unconstitutional and associalism. Nixon — the Republican? Why yes, Nixon:
Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. In fact, in some ways it was stronger. Right now, Republicans are balking at the idea of requiring that large employers offer health insurance to their workers; Nixon proposed requiring that all employers, not just large companies, offer insurance.
Nixon also embraced tighter regulation of insurers, calling on states to “approve specific plans, oversee rates, ensure adequate disclosure, require an annual audit and take other appropriate measures.” No illusions there about how the magic of the marketplace solves all problems.
So Obama’s socialistic takeover of health care – of which we were warned repeatedly and breathlessly — never materialized. Here’s conservative writer Andrew Sullivan’s summary:
“Again, the ferocious rhetoric belies the mundane reality. Between the boogeyman of ‘Big Government’ and the alleged threat of the drug companies, the practical differences are more matters of nuance than ideology. Yes, there are policy disagreements, but in the wake of the Bush administration, they are underwhelming. Most Republicans support continuing the Medicare drug benefit for seniors, the largest expansion of the entitlement state since Lyndon Johnson, while Democrats are merely favoring more cost controls on drug and insurance companies. Between Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan—individual mandates, private-sector leadership—and Senator Clinton’s triangulated update of her 1994 debacle, the difference is more technical than fundamental. The country has moved ever so slightly leftward. But this again is less a function of ideological transformation than of the current system’s failure to provide affordable health care for the insured or any care at all for growing numbers of the working poor.”
Of course, none of the reality interfered with the politically driven fantasy that Obama’s lukewarm, highly Republican, private-market based reform was an act of tyranny, akin to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Bolshevik plot, similar to the attack on 9/11, reviving theghosts of communist dictators, Armageddon, an unconstitutional leap toward socialism – a fantasy that fueled a series of ridiculous lawsuits from politicians trying to score points with uninformed constituents.
It’s interesting to note that President John Adams enacted a health insurance mandate decades before socialism was born:
In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance.
This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship’s captain to pay a 100 dollar fine. (emphasis added)
Virginia’s attorney general actually made the absurd assertion that “at no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service” in making the case that Obama’s health insurance reform is un-American, if not unconstitutional. Apparently, he is unaware of John Adams’ health insurance mandate, as well as George Washington’s Second Militia Act of 1792, which required a whole lot of U.S. civilians to buy, with their own money, “a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack” and various other items. Many of the members of Congress who voted to pass this law had been members of the Philadelphia Convention that wrote the Constitution itself. So if Obama is a socialist, then so were many of our Founding Fathers.
But we need not go back more than 200 years to show how silly the charge is. Got a paycheck? Take a look at the stub. See the deductions for Social Security and Medicare? Those are federally mandated purchases of insurance. Your employer also pays into unemployment insurance on your behalf, and since that amount could arguably be used for wages, it can be said that you’re buying that insurance, too.
Socialists, by the way, opposed Obama’s health care reform, calling it “a corporate restructuring of the health insurance industry created to protect the profit margins of private insurance companies…. (M)andates allow private insurers to use the coercive power of the state to enhance their private profits. Insurance credits will serve as a public subsidy to private companies. It is yet another case of public money that could be used for necessary social programs being funneled towards companies that engage in practices that are abusive and detrimental to the overall society.” And, of course, Obama’s reform does not put the working class in control of the health care system nor redirects the profits of the health care industry to workers, which is what socialism would demand.
One American socialist leader said Obama’s reform is the opposite of what socialists want: “By mandating that every person be insured, ObamaCare would give private health insurance companies license to systematically underinsure policyholders while cashing in on the moral currency of universal coverage.”
Exhibit B for conservatives wanting to paint Obama as a socialist is the bailout of the financial sector. To make that argument stick, however, we must conveniently forget that it was started under Bush and Paulson, it was largely necessary due to the deregulation of the financial industry, and – most importantly – the banks are still owned by and earning profits for capitalists. Some of the banksopposite in question were, by the way, given loans (not bought out) which they repaid. Others – like AIG — took tax payer money to pay off bad bets with other banks like Goldman Sachs.
