Hey, They're Catching On! BBC Reports that Obama Is Clintonizing

The BBC headlines a current article, "Is Obama recreating the Clinton era?" Well, clearly not the era, much as he might like to — tried and true route to reelection, if it were possible. Economic good times; a nice, continuous, low-level bombing campaign directed at a largely defenseless population to provide pretty pictures of explosions for the nightly news; undisputed American currency and business dominance.

But can't turn the clock back, can we. So Obama is settle for second best by picking up the pieces — Clintonizing — appointing a raft of Clinton people in any number of capacities. Rahm Emanuel, Robert Rubin, and even Hillary herself.

What will this get him? They lucked out the first time round. But they also laid a good deal of the groundwork for the current disaster.

Both Time and The New Yorker play on the comparisons between Obama and FDR. (Newsweek opts for a Lincoln analogy.) But as John Kenneth Galbraith noted towards the end of his life, FDR had people who approached the Depression, the reconstruction of Japan and Europe, as genuine problems to be solved. What form should a body of law take to provide a democratic foundation for a country heretofore a-democratic. How best do we deliver aid to get an economy back to health. These questions are getting little more than lip-service if the current cabinet prospects are anything to go by.

Obama is choosing idealogues who want to sound smart and inventive but will try to hammer square pegs into round holes, not least because they start from the premise that certain ideas are entirely unacceptable, or worse, reprehensible.

So just as when Hillary (before she became the craven political creature she is now) found herself gravitating towards a single-payer system as the best solution to the healthcare crisis, now the authorities, the 'experts', have already decided some solutions will be ruled out before the evidence and research is in.

This is not problem-solving. So it is bound to fail as a strategy to solve the problem

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of the State of Nature

The word is now about that Obama may name Clinton his Secretary of State, perhaps in the awful tradition of Madeleine Albright (who, some may remember, dismissed tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian fatalities as a 'necessary price' [1] during the years of Clinton bombing campaigns, little reported in the US).


In the Context of Policy

With Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel, hawk and privateer, for White House Chief of Staff, a pick of Clinton would signal just how liberal the Obama administration is not going to be. Of course, as of this writing, it's quite possible he will pick real liberals for domestic policy while adopting a hawkish stance abroad. Americans, usually conservative across the board, might like to keep the imperial foolishness abroad but adopt an FDR liberalism at home. But despite popular hopes, there is little chance of that with the likes of Austan Goolsbee or Robert Rubin or Larry Summers advising Obama on economics.

We do know one thing. In the best of times, Americans are both grossly ill-informed (thanks to the slavish and complicit media) and largely indifferent to what is happening even in Canada or Mexico, let along Iraq or the Palestinian Territories or Kashmir. Now, with the economy clearly forecasting an early fall for the American empire, Americans won't just be indifferent to foreign suffering. They will welcome a little 'entertainment' in the form of 'surgical strikes' in Afghanistan or Pakistan. (Never mind that there is simply no such thing as a surgical strike, especially when a drone is being piloted remotely from Florida or Wyoming.)

My prediction: Obama will do something akin to Clinton not long after taking office. In June of 1993, Clinton launched cruise missile attacks, ostensibly on the Iraqi Intelligence Service in Baghdad. No strategic or tactical success, but woman and children were killed, including Iraq's leading woman poet.

The George Packers and Thomas Friedmans, not to mention whole institutions like CNN, the Wall Street Journal, the Brookings Institution, will readily provide the 'intellectual' rhetoric and 'expertise' to support something like this. (I omit the Times as a wholly supportive institution because Bob Herbert, Paul Krugman, and one or two others might dissent.)


Clinton at State as a Political Strategy

The choice of Hillary to head State could also be a brilliant political move if there are any fears regarding her political plans. From the standpoint of 'keeping one's enemies closer,' it would officially make Obama Hillary Clinton's boss, so future saber-rattling by Clinton could be cast in a new light of irresponsibility. With Clinton at State in a time of international turmoil, Obama could keep her abroad for extended periods or at crucial times, hampering her ability to run domestically. Getting her out of the Senate would also limit her ability to claim credit for a role in solutions to domestic problems at a time when domestic issues are clearly trumping international ones in the eyes of American voters.


NOTES

1. Interview with Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996:

Stahl: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.