[Marxism] Obama and future of U.S. politics

["Dayne Goodwin" <daynegoodwin@xxxxxxxxx>]

Znet book interview: Demystifying Obama
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18670

Paul Street, Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers, 2008)

ISBN: 978-1-59451-631-3

URL: www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=186987





1. Can you tell ZNet, please, what "Barack Obama and the Future of American
Politics" is about? What is it trying to communicate?

. . .

My book situates Obama firmly within the United States' longstanding
corporate-dominated and militaristic U.S elections system and political
culture. It provides an overdue in-depth investigation from the left of the
Obama phenomenon's substantive content and limits in relation to corporate
power (a key subject in Chapter 1), class inequality (also in Chapter 1),
institutional racism (Chapter 3), and imperial U.S. foreign policy (Chapter
4)...



I find that the Obama campaign epitomizes three core essences of American
politics:  (1) "the manipulation of populism by elitism" (the still-Left
Christopher Hitchens' phrase in 1999); (2) the privileging of
corporate-crafted, mass marketed candidate image (branding) over substantive
matters of policy and ideology; (3) the absence of serious left options
within the American "winner-take-all" party system.



"Brand Obama," I argue, is no special exception to the basic essence of
American presidential politics. Every four years, many Americans invest
their hopes and dreams in an electoral process that does not deserve their
trust. These voters hope that a savior can be installed in the White House -
someone who will raise wages, roll back war and militarism, provide
universal and adequate health care, rebuild the nation's infrastructure,
produce high-paying jobs, fix the environmental crisis, reduce inequality,
guarantee economic security, and generally make daily life more livable.



The dreams are regularly drowned in the icy waters of historical and
political "reality."  In the actuality of American politics and policy, the
officially "electable" candidates are vetted in advance by what Laurence H.
Shoup calls "the hidden primary of the ruling class."  By prior
Establishment selection, all of the "viable" presidential contenders are
closely tied to corporate and military-imperial power in numerous and
interrelated ways.  They run safely within the narrow ideological and policy
parameters set by those who rule behind the scenes to make sure that the
rich and privileged continue to be the leading beneficiaries of the American
system.

. . .

I should add that the book's introduction gives a short history of exactly
how Obama came to be an "overnight" sensation.  It traces Obama's career
from his short community organizing period through his early vetting (in
late 2003 and early 2004) by the national political, business, and lobbying
class, his celebrated (and militantly centrist)Keynote Address to the 2004
Democratic Convention and the publication of his second book ("The Audacity
of Hope"), which kicked off his presidential campaign in late 2006.



Last but not least, my book suggests ways in which left progressives and
others might respond productively to both the limits and the opportunities
of the Obama phenomenon.

 . . .

At the same time, my book cautiously holds out the possibility that the
Obama phenomenon could help (in Charles Derber's words on the back of the
book) "oxygenate the grassroots movements that are the true architects of
change."  It cautiously recommends that voters select Obama to block the
dangerous and extremist John McCain in contested states, though I must add
that I penned this advice before Obama lurched further to the right in
dramatic ways during July and August of 2008.

. . .

(2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the
content come from? What went into making the book what it is?

 . . .

...I have been in good places to see the rise of Obama up close. I was an
urban social policy researcher producing project studies on various Illinois
issues Obama deliberated upon (chiefly campaign finance and welfare
"reform") in the Illinois state legislature during the late 1990s.



Between 2000 and 2005, I was the research director at a predominantly black
civil rights and social service agency located in the historical heart of
Chicago's South Side black ghetto.  I occasionally worked with black
legislators and had some very marginal involvement with state senator Obama.
I organized a fall 2002 conference where he spoke on incarceration and job
issues, referring to a study I did on racially disparate mass imprisonment
and felony-marking. I managed a project study (on school technology) he
funded through the state.



I knew the Obama phenomenon before it hit the national scene and I knew it
from within the black community (white though I may be), where it was common
to see Obama as excessively "bourgeois" and as too close to the Chicago
(Richard M. Daley) Machine and to other centers of white, political,
corporate, and academic power.

. . .

(3) What are your hopes for Barack Obama and the Future of American
Politics?  What do you hope it will contribute or achieve politically? Given
the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a
success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would
leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?



I hope this book will help citizens and activists shed illusions about
Obama's "progressive" claims.  I hope it will spark them to remember that
Democratic Party politicians and presidents soften their attachment to
capitalism and war only when challenged (as in the 1930s and 1960s) by
popular rebellion from below. I hope it will encourage readers to
differentiate between (i) the secondary question of how to respond to the
limited "choices" offered by the corporate-managed electoral "democracy" and
(ii) the more urgent problem of rebuilding and expanding grass roots social
movements and changing the political culture across and between election
cycles.  I hope it will help clarify critical differences between (i) Obama
and the Democratic Party's persistent corporate-imperial centrism and (ii)
an actual Left, true-progressive change agenda.  If Obama wins, I hope my
book will encourage an organized and outraged citizenry to put regular
powerful and guilt-free pressure on an Obama White House and (more
significantly) to develop alternative popular power centers and democratic
capacities beneath and beyond electoral politics.  I hope it will help
readers understand a President Obama's likely "progressive" failures and
betrayals in light of his repeatedly demonstrated allegiance to dominant
domestic and imperial hierarchies and doctrines.



John McCain is a profoundly dangerous presidential candidate representing an
extremist, arch-plutocratic and messianic-militarist party.  Still, Obama is
attractive to a large section of the U.S. power elite because he promises to
pacify and co-opt angry citizens and activists and re-establish confidence
in the legitimacy of the current political order by reinforcing the argument
that "the system" still "works."



Our current corporate-managed and imperial democracy doesn't work for any
but the privileged Few. It is a grave threat to human survival and peace and
justice at home and abroad. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right forty years
ago when he called for the "radical reconstruction" of society and the
"radical redistribution of political and economic power" in the U.S...



If Obama loses, and he could (racism would be the main reason, I think), it
will be important for progressively inclined citizens and activists to
understand that it was corporate-imperial centrism, not the Left and not the
People, that got defeated. They must not interpret an Obama defeat to mean
that the People and/or the Left tried and failed and that it is therefore
okay for them to give up and retreat into private experience and concerns.
If he wins, citizens and activists need to understand the severe limits of
what triumphed and be prepared to fight and organize on a daily basis
beneath and beyond quadrennial candidate-centered and corporate-crafted
election spectacles.
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