It's hard for me to take sides in the debate between those sorely disappointed by Obama's policies and those that point out that his policies, however flawed, still represent very real progress and are so much better than the alternative. Or between those that feel betrayed by Obama's centrist behavior and those that remind us that he has to deal with a fairly conservative Congress.
The reality is that Bush was a hard-right, fundamentalist, administration, and we're now getting a centrist (but right of center) - and maybe more importantly, sane - administration. The reality is also that this is largely in line with what Obama promised. The reality is also, sadly, that, in today's political and media environment, this is probably close to the best (ie leftiest) we can get.
Thus, the questions we need to ask are - (1) why is it that the range of political discourse and policies considered possible in the US ranges from the hard right to the center right? And (2) what needs to be done to change this?
Of course, there's a third question pending: will center-right policies be enough to solve the current economic catastrophe? And if not, what happens then?
The fact that current policies are the best we're likely to get can be both a cause of celebration (we're getting sane and somewhat decent policy-making) and despair (it's so far from what's needed, and from what could be done, in theory, to solve problems). But we need to explain why it is so.
We all know the main reasons:
- the role of money in politics, under the argument of the first amendment, gives more power to those who can buy lobbyists or political campaigns than to those who actually vote - thus to big corporations and billionaires keen on deregulation, lower taxes and wealth concentration;
- the corporate controlled media mindlessly repeats the same lies and simplistic soundbites over and over again, making a mockery of honest debate and respect for the truth, and somehow making popular the same deregulation, lower taxes and wealth concentration;
- to be brutally honest, the right has been quite competent in shaping narratives, ie simple stories with a smidgeon of truth (there used to be a link between the Dow Jones and overall prosperity) and values (freedom, toughness, self-sufficiency), and all the requisite distractions (abortion, gays, immigrants, etc...) that make the corporate propaganda plausible and apparently attractive...
So what can be done to get anything better than the left of the corporate agenda range, ie what can be called the center-right in US terms and quite far on the right in European terms (but dontcha know Europeans are weak, stagnant, doomed and irrelevant?)
I'm stumped - but one sure is for sure: not complaining about the result will certainly not result in it changing for the better. While tactically, and, in the case of health care coverage for more citizens, morally, there is a case to accept the current reforms as progress, strategically, there has to be a backlash, and sustained noise that the result is still fundamentally biased and unsatisfactory.
Because one thing is for sure: the current system is NOT sustainable, and thus will not last eternally. But if a crisis as severe as the one we just went through is not enough to bring about real change (as in: seriously redistributive policies), it only means one thing: change will require a bigger crisis. And given that change from our unsustainable system is inevitable, a bigger crisis WILL happen. The only question is whether it happens before 2010, 2012 or later.