Bush brings socialism to citadel of capitalism

BY MARTIN SCHRAM

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/380223_schramonline24.html

It was a true September Surprise. A calamitous financial crisis that not only toppled Wall Street's corporate icons and sent global markets plummeting but may have given Barack Obama's seemingly mired campaign the one thing he may never have secured on his own: victory.
Among Obama's most effective helpers was John McCain. The Republican presidential candidate responded to the crisis' first burst of pressure with tough-talk -- a calculated but wrong-headedly furious call for the firing of little-known Chris Cox as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, charging he had betrayed the public trust. McCain's response was so lacking in judgment that he was pilloried by his natural party pillars.
The Wall Street Journal editorialized that McCain's call was "false and deeply unfair" and "unpresidential." Conservative columnist George Will questioned whether McCain's "boiling moralism and boundless reservoir of certitudes" meant he was "not suited to the presidency."
But before we get to the presidential politics of it all -- and opine on outcomes we won't know until America votes -- we need to take note of a mind-boggling truth that has become self-evident only in the past few days. A new chapter of the presidential legacy of George W. Bush has now become clear: He, of all people, will inevitably go down as the president who brought socialism to the citadel of capitalism -- Wall Street.
The now necessary federal bailout of the banks and investment entities is the sort of big government effort that often has been labeled by the political right as socialism -- also, welfare -- when it has been proposed for the have-nots. Now that it is being proposed for the have-lots, it must be called the same -- and indeed, that too has come to pass.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., called the Bush administration's $700 billion bailout plan "economic socialism ... it's un-American!" (I think I hear your mind boggling even as we speak. But hold on, for it gets curiouser and curiouser.) The case can be made that this is more rare than anything envisioned by Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas, back when they ran for the presidency as Socialist Party candidates in America's past.
For the case can be made that this bailout of the bankers will be seen as the Czar's own Socialist Revolution. After all, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's original three-page remedy gave him unfettered powers to bail out the banks and investment entities holding shaky mortgages -- without review by Congress, the courts or regulators. Legislators from both parties warned that he would be acting as "a czar."
This has been a rare burst of bipartisanship -- it has been hard to separate the far left from the far right. Try it yourself:
One senator said: "If the government is going to get into the bailout business, shouldn't we also be focusing our resources on average Americans, rather than sophisticated and well-compensated bankers? The Treasury's plan has little for those outside of the financial industry. It is aimed at rescuing the same financial institutions that created this crisis with their sloppy underwriting and reckless disregard for the risks they were creating, taking, or passing on to others. Wall Street bet that the government would rescue them if they got into trouble. It appears that bet may be the one that pays off."
Another senator said: "Whatever we do, we have to insist that those who created the scandal do not benefit from the bailout. No golden parachutes. Let them feel the hard landing that my constituents faced when they were laid off from Bethlehem Steel. Let them feel the hard landing of knowing what it's like to have your home foreclosed upon. ... We do not need to subsidize bad behavior."
The first quote was Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., a leading conservative. The second was Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., a prominent liberal.

Obama’s Hairy Struggle - Geoff Elliott

From The Australian - 14 July 2008.
(http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/geoffelliott/index.php/theaustralian/comments/obamas_hairy_struggle/)


BARACK Obama might be a political candidate for the times, appealing to an ideologically ambiguous internet generation, but he will not escape the culture wars of the 1960s easily.
The battles of yore keep popping up in this 40th anniversary of the biggest year in US culture wars, when the shape of modern US politics and its players were forged. In 1968, the civil rights and ideological battles reached a nadir when leaders Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated.

Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, tries to fly above the fray, vowing to move the US beyond those fights and establish a “new kind of politics”.

Jesse Jackson, the leading civil rights activist of that era, this week let slip into a microphone what he thought of Obama’s post-ideological appeal. He wants to “cut his nuts off”.

Obama, 46, is attempting to appeal across the US’s racial milieu, and key to his message is to talk straight to African-American men, saying they share a responsibility in the social ills that affect the black community.

It’s the antithesis of the Jackson message. He attributes the problems of high crime rates among blacks to the country’s slave-trading past, poverty and the bloody struggle for rights.

But Jackson’s whisper that turned into a roar this week was just another example of US leaders fixated on the cultural battles that were waged so intently 40 years ago. Not just civil rights, but also the anti-war era and advent of ultra-liberalism that found its expression in free love and drugs and the Woodstock phenomenon.

Republican candidate John McCain, 71, is making the ‘60s a centrepiece of his campaign. He makes much of his failure to attend the 1969 Woodstock festival because he was “tied up at the time”. It is a reference to more than five years in captivity during the Vietnam War.
McCain’s record as a war hero while young Americans at home went psychedelic was the message behind a campaign advertisement he launched this week.

It starts with images from the ‘60s, showing student protesters, long-haired hippies and Woodstock. Then it cuts to the famous grainy images of McCain while he was imprisoned and then of him saluting when he finally landed back on US soil. The script opens: “It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change, the summer of love. Half a world away, another kind of love, of country: John McCain, shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said: ‘No.’ He’d sworn an oath.”

Just what any of this has to do with Obama is unclear. He was six years old at the height of flower power and living in Hawaii.

But the ad attempts to make a link. The announcer says McCain will tell Americans what they need to hear. “Beautiful words will not make our lives better,” the ad says in a clear swipe at Obama’s speeches. “But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t hope for a better future, vote for one.”

Obama has tried to bury the ‘60s. To beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he cast new generational appeal. He said she would be unable to bring change, partly because “Clinton and others, they have been fighting some of the same fights since the ‘60s. And it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.”

Obama says he will reach across the aisle to bring about big changes. Rubbish. What he is banking on is big Democratic sweeps through Congress that deliver him power not only in the White House but wide majorities in the legislature as well.

Obama’s appeal should help herald those big gains. And there’s the rub. This could be the best chance the Democrats have had since the ‘60s to bring about the changes they long for, including their nirvana of government-sponsored healthcare.

Obama’s hidden message is that he wants to end the culture wars, all right: by smashing the opposition and winning them.