Usually it is the great bobswern who brings us news from the pages of Naked Capitalism. But I don't see one of his posts up today, so I thought I would bring today's readers one of the best pieces I have seen on the continuing debate about Obama and those surprised or disappointed in him.
Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers used to work on Open Left together before Matt went to work for Alan Grayson. Today in Naked Capitalism Matt uses New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to illustrate what exactly it is the Barack Obama is. He then uses that dichotomy to make each of us take a hard look at ourselves.
There is a contrast between how Barack Obama on the one hand, and Eric Schneiderman approached the massive fraud that collapsed the banking system and the housing market. This distinction gets to the heart of who each of these two politicians are, what they believe, and what they do.
The banking system is really at the heart of our politics, which is why it’s such a great test of one’s political theory of change. I’ve been following the foreclosure fraud story for a few years now, because it’s the tail end of a massive economy-wide fraud scheme that started as early as 2003. The securitization chain failure can’t be put back in the bottle, the housing system it collapsed is simply too big to bail. So elites keep trying to patch this up the way they have everything else. It isn’t working. And their scheme has been obvious and obviously dishonest. Along with Obama (who I criticized as empty as early as 2004, ratcheting this up to dishonest and authoritarian by 2006-2007), I pointed out that Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller was engaged in serious bad faith only a few months after the negotiations started.
I’m no genius, I just listened to what these people actually said and did. Obama mocks the idea that he is an honest politician, overtly, lying about NAFTA and FISA very early on in power. Miller lied to activists about being willing to put bankers in jail, and then said he was negotiating with banks in secret. It was overt. For Miller, as with Obama, few people really picked up on the lies until recently. Iowa activists who heckled Miller got it, as did Naked Capitalism readers. Now it’s becoming more and more obvious. That’s just how it is, I suppose, people in the establishment are paid to not notice corruption until the harsh glare is too bright.
Yes, at the very least we owe Obama and Biden and Rahm Emmanual respect for doing what they believe and for being reasonably competent at going about and accomplishing that. It's just too bad that what these elites believe in and want is miles away from what most of us believe in or want.
When you look closely at most significant areas of government, it becomes clear that the President and his administration are enormously powerful actors who get a lot done. Handing over our national wealth to the banks and to China is not nothing. These people are reorganizing the economy and the political system so that there are no constraints on the oligarchical interests that fund and pay them. That is their goal, it has been their goal from day one (or even before that), and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong or deluding him or herself. Obama spoke at the founding of Robert Rubin’s Hamilton Institute, and his first, and most important by far policy initiative, was his whipping for TARP, a policy that was signed by Bush but could not have passed without Obama getting his party in line. That was his goal, and he’s still pursuing it. The numerous “what happened to Obama” wailing editorials overlook the consistency of his policy agenda, which stretches back years at this point.
And understanding this is very important in order that we actually put our own actions and motivations into a clearer light. We want to believe that we -- progressives, people committed to democracy -- actually have a chance, that things aren't as rigged or rotten as we fear. So we latch onto a cynical manipulative fraud and try to believe that -- despite all the evidence -- he means the bullshit he cynically spouts on the campaign trail. I had forgotten about Obama's promise to withdraw from NAFTA if changes weren't made that would protect the rights of labor and the environment. I had forgotten that even at the time, the Obama campaign had contacted the Canadian government and told them not to worry, that it was all just bullshit. I had forgotten probably because I was addicted to hope.
Time to set that aside and take a hard look folks, because it isn't just to good of the country that's at stake, it's the moral compass by which we operate as political actors. I doesn't just implicate policy; it brings our souls into the equation.
If someone worked or works for the Obama administration, or the Department of Justice, or any other executive branch agency, they need to remember their service as a mark of shame for the rest of their lives. Remembering how they participated in this example of how to govern is literally the least they could do for the damage they have caused. I would leave out the small number of people who are there to overtly prevent as much damage as possible, and those who resign or are fired in protest.
For the rest of the Democratic Party, well, reality is just beginning to intrude into the fantasy-land of partisans, even though the 2010 loss should have delivered a searing wake-up call to the failure Obama’s policy agenda. From 2006-2008, the Bush administration’s failures crashed down upon conservatives, and they in many ways could not cope. But their intellectual collapse was bailed out by Obama. Faux liberals are seeing their grand experiment in tatters, though right now they can only admit to feeling disappointed because the recognition that they have been swindled is far too painful. And the recognition for many of the professionals is even more difficult, because they must recognize that they have helped swindle many others and acknowledge the debt they have incurred to their victims. The signs of coming betrayal were there, but in the end it all comes down to judging people based on what they do and who they choose as opponents. And this Democratic partisans did not do, choosing instead a comfortable delusional fantasy-land where foreclosures don’t matter and theft enabled by Obama (and Clinton before him) doesn’t matter.
As Jean Paul Sartre said in his essay on Existentialism as Humanism, we are what we do and our morality is constantly on the line, to be judged by how we act, by what we choose to see and what we choose to do. As Meteor Blades put it, "Don't tell me what you believe; show me what you do and I'll tell you what you believe." And as Sartre also put it in his essay on Bad Faith, there is an elaborate mechanism by which we lie to ourselves (kind of difficult if you think about it) but that it essentially boils down to bad faith.
Getting back to an effective -- or at least moral -- approach requires casting aside comfortable illusions spoon fed to us by those with an agenda. Getting beyond denial is the first step toward recovery. Or at least recovery is impossible unless you get beyond denial. How hard is it to accept that politicians -- or at least most of them -- cynically lie. The trick is to learn to see the signs of one who doesn't.
I want to thank Matt Stoller for making it easier to do that. I will probably be looking around for other Eric Schneidermans to put my energy into this cycle. I am going to try to let hard analysis, rather than "Hope" govern what I do this time around. The stakes -- both for the country and for my soul -- are just too high this time.