Dr. J.'s Commentary: No Obamallusions

Since he secured the Democratic nomination for President, Sen. Barack Obama has been moving rapidly to organize, re-organize, and expand his policy staff. One feature has been the increasing presence of "Clinton people" such as Robert Rubin and Madeleine Albright. The response to this from an increasing number of progressives and leftists has ranged from raising caution flags to expressing outright horror: "what's he doing on Israel?" "what's he doing on FISA?" "what's he doing on campaign finance reform?" "what's he doing on 'free trade'?" There are three principal issues to consider here. First, do these appointments indicate any major changes in Sen. Obama's principal campaign theme of "Change We Can Believe In?" Second, whether yes or no, were they predictable? Third, what should the progressive/leftist response be?

In my view, there was a huge amount of "reading in" done with Obama during the primary campaign. (Full disclosure: I fell into that trap too.) He is very, very smart. He is literally African-American. He is the child of a teenage mother who became a single mother not too long after his birth, and was primarily brought up by her mother. He somehow made it to Columbia College (and as a Columbia College graduate myself, 1958, I wish that that fact were mentioned more frequently by his campaign as well as others!) Graduating from Harvard Law School, he decided against taking a high-paying corporate law firm job, very possibly with an eye towards a career in politics from the very beginning, and worked on the streets on the South Side of Chicago.

However, he has never been a radical in any sense of the word, no matter how hard O'RHannibaugh and the Fox "News" Channel et al. try to convince their viewers/listeners that he is or at least was. And using guilt by association, they are trying ever so hard to do that. But radical? Hardly. His health care proposal does as much to maintain the role of the profit-makers in the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries as does Clinton's. (Of course McCain's would make both industries even more profitable.) He calls for a relatively swift withdrawal from Iraq, that is, just what was called for by the Jim Baker-lead Iraq Study Group, the report of which was so studiously ignored by CheneyBush.

One of Obama's major foreign policy advisors from the beginning has been Mika's (MSNBC) dad, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's relatively right-wing National Security Advisor. One of his major "accomplishments" was to convince Carter to organize a strong response to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan that was designed to bolster a then new anti-monarchical, anti-Islamist, Communist government. Brzezinski correctly predicted if the U.S. were able to arrange for the Soviet Union to get bogged down there, it could become their "Vietnam," and speed the long-impending collapse of the pseudo-Communist Soviet government. That it did. It should be noted that if NATO significantly expands its military role in Afghanistan, it could become in turn their AFGHANISTAN. As for economic policy, Obama does advocate a return to pre-Clintonian caution on globalization and the free export of capital. He also advocates a recognition that the WJ Clinton declaration that "the days of big government are over" in terms of economic, regulatory and infrastructure policy are in urgent need of revision. Nothing radical here in either of those positions, if one takes seriously the Preamble to the Constitution.

In my view, the most important point is one should never expect anything truly radical from a candidate for the Presidency of one of the two leading parties. The Power Elite in this country generally controls the political system, just as it does in every other country in the world. The current U.S. election does reflect a major division over policy. But that division is nothing more, or less, than a reflection of two different approaches within the Power Elite as to how it should go about maintaining its power. It does not reflect any conflict over the fact that the Power Elite does have the political, as well as the economic, power in this country and fully intends to maintain them. Obama, who has major Wall Street support beginning with Goldman Sachs, simply represents that sector that would like to return to the Rule of Law and the Constitutional approach to governance and governing under which it has done very well since the beginning of the U.S. industrial revolution following the Civil War, thank you very much. Further, it wants to end as soon as is expedient the totally ill-advised and disastrous PNAC/petroleum industry inspired foreign adventure that has done such damage to major aspects of American life both at home and abroad, to say nothing of its costs in lives and money.

No one should be under any illusion, Obamallusions or otherwise, that any major party would ever be able to nominate a candidate for President who would challenge the control of the Power Elite as a whole over the economy or the government. So what should we progressives and leftists do? Vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney? Stay home on Election Day? Well, surprise, surprise, I think that any of those would be a bad idea. The "lesser-of-the-evils" argument has driven the American Left for decades. I must say that I have always hewed to that line, even if it meant supporting Humphrey in '68, Carter in '76 and '80, and so on and so forth. It has perhaps not always been the correct thing to do. But now it most assuredly is.

We Cannot Afford to be Picky.

We now once again confront true evil in the form of the Republican candidate for president, as we have since the 2000 election. McCain indeed does represent the Third Bush Term. Under him, the Republican Right's drive to Fascism would very likely continue, perhaps with a different style only. Hey, McCain thinks the Supreme Court decision restoring habeas corpus, which is ensconced in the Constitution in no uncertain terms, is incorrect. At the same time, he thinks that the Supreme Court interpretation of the totally ambiguous Second Amendment is totally correct. And he has told us that he wants more Scalia/Thomas/Roberts/Alito clones on the Supreme Court, not fewer.

Under Obama, the fascist threat here at home will not be dead. But at least we would have some breathing room. Given that a major and powerful sector of the Power Elite, shall we say "The Cheney Wing," would like very much to have fascism here, and given their Privatized Ministry of Propaganda that will be on Obama from the moment his election were to be assured, the danger of fascism will be clear and present in our country for the foreseeable future. But at least with the election of Obama, we would have a pause. One thing that might happen during this time would be the development of a mass-based anti-Fascist movement in our country. Hey, you never know. But at least with Obama, there would be hope. With McCain, none.

This column is based in part on a two-parter of mine, "No Obamallusions," that appeared on The Political Junkies.net (soon to become TPJmagazine.us) on July 2 and 9, 2008.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine TPJmagazine.us; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and a Contributing Columnist for the Project fro the Old American Century.

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