by Frank James
Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson has a column under the provocative headline: “The Obama Delusion.” In it he argues that not enough attention has been paid by us in the media to this: when you cut through all of the senator from Illinois’s soaring rhetoric, Sen. Barack Obama is a fairly doctrinaire liberal Democrat pushing rather mainstream ideas.
Chalk up another win for Obama in his effort to capture a bit of that John F. Kennedy image for himself because one of the nation’s leading JFK experts, historian Robert Dallek, makes a similar point to Samuelson’s, only about the 35th president in his book “An Unfinished Life:John F. Kennedy.”
But back to Samuelson. He writes this of Obama:
The subtext of Obama’s campaign is that his own life narrative—to become the first African American president, a huge milestone in the nation’s journey from slavery—can serve as a metaphor for other political stalemates. Great impasses can be broken with sufficient goodwill, intelligence and energy. “It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white,” he says. Along with millions of others, I find this a powerful appeal.
But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation’s ills. The task requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.
By Obama’s own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans “are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change,” he recently said. Shortly thereafter he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points that, among other things, would:
Provide a $1,000 tax cut for most two-earner families ($500 for singles).
Create a $4,000 refundable tuition tax credit for every year of college.
Expand the child-care tax credit for people earning less than $50,000 and “double spending on quality after-school programs.”
Enact an “energy plan” that would invest $150 billion in 10 years to create a “green energy sector.”
Whatever one thinks of these ideas, they’re standard goody-bag politics: something for everyone. They’re so similar to many Clinton proposals that her campaign put out a news release accusing Obama of plagiarizing. With existing budget deficits and the costs of Obama’s “universal health plan,” the odds of enacting his full package are slim.
Now, let’s transport ourselves nearly 50 years into the past. Here’s how Dallek describes the political positions of JFK in 1960 when he was a presidential candidate whose official campaign biographer called him a “new kind of liberal.”
A lack of clear definition, however, made Kennedy’s “new” liberalism suspect. Indeed, the details of his domestic program sounded much like the old liberalism or little different from what Progressive Democrats were advocating in 1960: “comprehensive housing legislation… a ten-point ‘bill of rights’ for improved living standards for older people… [a] bill to outlaw the bombing of homes, churches, schools, and community centers”; anti-lynching and anti-poll tax bills; a higher minimum wage; and an end to loyalty oaths.
On foreign and defense policies as well, Kennedy seemed to be treading on familiar ground. True, he called for fresh thinking about Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, emphasizing economic assistance, but a focus on military strength and the ” ‘magic power’ on our side [of] the desire of every person to be free, of every nation to be independent” gave little indication of just how he might turn the Cold War in a new direction.
So while Kennedy offered himself as the candidate of change when he talked in 1960 of a “new generation of leadership” he could’ve just as easily been accused by Samuelson of dispensing little more than “standard goody bag politics” as well.
Samuelson also faults Obama for not telling voters the hard truths they need to hear, even though the lawmaker from Illinois says that’s exactly what Americans need.
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A favorite Obama line is that he will tell “the American people not just what they want to hear but what we need to know.” Well, he hasn’t so far. Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: “Spending for retirees—mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem.”
Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to “protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries.” This isn’t “change”; it’s sanctification of the status quo. He would also exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax. By his math, that would provide average tax relief of $1,400 to 7 million retirees—shifting more of the tax burden onto younger workers. Obama’s main proposal for Social Security is to raise the payroll tax beyond the present $102,000 ceiling.
Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscuration. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it’s his standard and also his campaign’s central theme. He has run on the vague promise of “change,” but on issue after issue—immigration, the economy, global warming—he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.
The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media—preoccupied with the political “horse race”—have treated his invocation of “change” as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation’s major problems when, so far, he isn’t.
Hold on one second, pilgrim. Isn’t it arguable that a candidate like McCain who has made his reputation for straight-talk central to his campaign (the Straight-Talk Express) should be held to the same high standard as Obama? We haven’t heard McCain talking much about tax increases or benefit cuts. How is it that Samuelson’s willing to give McCain such a easy pass?
And what about Clinton who has been fond of saying “let’s get real” lately as a way to distinguish herself from her Democratic opponent who she fondly wishes voters would see the way she sees him, as sort of a fantasy candidate from Oratory land? Doesn’t her desire to keep it real mean Samuelson should apply the same standard to her?
Again, Kennedy wasn’t much into telling voters what they didn’t want to hear, either. There aren’t many successful politicians in democracies who are.
Walter Mondale tried that in 1984 when he told America that either he or President Ronald Reagan, the incumbent White House occupant that year, would have to raise taxes, the difference being, Mondale said, that he was saying it publicly while Reagan wouldn’t.
Mondale went on to lose in a landslide, winning only his own state of Minnesota. So much for telling voters hard truths. By the way, Reagan did raise taxes after that election by signing the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Anyway, Kennedy knew what Obama does too, that the angry murmuring that would ensue if a politician vowed to cut Americans’ Social Security benefits or raise taxes doesn’t mean voters don’t want to be challenged to lift their sights.
When Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination in 1960, he spoke to this desire among voters. Kennedy said, as excerpted by Dallek:
The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises. It is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people but what I intend to ask of them… Can a nation organized and governed such as our endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will?… Are we up to the task? Are we equal to the challenge?…
Here is Obama from last night in Houston, speaking to a similar desire more 47 years later:
It will not be easy but at some point in our lives we all have to decide as hard as it’s going to be, we are going to join together, lock arms, and go about the difficult but noble task of remaking this nation, block by block, county by county, state by state. Houston, this is our moment. This is our time….
So presidential candidates can challenge voters so long as they don’t do anything politically suicidal like telling them their taxes will be going up or their Social Security checks will be going down.