The largest ownership stake for Uncle Sam in the financial world is AIG, which ran into financial difficulties (not bankruptcy) in September 2008 after a complex series of financial transactions turned bad. The US government still owns almost 80 percent of AIG, which has received at least $182 billion in government assistance.
In his book, Gingrich implies that government officials stormed into AIG’s headquarters and took over the company. “They have taken over AIG, America’s largest insurer,” he writes.
The actual “takeover” of AIG occurred under President Bush in 2008, right after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy.
Using an action by President Bush to paint President Obama as a socialist is a particularly smarmy way to apply an already spurious smear.
Socialists, on the other hand, call for giving the working class direct input into how these enterprises are operated and having workers directly benefit from them. All that’s happened under Bush and Obama is that the government temporarily owns shares in some of these firms, but the capitalist owners still run them and receive the profits.
Exhibit C: The government’s intervention with the auto industry is another rallying point for those asserting Obama’s socialism. A socialist would oppose private ownership and would want automobile manufacturing to be controlled collectively and for automobiles to be distributed according to need — but the auto bailout’s goal was to help the private companies, known as the Big 3, survive as private institutions that sell their cars according to what customers will pay for them. In short, the goal was to preserve an aspect of capitalism, not establish socialism.
The Right has charged that the Obama administration was socialist in its “sweeping” management mandates, particularly at GM, but GM spokeswoman Noreen Pratscher says that’s not true: “The government has taken a very hands-off approach.”
Beyond the fact that the bailout was meant to preserve capitalism, beyond the fact that the government’s intervention was designed to be temporary, and beyond the fact that it was safeguarding the tax payer loans to the auto makers, is the fact that it was a necessary step to avert an even greater economic collapse. Here’s the president explaining:
This is a difficult situation that involves fundamental questions about the proper role of government. On the one hand, government has a responsibility not to undermine the private enterprise system. On the other hand, government has a responsibility to safeguard the broader health and stability of our economy.
Addressing the challenges in the auto industry requires us to balance these two responsibilities. If we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers. Under ordinary economic circumstances, I would say this is the price that failed companies must pay — and I would not favor intervening to prevent the automakers from going out of business.
But these are not ordinary circumstances. In the midst of a financial crisis and a recession, allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action. The question is how we can best give it a chance to succeed. Some argue the wisest path is to allow the auto companies to reorganize through Chapter 11 provisions of our bankruptcy laws — and provide federal loans to keep them operating while they try to restructure under the supervision of a bankruptcy court. But given the current state of the auto industry and the economy, Chapter 11 is unlikely to work for American automakers at this time.
Does that sound like a socialist bent on government takeover — a “power grab,” as one Republican senator called it — of the entire economy? To some, it does, and it’s proof that Obama is a socialist. Trouble is, the quote is from George W. Bush, who actuallybegan the process that Obama finished. (By the way, it’s hard to agree that the intervention was a “power grab” when the auto makers spent quite a bit of time begging for government intervention.)
Socialists, on the other hand, hated the auto industry bailout, saying:
It is now clear that the central issue in the debate over whether to extend a bailout to the US auto industry is the destruction of the conditions of auto workers. Whether it takes the form of a government loan or the bankruptcy of one or more of Detroit’s Big Three carmakers, the aim is to create conditions which will rip up existing labor agreements and drive auto workers back to conditions of poverty and ruthless exploitation which existed prior to the industrial battles that built the United Auto Workers union in the 1930s.
Not only did the bailout not put ownership of the means of production into the hands of workers, not only did the bailout not redirect profits from capitalist owners to the workers, but the bailout hurt workers in a number of important ways.
Exhibit D: Financial sector regulation and consumer protection are also being described as socialism – and, once again, the charge is absurd. Obama’s tentative steps in this direction are so weak that they’re not only unacceptable to socialists, they’re not even good enough for a budget-hawk liberal like Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI):
“Unfortunately, this bill doesn’t do the job,” Feingold says. The two major issues that it doesn’t address, he says, are replacing the firewall between regular banking activities and gambling on Wall Street and breaking up institutions that are “too big to fail.”
