Radical? Not!

Recently, in an interview with the editors of National Review, Newt Gingrich said, among other things, the following:

If power in America continues to move away from the people, Gingrich says that the country risks “actually eliminating the uniqueness that has made America an exceptional nation. You begin drift into a world where nothing is stable.”

“The modern Left is essentially proto-totalitarian,” says Gingrich. President Obama, he says, is “an authentic representative of the intelligentsia. I think he likes Reveille for Radicals for a reason; he likes William Ayers for a reason. He didn’t notice 20 years of sermons for a reason.”

But is Obama that different from liberals like George McGovern? “Oh, yeah,” says Gingrich. “My sense is with McGovern, unequivocally, that he was a man from a different world. McGovern was a man who had grown up in pre-World War II America. And he grew up in South Dakota. Obama really grew up in the world of the modern American intelligentsia — he is a person of the left. The minute you accept that, you understand almost everything.”

Obama, Gingrich adds, “is a radical in the sense that the victory of those values would mean the end of American civilization as we know it.”

I am tempted to respond to this as the real Eugene Victor Debs might — you know, as a real radical back in the day, just to show the difference.  But even the real Eugene Debs, pride of Terra Haute, Indiana, constantly extolled the founding documents of our Republic, and believed himself to be advocating on behalf of a greater expression of American democracy and civilization, not its diminution.

How about, therefore, evaluating Obama merely on the terms that Gingrich does, within the context of American political culture today, and compared to famous leftists he cites in his discussion, George McGovern and one of Obama’s early intellectual mentors, Saul Alinsky.

Gingrich is a smart guy but, as a trained historian, (which he reminded NR he indeed is), he should avoid hyperbole.  How about a little scholarly sobriety?  Let’s look at the Obama administration briefly in the three major areas:

Foreign policy/national security:  Obama’s alternatives in Afghanistan, as he has stated are keep at least the current 68,000 troops there, or escalate with perhaps another 40,000.  Or do something in between.  Note that the proposal by George Will (Is he a radical, too?) for the withdrawal of U.S. ground troops and the mere use of drone attacks cum special forces forays isn’t even on the table. In Iraq, Obama is just completing the deal that Bush cut with the Iraqi government before he left office — American troops out by 2011.  He’s pushing a bit around the edges with Israel, but, as David Frum and others suggest, probably to no avail.  On Iran, he’s doing what most presidents would do, pushing hard on sanctions.  Which probably won’t work.  And then if Iran lies before the entire world and develops the bomb they have steadfastly denied they are even contemplating developing (first, think about the position that will put the Iranians in before the entire world), we’ll either bomb their facilities and thus, as Secretary of Defense Gates suggests, delay their program by a few years, or we won’t and move to the same kind of deterrence we practiced for decades with the Soviets and China.  Just like every other president. Some radical. (One word about Gates — a stalwart Republican, of course, for decades.  Now he serves as Obama’s top defense adviser.  Has he suddenly become a dupe of this proto-totalitarian radical?  Someone should get to Gates.  Fast.)

Oh, we’ve got about, what, 725 military bases around the world.  I don’t remember Obama announcing the closing of even one of them.  The defense budget looks pretty robust too, except for cuts in weapons systems that his Republican opponent for the presidency, John McCain, also supported.  Some radical.

Domestically: On healthcare.  No single payer plan — never even remotely considered, let alone proposed — a half-assed public option if that — basically a subsidy/regulation program which, because Obama is afraid of the one trillion sticker shock number, will only cover at most 94% of the population rather than a near universal 98%.  And nothing like essentially turning insurance companies into public utilities like in Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.  Some radical.  In short, the guts of American healthcare–the employer based system that covers 60% of Americans (a number declining rapidly however) and Medicare, the single payer system for those over 65, stay exactly the same. (The Medicare cuts are trivial as the Republicans know, most dealing with the Advantage program).  The architecture of American healthcare–for better or for worse, mostly for worse — remains intact.  Insurance companies get more customers in return for assuming entirely rational regulations.  Those customers because they cannot otherwise afford private insurance receive subsidies.  Some radical.

