Reading brooklynbadboy's diary of today here reminded me of something I've (we've!) been thinking about for a long time and, with the news over the past 10-14 days of an economy that not only isn't charging out of the recession but oscillating between fitful steps and downright stumbles, my urgency to find an explanation for why our fine President hasn't been more urgent or outwardly aggressive on the issue of jobs and re-employment has led me back to a heart-breakingly prophetic article by Kevin Baker from July 2009 Harper's Magazine, Barack Hoover Obama:The Best and Brightest Blow it Again. It was probably discussed at length on DK when it was published but, in today's day and age, the relentlessness of the the news cycle and the publishing volume probably consigned it to a too-fleeting moment in the spotlight; it's time, however, has come again...
Before we get into the Baker article, let's look at some of the (uncontroversial) quotes from the diary of bbb (an undoubted supporter of the President):
Let me sum up the GOP message last night: "President Obama has failed to put America back to work."
So what is Gibbs' response? I'll sum that up too: "President Obama is making progress on the mess Republicans created. Please be patient."
You don't need to read the extensive amount of polls and economic data to know that the vast majority of Americans do not think we are making progress
bbb, of course, has hit the nail on the head that progress is not being made at a pace fast enough to satisfy anybody who is NOT a heavily bond or stock-endowed rentier or a "captain" of industry sitting on piles of cash. But his solution targets the problem(s) of messaging rather than getting to the root of WHY the policies were adopted in the first place, as if the President didn't have a choice:
bbb's diary
What you saw last night was a Republican presidential field that has declared war on the middle class. President Obama even gave their methods a try... none of that stuff is working......
So now, this is what President Obama is going to do...
The Republicans will fight us because, like always, they only care about the rich. Their ideas are proven not to work. If tax cuts were going to make the economy work, we'd have 0% unemployment right now. President Obama realizes this because he's tried many of their ideas and they didn't work.
Why, oh why, did President Obama try many of their ideas? Not some of their ideas, but MANY of their ideas? Well, Kevin Baker had an inkling about this not much more than 3 months into President Obama's term!
Barack Hoover Obama: The best and brightest blow it again
Three months into his presidency, Barack Obama has proven to be every bit as charismatic and intelligent as his most ardent supporters could have hoped. At home or abroad, he invariably appears to be the only adult in the room, the first American president in at least forty years to convey any gravitas. Even the most liberal of voters are finding it hard to believe they managed to elect this man to be their president.
It is impossible not to wish desperately for his success as he tries to grapple with all that confronts him: a worldwide depression, catastrophic climate change, an unjust and inadequate health-care system, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ongoing disgrace of Guant·namo, a floundering education system.
Obama’s failure would be unthinkable. And yet the best indications now are that he will fail, because he will be unable—indeed he will refuse—to seize the radical moment at hand.
Baker goes on to magnificently flesh out a story of why this crisis, the one whose fire is still burning careers and scarring the lives of millions old and young, DEMANDED radical unorthodoxy but was met with the technocratic delicacies of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers:
Still worse is Obama’s decision to leave the reordering of the financial world solely to Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner, both of whom played such a major role in deregulating Wall Street and bringing on the disaster in the first place. It’s as if, after winning election in 1932, FDR had brought Andrew Mellon back to the Treasury. Just as Herbert Hoover could not, in the end, break away from the best economic advice of the 1920s, Barack Obama is sticking with the “key men” of the 1990s.
The Herbert Hoover reference in the title is critical because, unlike many hit-and-run pundits, or even the average modern citizen, Baker correctly identifies the ill-remembered Herbert Hoover as a "dynamic figure" who "created a bold program" to fight the ravages of the Great Depression. It didn't work of course, because, unlike Roosevelt, Hoover could never quite throw off the business orthodoxy of the day: tight money, liquidation of all failed enterprises, reluctance to offer adequate government emergency measures in lieu of the free market and for fear of creating dependence on "the dole." It was, eventually, up to FDR to cut the Gordian knot of economic orthodoxy and lead the country to it's greatest-ever growth and successes.
This brings us back to the linchpin of Baker's article, as well as the conundrum that bsb is identifying: President Obama has embraced the received wisdom of Wall Street, The Federal Reserve banks which serve it, the rentiers and Republicans who both fear and despise him and the masses, and failed to grasp that these institutions and parasites would not only NOT desire his success but would see it as an attack on their own.
President Obama is brilliant, inspiring, and I dare say visionary in his way; but he's been, and cannot continue to be, the uber-pragmatist we see him being, since his enemies call his pragmatism "radicalism" and his allies wait in seeming vain for such pragmatism to lead to real economic results.
Baker sums his article up thusly:
Barack Hoover Obama: The best and brightest blow it again
Franklin Roosevelt also took office imagining that he could bring all classes of Americans together in some big, mushy, cooperative scheme. Quickly disabused of this notion, he threw himself into the bumptious give-and-take of practical politics; lying, deceiving, manipulating, arraying one group after another on his side—a transit encapsulated by how, at the end of his first term, his outraged opponents were calling him a “traitor to his class” and he was gleefully inveighing against “economic royalists” and announcing, “They are unanimous in their hatred for me—and I welcome their hatred.”
Obama should not deceive himself into thinking that such interest-group politics can be banished any more than can the cycles of Wall Street. It is not too late for him to change direction and seize the radical moment at hand. But for the moment, just like another very good man, Barack Obama is moving prudently, carefully, reasonably toward disaster.
Please, read the whole article and be amazed (and slightly deflated) at it's prescience. And hope it's not too late for what could be our greatest President-if only he wouldn't listen to his trusted advisers.