According to actual American socialists:
The first clear indication that Obama is not, in fact, a socialist, is the way his administration is avoiding structural changes to the financial system. Nationalization is simply not in the playbook of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and his team. They favor costly, temporary measures that can easily be dismantled should the economy stabilize. Socialists support nationalization and see it as a means of creating a banking system that acts like a highly regulated public utility. The banks would then cease to be sinkholes for public funds or financial versions of casinos and would become essential to reenergizing productive sectors of the economy.
Knocking down the faux socialism straw men is, however, just the start of showing how Obama’s policies separate him from socialism – even from much of the liberal/progressive Left. A few significant and illustrative examples include Obama’s:
* support for states rights to ban late term abortions;
* decision against investigating Bush, Cheney, Rove and other members of the Bush administration for what are, to many, obvious crimes;
* giving billions to large corporations;
* dropping the public option in health care reform;
* having the CIA assassinate al Qaeda and Taliban leaders at a far greater rate than during the Bush administration;
* expanding, far beyond what Bush did, the role of special operations forces in “secret wars” across the globe;
* calling for more tax cuts in next year’s budget;
* achieving the nation’s lowest tax bill in 50 years;
* proposal to spend $8 billion to help build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia;
* launching a major military offensive against the Islamo-fascists in Afghanistan;
* support for the FISA bill legalizing warrantless wiretapping and granting immunity to telecom firms that engaged in criminal activity;
* desire to expand the size and budget of the Pentagon (something he’s already done);
* belief that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist organization;
* dismissal of promise to rewrite NAFTA as just overheated campaign rhetoric;
* prolonging of the Iraq occupation and desire to keep residual troops in Iraq;
* bombing in Pakistan;
* support for so-called merit pay for public-school teachers;
* silence in response to, if not support of, what many see as Israel’s war crimes;
* support – prior to the BP disaster – for expanded offshore oil drilling;
* appointment of two Supreme Court justices who are more conservative than the justices they replaced;
* refusal to make any real effort to address climate change;
* tepid approach to ending “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”;
* decision to keep Guantanamo open and operating;
* decision to continue using torture and rendition;
* decision against making a strong stand in favor of due process rights;
* continuation of Bush policies of workplace raids and speedier deportations of immigrants;
* continuation of Bush policies of detentions and domestic surveillance;
* increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan; and
* decisions to continue Bush’s bank bailouts but against nationalizing the banks.
Liberal economist Paul Krugman described his “despair” that Obama “has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing. It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street.” Not exactly what one would expect to read about a socialist.
Every major candidate in the last presidential election supported use of targeted military force against al-Qaeda if necessary, preventing Iran from getting the nuclear bomb, maintaining an open-ended deployment in Afghanistan and an unswerving alliance with Israel – and Obama was firmly entrenched in the middle of them. So if we’re going to claim Obama’s foreign policy is too far to the Left, we’ll have to say the same thing about McCain, Palin, Romney, Huckabee et al.
Meanwhile, an American “socialist foreign policy would call for the immediate removal of all troops. It would seek to follow the proposal made by an Afghan parliamentarian, which called for the United States to send 30,000 scholars or engineers instead of more fighting forces.”
“Barack Obama has never made any bones about it: He is a moderate,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a moderate public policy think tank. “People who ignored that did so at their peril.”
In his best-selling book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama actually echoed a favorite rightwing narrative in taking the Left to task and praising President Reagan’s appeal:
That Reagan’s message found such a receptive audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities.
…by promising to side with those who worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his critics carped, the more those critics played into the role he’d written for them—a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first, politically correct elites.
The incontrovertible, inescapable fact is that Obama’s foreign, domestic, social and economic policies have been relentlessly centrist – at times center-left, at other times center-right, but always squarely in the center. Those who don’t see that, or who are shocked by that, simply haven’t been paying attention.
