March 03, 2008

Krugman on Obama - A Progressive Critique from Daily Kos

Going right to heart of it, this critique from Daily Kos of Paul Krugman's increasingly dispiriting dismissals of Barack Obama describes what I think is the real conflict in the Democratic Party right now: progressive democracy vs. representative corporatism, to coin a phrase.

The argument is that an ostensibly more aggressive health care plan is more corporatist is terms of a philosophy of power, and is a primary division between Clinton and Obama; a more glaring example, in my view, is that Obama makes a return to constitutional control a priority, whereas Clinton has not fought hard to limit executive power. Far from it, on occasion.

Here too, Clinton is arguing only for the substance of policy. Obama is arguing for policy proceeding from much more strongly democratic view of power. In civil liberties this has been my point for some years - as brilliant as the Constitution is, the history shows that when the democratic values of the people are divorced from power, or when the values erode, the law tends hierachical, or now, even fascistic.

Start with the Bill of Rights, and convince Americans through endless concentrations of social, political, and financial power that they have no real voice in their own lives. The result is...mere words.

The core of the cure is revitalization of the democracy, in values, form, and law. The very test of leadership now is to bring Americans toward broad involvement in their government, not merely organizing them for collective adoration of a wise leader and her wise policies.

Obama, I believe, is demonstrating this capability now. His skill has been to locate and touch off the loaded spring of Americans' instinct for active involvement in the democracy.

1 Comments:

Blogger The Front said...

A little speculative poli sci here:

All leaders are elected by promising authenticity, popular subsidies, and/or freedom.

Authenticity is the best-seller. Your big-time nationalists - deGaulle, Reagan, Hitler - sold people an image of their nation, and positioned themselves not just as leaders, but as flame-keepers. Obama can do this. McCain maybe can do it. Hillary can't.

Popular subsidies are your next-best wheeze. A chicken in every pot. A tax cut. Health care for all, or even Mike Gravel's inspired 'Peoples' Wage'. The Republicans have made big hay by selling authenticity with one hand and taking away subsidies with the other. McCain offers nothing here - no taxes left to cut. But neither does Hillary. She was a big sponsor of your new and regressive bankruptcy law, and when she had a chance to craft national health care, she blew it. It's sad but true - we just can't count on her to give us stuff. (And, having served on Wal-Mart's board, I'm not sure she's really ok with taking money away from rich people.) I don't know about Obama, but I think, deep down in his heart, he wants to take money from rich people and give it to us.

That leaves freedom. People do seem to want it. Neither McCain nor Hillary have done much to promote it during their careers. Obama's limited time in office works for him here, but he signed the Freedom Pledge and Hillary didn't. So I guess he's more for freedom than she is.

If you're scoring at home, that's Obama 3, McCain 1, Hillary 0.

March 3, 2008 at 10:31 PM  

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