Obama’s Oddly Conservative Codas

Obama’s Oddly Conservative Codas. By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive, February 25, 2009

Did Obama really have to say that he didn’t believe in bigger government? He’s in the midst of a tough ideological battle with the Republicans, and he just surrendered an enormous amount of territory.

I watched Obama’s speech, and I was impressed with his performance and his command, and with some—but only some—of what he had to say.

I liked his call to bold action, but his defense of government intervention in the economy was neither as fulsome nor as persuasive as the one offered at his first press conference.

In his speech, he gave a quick tour of previous positive public interventions, and concluded, “Government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise.”

Well, that’s not exactly true. During World War II, it basically ran the economy. And, anyway, should government’s only role be to catalyze capitalism?

Plus, did Obama really have to say that he didn’t believe in bigger government?
He’s in the midst of a tough ideological battle with the Republicans, and he just surrendered an enormous amount of territory.

Likewise, he didn’t need to propose, in his recovery plan, and then stress, in his speech, that 90 percent of the jobs he creates will be “in the private sector.” Those will be largely nonunion jobs, and less secure ones, at that.

Nor did he have to reiterate his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. That’s precisely the wrong thing to do in the Great Recession. He will either accomplish this goal and kill off the recovery, or fail to meet the goal he foolishly set for himself.

And while he had the cutting knife in his hand, he menaced Social Security with it.

He sang some populist notes, like talking tough with bankers, though he didn’t propose the obvious solution, nationalization. How could he, with his paeans to the private sector?

He also put as much blame on the American people for overspending and overbuying, as he did on the banks for swindling them and then gambling on their securitized mortgages.

He played to the stands when he repeated his lecture to parents to turn off the TV and read to their children. In a line that Ronald Reagan could have uttered, he said, “There is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father” who is involved with their kids.

Though his agenda was liberal and ambitious in some places, his coda was too often oddly conservative.