The socialist view
What do real socialiststhink of President Obama?
What Mr. Johns, Mr. Gingrich, and others brandishing the “socialist” s-word are really complaining of is a return to the policies of John Maynard Keynes, the English economist who advocated vigorous government involvement in the economy, from regulation to pump priming, says labor historian Peter Rachleff of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
“Socialism suggests getting rid of capitalism altogether,” says Dr. Rachleff. “Mr. Obama is not within a million miles of an ideology like that.”
For what it’s worth, socialists deny that Obama is one of them – and even seem a bit insulted by the suggestion.
“I have been making a living telling people Obama is not a socialist,” says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America. “It’s frustrating to see people using our brand to criticize programs that have nothing to do with our brand and are not even working.”
Adds Billy Wharton,co-chair of the Socialist Party USA: “I am not even sure he’s a liberal. I call him a hedge fund Democrat.”
Well then, is Obama a “secret socialist”? The real socialists say “no” through their laughter:
He’s not a secret socialist. He’s not any kind of socialist at all. He’s not challenging the power of the corporations. The banking reforms that have been suggested are not particularly far reaching. He says we must have room for innovation. But we had innovation — look where it got us. So I just…I can’t…I mean laugh out loud, really.
I was on Glenn Beck recently and he said Canada is a socialist country. Well, there is a party in Canada that’s called “socialist” within the Democratic party, that’s won some provincial elections, never won a federal election. It would be news to them that Canada is socialist. So it’s just unserious.
They always use socialism to try to defeat moderate reforms…just because something is government run doesn’t mean it’s socialist. I’ve never heard anybody say we have a socialist army.
There’s more:
“As I understand it, we have taken over the country,” says Kastner, who is a proud member of the Milwaukee local of the Socialist Party. “The Republicans in Congress, the talk radio, all through the health-care debate, they’ve been saying its proof that the Socialists are in charge. Can you believe it?”
It has been almost exactly 50 years since a capital “S” Socialist last ran a major American city, let alone anything more major.
But, now, a bemused Myrtle Kastner notes that her party appears to have taken complete charge of the U.S. government–or so House Minority Leader John Boehner, various and sundry sulking Republican politicians, and their amen corner in the media (led by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity) would have us believe.
What surprises Kastner is not merely the fact that the party, which sometimes has a hard time filling all the chairs at its meetings, organized the takeover without informing her–or, to her knowledge, any other Socialists.
Summary
Obama is a socialist. It has to be true, because we hear it said repeatedly, on television and from people we trust. We hear it in the spittle-flecked rants of the Tea Party faithful who don’t know any better and from calculating Republican political operatives who do know better but don’t care, but we also hear it from college-educated, suburban guys in JC Penney’s suits and ties – the people our culture presumes to be calm, reasonable and fairly informed. Some, knowing the error of those words, use euphemisms like “most liberal” and “far Lefty” as a way of saying, “Well, ‘socialist’ may not be technically correct, but the basic complaint is valid.”
Except it’s not. To even be suspected of being a duck, one must look like a duck, walk like a duck or quack like a duck. The Oval Office is utterly duckless.
President Obama: won the support of millions of Republican voters in 2008; won the support of a great many well-known and highly respected Republican leaders; populated much of his inner circle with Republicans and conservatives; spoken and written glowingly of capitalism, centrist values and conservative icons; spoken and written critically of what he sees as liberal excesses; adopted, continued and expanded a great many of the major policy initiatives of George Bush; pursued a great many agenda items that earn criticism from the Left; has been pro-capitalism and pro-private sector in all of his major policy initiatives; has continued and expanded military interventions begun by George Bush; and has earned laughing derision from socialists. The United States has a market-oriented (not socialist) economy in which private individuals and business firms (not worker collectives) make most of the decisions, and the federal and state governments buy needed goods and services predominantly in the private marketplace (not from government-owned and government-run production).
If you thought Obama was a socialist before, you were probably unaware and mislead; if you think Obama is a socialist now, you’re just stupid.