Reality Sets In

I have to admit…I am disappointed, disappointed on two fronts. First, I am disappointed in myself for a certain puerile naiveté, for awhile there I actually believed. I thought that this man, Barack Hussein Obama, really represented something, that he could spur a sea change in American politics. That his foreign policy would not just be drastically different from what we usually are forced to swallow, that his entire presidency would be, in a word, transformative. I drank the kool aid for a couple of months and I credulously accepted the campaign line, that an Obama presidency would usher in a new dispensation, an epochal change, in America and consequently the face of global politics. So, secondly I am disappointed in Sen. Barack Obama.

This was to be expected, as the general election draws near Obama will be forced to move to the center. His campaign strategy has been Nixonian, placate the party basis (the left in this case) in the primary and utilize a more centrist inclination in the general election. This is all well and good, but Obama is going too far in an effort to prove that he is not a paragon of the left, a Muslim, or whatever other accusation happens to be tossed up at him at the time, Obama is offering up a steady diet of policy proposals and soundbytes that seem counter-intuitive to the fundamental theme of his campaign. “Change”

Just a few examples

Obama’s recent betrayal on the FISA bill, which gives the State access to all internal and external communications WITHOUT a warrant. Discussing the bill, Obama essentially regurgitated Bush talking points verbatim, ““Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay”. Obama is pandering in an effort to bolster his much maligned national security credentials. Unfortunately, he is either overlooking or completely ignoring the unconstitutionality of the bill and the miniscule amount of oversight it actually allows for.

In recent campaign adds he has also called for a reduction of welfare in favor of the classic, “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” , ideology of the right. Again and again his postions seem to be shifting to the right.

Obama is already starting to slowly back down on his commitment to troop reductions, no longer committing to the precipitous one brigade (10,000 soldiers) he was calling for during the primary. In one of the debates he even said that he would send troops into Pakistan without the consent of the Pakistani authorities, if there was “actionable intellingence”. This is redolent of neocon policy, where America and America alone has the right to make decisions, a policy that violates the entire international structure, which is based on the sovereignty of individual nation-states.

Now my next example isnt really Obama moving to the center so much. Obama is clearly (over)emphasizing his Christianity in an attempt to make it clear that he is not one of those Mohammedans. In a speech a few days ago he called for a reinvigoration of the failed “Faith-Based Initiative” Bush policy. This “Faith-Based Initiative”, or whatever appellation the Obama campaign wants to call it, is eerily similar to Bush’s plan and brings back some of the same fundamental and philosophical questions about the American system of governance. In other words, is this a betrayal of separation of church and state? In every speech Obama is constantly talking about finding God, his conversion to Christianity, Jesus this and Jesus that. Barack, I get it, you are a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N.

A few weeks ago, Obama staffers would not let two girls, wearing hijabs, into a speech that Obama gave in Detroit. And lets not forget Obama’s performance at the AIPAC conference a month ago. It was here that he had the chutzpah to espouse a more radical, Likudnut pro-Israel policy than any American President, including Bush, the most pro-Israel president in American history, ever has. He referred to Jerusalem as the, “eternal and undivided capital of Israel”, an assertion that stands in stark contrast to U.N. resolutions 242 and 338 and is, frankly, absurdly fatuous. The fecklessness of this comment is mind-boggling. It is generally recognized, except by the extremists on both sides, that there will be some type of dual sovereignty arrangement over Jerusalem. Obama has gone a long way from rubbing elbows with Edward Said and Ali Abunimah at dinners in Chicago. In the fall of 2007, in a campaign stop in Iowa Obama said that, “the palestinians are suffering”, a rather innocuous and fairly obvious statement to anyone with a semi-operative brain, and he was summarily excoriated. He simply doesn’t seem to give a damn about the Palestinians anymore, as he daily bends down and genuflects before the right-wing Israeli lobby establishment. If Obama is going to bridge the divide between the Muslim world and the United States he is rapidly heading in the wrong direction as he begins to seem more like your average American politician vomitting out pejorative phrases like “Jihadist” and “Islamofacist” everyday.

Unfortunately, the alternative is worse. McCain, has not followed the Nixonian strategy at all, he favors Karl Rove’s strategy. McCain moves more to the right everyday, completely eschewing his “independent-minded” and “maverick” image in favor of reinstituting failed Bush policies. It seems like everyday McCain is changing his mind about something.

There is no doubt in my mind if Obama were elected, it would help to curb global anti-American sentiment. However, the change would be cosmetic, not transformative. In America, a country so imbued with racial tensions, with a copious history of tenuous race relations, the election of a black man would certainly help to futher remove us from a rather checkered and in many cases immoral past. Yet, I doubt any substantive difference in America domestic or international policy would take place.

I don’t entirely blame Obama for this, some of it is a product of the American political system which at its core is conservative, in the Burkean, or even Aristotlean, sense. In other words, America is an essentially status quo society in which “change” generally manifests in incremental, piecemeal steps. No one president will ever have the ability to transform the American system. Maybe he can change this…but, I am very dubious.