Barack Obama is a centrist, trying to move the center left, defending it against the right. Health care reform has been his great legislative “left moving” achievement. Though far from perfect, he established the principle of universal coverage.
In the past months, he has been primarily on defense, fighting back against the Republican attack on government. Obama is not a left-winger, to the dismay of many on the blogosphere. He is now defending a new center, which he helped establish, against right-wing attack.
The opening shot of the attack was the Tea Party protest against the bank bailout, the stimulus package, and “Obamacare.” In the recent elections, Obama and the Democrats suffered a defeat, a “shellacking” as he put it. But now as we are approaching the main event, the Republican attack has taken the form of Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.
William Milberg asserted here that with this proposal the President is just about assured re-election. I have talked to a number of friends and colleagues about this. Their response, put bluntly: “from his mouth, to God’s ears.” But just perhaps, God won’t have anything to do with it. Perhaps, it will be a matter of leadership and political direction, along with the political economic fundamentals Milberg highlighted. The quality of the leadership was revealed in Obama’s speech on the deficit yesterday.
In his speech, the President was forthright in his rhetoric and policy recommendations. He addressed the problems of the deficit, emphasizing that deficit reduction will require taxing as well as cuts in spending. He drew a sharp distinction between his and the Republican plans. The contrast was stark. The political thrust of the speech was clear.
Obama and the Democrats promise to defend Medicare and Medicaid, while the Republicans will dismantle them. The Ryan budget provides many tax advantages for the rich, while what they present means that “50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit.”
As the President declared:
“And worst of all, this is a vision that says even though Americans can’t afford to invest in education at current levels, or clean energy, even though we can’t afford to maintain our commitment on Medicare and Medicaid, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy. Think about that.”
What was most compelling about the speech was the way he turned the budget debate into a debate about American character.
“The America I know is generous and compassionate. It’s a land of opportunity and optimism. Yes, we take responsibility for ourselves, but we also take responsibility for each other; for the country we want and the future that we share. We’re a nation that built a railroad across a continent and brought light to communities shrouded in darkness. We sent a generation to college on the GI Bill and we saved millions of seniors from poverty with Social Security and Medicare. We have led the world in scientific research and technological breakthroughs that have transformed millions of lives. That’s who we are. This is the America that I know. We don’t have to choose between a future of spiraling debt and one where we forfeit our investment in our people and our country.”
The President continued his important project as “Storyteller in Chief,” in reinventing American political culture, telling a convincing story that presents an alternative to the Reagan mantra, that “government is not the solution to our problem, it is the problem.” Obama is joining the debate as he formulated it in the past election campaign. The immediate conflict is about the budget, taxing and spending. But it is a conflict about two visions of America.
The upcoming Presidential elections will involve many twists and turns. But it will be in the end a choice between these two visions. The election will be in Obama’s power zone. It will be a battle about the American center. To paraphrase and reverse a great American conservative politician, the late Barry Goldwater, extremism in the defense of liberty will be a vice.
You’re kidding, right? Capitulation to bat-crazy right wingers is not vision.
It seems to me that one valuable thing sociologists can contribute to this discussion is to define clearly what is meant by “left,” “right,” and “center.” (Or at least to raise questions about how these terms are and/or should be defined.) Are these terms relative or absolute? Do they refer to both economic and social policies? Should all kinds of policies be lumped together into a single left-right position, or do we need multiple axes?
The idea of storytelling is very interesting as well, and I agree that this is one of the most important elements of a president’s job. However, I wonder whether we should be paying more attention to the story that comes out of Obama’s mouth or the storyline that is implicit in the policies he promotes. In this case, he has implicitly (and even explicitly) accepted the Republican story about the need for austerity measures at a time of high unemployment and general economic slump. This is part of a larger narrative that says government cutbacks are good for growth and that the deficit is the biggest economic problem we face right now. I’m not sure that talking about compassion is enough to overcome that. But I’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts.
For some reason there are certain narratives, as erroneous as they sometimes are, that never seem to lose their appeal. Just like the myths about the “free-market,the “tax cuts for the rich will create economic growth and jobs” narrative is one of these. Certainly the national debt is problem, but collective delusions are perhaps even more so, especially when they have the force of billions of dollars behind them. Yet certainly, the choices are more nuanced than between fact and delusion, and in a democracy the “center” often becomes the most feasible option, but I nonetheless don’t think its the best one right now and like other I am certainly peeved that Obama will not take a more principled stand on the issues this country faces even as the Republican opposition for 2012 currently looks anemic at best.
President Obama presented a factual and necessary message to the nation. There are serious economic issues to be addressed. That idea is not an invention of the Conservative Right and it is a situation acknowledged by Democrats. The differences are in what the approach should be to mitigate the problem. I say mitigate because “solution” is not an appropriate term to apply to it here. A solution in any meaningfully short time frame would demand such an upset to the lives of almost all Americans that it is totaly impractical. President Obama’s plan recognizes that. He proposes budgets and taxes that slowly tapers things down and achieves balance at some point in a relatively distant future. He recognizes that a slashed budget while the nation faces a host of demanding economic needs is not a strategy that is in the best interest of middle and low income America. The Paul Ryan plan discounts those needs and sets out to more quickly achieve vastly reduced budgets, and to do contemprously withthout any increase in taxes. That strategy is something that upper income people can live with because they have the financial circumstances to absorb the increased costs that come from less government support of social needs. Middle and low income people will be devastated, but that is not all. A large segment of the national infrastructure will be allowed to deteriorate in ways that will impact negatively on the quality of life for everyone.
This is the classical socio-economic and socio-political debate that has been waged in all civilizations for centuries. It hinges on whether one believes that government can be a positive force in economic affairs bearing on social justice, or that all government intervention in economic matters works to the detriment of social justice, i.e. society looses its freedoms and economies falter. Conservatives of the far right regard almost all government as useless. Progressives of the far left look to government as the only means for assuring social justice for all. There are moderates who feel there is a role for government somewhere in the middle of these extremens; but unfortunately, they seem to be less willing to make their feelings known than the extremists in the debate.
Unless the moderates take charge and overule the demands of the extremists, by voting the relevant measures in Congress to implement a reasonable correction that steers a mid course through the stormy economic waters, the grand ship of this state could actually sink. Time is short for doing this. This is not an issue to be debated as opposing ideologies or for reasons of political party loyalty and campaign positioning for 2012. This is an issue for pragmatic and reasonable decision making and to do it now in the best interest of the country over all. President Obama is proposing that. All citizens should support him.