Regarding cap-and-trade, the best he can get through Congress is, again, some half-assed plan watered down by his own party. Now, in order to get Lindsey Graham’s vote, it will also include nuclear power and offshore drilling, both vehemently opposed by “radical” environmentalists.  This program — if implemented — still puts us behind every other advanced country in the world in addressing climate change.  Even the Chinese are now massively expanding their solar and wind programs.  Some radical.

On education, he isn’t any more radical in what he has outlined than that enacted in the comprehensive national plan that the Bush administration passed.  He could stand to be more radical, although different people would argue over what the meaning of radical would be in this context.  Gingrich himself, when not fearing that Obama will bring us the end times, met with him and… Al Sharpton in the Oval Office, and now tours the country with Sharpton on behalf of education “reform.”

On financial regulation: Barney Frank — whom the Right also believes to be a dangerous radical — has so preemptively gutted the relevant bills, in order to get Democratic support, that both Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post and Joe Nocera in the New York Times have practically laughed them off the stage.  The banking industry — which opposes even these neutered proposals — is back stronger than ever, breaking its 2007 record for bonuses, opposing even the minimal reforms, and Obama and his Democratic Congress are, apparently terrified of them.  Some radical.

On organized labor: Obama has essentially put no energy into passing the Employee Free Choice Act, which might give unions — the Democratic Party’s most stalwart interest group supporter — a chance to revive their fortunes.  The bill is twisting in the wind while Obama pays it less than lip service.  Hard to call yourself — and it should be hard for anybody else to call you — much of a radical if you don’t support a robust and resurgent labor movement.  Some radical.

On civil liberties/Gitmo type issues: Obama has followed the Bush lead more often than not.  He has thus infuriated lefty civil liberties types like David Cole and The Nation.  Some radical.

On social issues: Obama opposes gay marriage, which puts him to the right of the campaign manager of his Republican opponent in 2008 and the attorney who argued the case before the Supreme Court which ratified the victory of his Republican predecessor in 2000.  He has slow-walked repealing “don’t ask/don’t tell” despite the fact that 65-70% of Americans support its repeal in polling, and despite the fact that almost all of our allies permit openly homosexual soldiers to serve in their military.  This has infuriated the gay community. On abortion, he is conventionally pro-choice, a view he shares with about half the population.  His personal life, so far as anybody can tell, is about as “pro family” and emotionally stable as any president we have ever had.  Some radical.

And we should note two final ironies in Gingrich’s remarks.  George McGovern indeed was much more radical than Obama.  During his 1972 presidential campaign, he proposed a 37% reduction in the defense budget.  He also advocated that each American receive a $6500 minimum annual income.  Indeed, McGovern was the most radical major party candidate who ever ran for president — an upper Midwestern leftist progressive.  And McGovern has just co-written a book about how we should withdraw from Afghanistan every last American.  (Of course, this is not to equate “radicalism” with “unamericanism” as Gingrich implies.  McGovern was a war hero, too — but if we’re talking a dramatic transformation in American politics, McGovern has it all over Obama).

And Saul Alinsky, despite the titles of his books, was not very radical.  He was a local disrupter, a hell raiser, a street demonstrator who pushed for stuff like… more traffic lights, more cops on the beat, and other very mundane indigenous incremental community reforms.  He mistrusted politics and politicians and thought of reform as something very circumscribed and concrete. Everything was based upon local organizing, ground in the gritty city blocks of the lived community.  Anything else, in his mind, was utopian — he was anti-Marxist, despite what ignorant people like Andy McCarthy say.  Disruptive street actions in pursuit of the most incremental of ends were the extent of his radicalism. I know from the interview that Gingrich can cite the title of one of Alinsky’s books. But maybe Newt ought to read Alinsky.

In short, if the ascent of Obama — with the support of 53% of American voters — and the implementation of the program I describe above really is the “end of civilization”, as Newt insists, I’m both disappointed and relieved.  Disappointed in that Obama’s own lack of imagination — combined with the cravenness of Senate Democrats and the sheer structural and procedural impediments of an already undemocratic Senate — make it almost impossible to generate social democratic outcomes in this country.  But relieved, in that the end of civilization is pretty mundane.  Today, for example, I took my daughter to school, read a couple of newspapers, had breakfast, did a couple of work related meetings, checked my fantasy football team — in short, pretty much just another day in early 21^st century America for somebody fortunate enough, despite this recession, to have a full time job.

I never knew the end of civilization could be this good.