Professor Richard Wolff: Poor Polls and Obama's Missed Opportunity

[marmar]

Poor Polls and Obama's Missed Opportunity

Thursday, 07 August 2014 00:00
By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | Op-Ed

What if President Obama had rejected conventional political advice and pushed for a new New Deal? What if an effective nonaligned left had pushed for such a program, economist Richard D. Wolff asks.

Once upon a time, long ago in America, another president was elected just as a major economic crisis was deepening fast. Like Barack Obama in 2008, Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 was a typically centrist Democrat. His past, too, offered little reason to expect that he would deviate from the conventional politics that got him the presidency. Moreover, both presidents' conventional advisers and political friends argued against anything other than the usual government response to capitalist economies' recurring downturns.

The advisers' argument was simple and direct. You must wait out the crisis and NOT have government interfere much (after initial emergency government bailouts of failed big corporations). Large corporations, the business community generally, and those they have made rich prefer that course of (in)action. Once the initial emergency is past, they have the resources to wait out the crisis in comfort while grabbing crisis-distressed assets at bargain prices. Most hate the idea of being taxed to pay for taking care of "bums and the unfortunate." In their minds, a government that taxes capital to support labor thereby opens the door to ever more state interventions and ultimately to "socialism." Conventional advisers insist that state interventions (eg., deficit-boosting fiscal stimulus programs, welfare supports to people struggling with unemployment, minimum wage increases, etc.) and socialism only hurt those they claim to help. They repeat as absolute truth the idea that capitalism heals itself better than any government intervention could. They conveniently forget those initial bailouts by the government.

If politicians disobey this conventional advice, corporations, business and the rich will abandon them in favor of their political competitors. Such politicians then lose to those competitors, who in turn, either follow the conventional advice or else they lose too. The lesson: To disregard the conventional advice is to commit political suicide. That threat is always part of the conventional advice, explicitly or implicitly. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/25378-poor-polls-and-obamas-missed-opportunity

[scarletwoman]

1. K&R

I have quite a few thoughts on this, but I have an injured tendon in my wrist and the pain is too distracting - not to mention, it hurts to type. Here's a kick, at least...

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. Professor Wolff ...

I love your "what if" ... but should that start with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/73rd_United_States_Congress ?

[KeepItReal]

3. President Obama does not want to be on Mt. Rushmore

If he'd gone all FDR, I'd be leading the charge to get him up there.

Instead he went Pro Wall Street, no accountability for Bush & Co., etc.

The President will retire a rich man, with a decent reputation - just not a great one like FDR.

Maybe we'll get an Elizabeth Warren/Howard Dean/Elliott Spitzer in the White House someday.

That'll give the GOP something to be mad at for real - instead of the gentleman whose most admired political figure is Ronald Reagan.