Obama-22
By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com
Yossarian, the protagonist of Joseph Heller’s classic 1961 novel Catch-22, is a bombardier on a U.S. B-25 Army air force plane during World War II. The life expectancy of aviators flying such combat missions was not long. But Yossarian is desperate to stay alive. And there is only one way to get out of flying: being declared insane. But, as always in the Army, there is a catch. The catch, in this case Catch # 22, holds that anyone who claims to be crazy (and thereby would avoid combat and be sent home) must be, in reality, very sane indeed.
The dilemmas faced by President Barack Obama since taking office in early 2009 have resembled a series of Catch 22s. Saddled with the Bush legacy of two disastrous wars, a financial system on the brink of collapse, and an enormous budget deficit borne of huge military spending and gigantic tax cuts to the very rich, Obama had his work cut out for him from the outset. In addition, he had to deal with a united and recalcitrant Republican Party in Congress, a party determined to destroy his presidency at almost any cost. Add to this the fierce hostility of Fox News (the most viewed cable television network in the country), the smears of the plethora of right-wing radio demagogues, and the hatred of the Tea Party crowd, and you have the makings of very challenging presidency.
The president has tried to navigate too carefully through these mine fields. Obama’s response to the chicanery on Wall Street that brought the economy to its knees should have been to use the enormous political capital that he earned through his resounding electoral victory to rally the American people against the bankers and speculators. Instead, he chose to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer money to rescue the culprits without making them pay a price proportionate to their recklessness. Making sure that the government (i.e. the American taxpayer) covered Goldman Sachs and other banks for every penny they had gambled away is not why we elected Barack Obama.
But here’s the catch. If Obama had played hard ball with Wall Street, the claque of Republican and free lance right-wingers who, despite the largesse extended by Obama to Wall Street, accuse him of being a socialist or even a communist, would have even more ammunition to attack the president. And the corporate sector, empowered by a recent Supreme Court decision that allows business to spend as much money as it wants on political campaigns, would have gone after Obama and the Democrats with a special vengeance. As it is, Obama’s infrequent rhetorical attacks against the excesses of casino capitalism, and his modest reform of the financial system, have earned him a reputation of being “hostile to business” and have won him the enmity of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
When the depth of the economic crisis became clear, Obama should have fought for a much larger stimulus than the almost $800 billion that was eventually approved. But, had Obama proposed a stimulus large enough to ensure the economy would create enough jobs to reduce unemployment, he probably would have been blocked by a coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats in Congress and been branded as a free-spending ultra-liberal in the process.
The irony is that, as much as Obama has tried to chart a pragmatic, moderately liberal course on almost every issue, he has been vehemently attacked by the right anyway. Obama, like FDR, helped save the capitalist system from its own excesses. For his troubles, he has been called a communist and a socialist. But, unlike Obama, FDR said he welcomed the hatred of his capitalist detractors, and he rallied the masses. Obama has tried to reason with big business and convince them that his policies would in the end benefit them as well; a win-win proposition. But big business has not been persuaded.
The reality is that the Obama administration’s attempts to rise above partisanship and carry out a virtually post-political presidency have been politically disastrous. We have not arrived at the end of history: political battles and class conflict are the only way to bring real change. Obama’s approach, whether by choice or necessity, has tended to embolden his enemies and discourage his friends. The president has been ensnared in one Catch-22 after another.
Today, the president’s approval ratings are barely above 40 percent. If Obama is to avoid being a one-term president, he must perform a minor miracle in the last two years of his presidency: to escape from the traps in his path in order to find a way to recapture the support of the majority of the American people by reducing unemployment significantly and fulfilling the promises he has made: to promulgate a humane immigration law, to close Guantánamo, to end the human rights abuses of the Bush administration, and to change the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy in the military.
