So what is the connection between Barack Obama's core beliefs, his campaign advisers, and his rather lackluster performance since Denver?
Last night, I had an intriguing encounter with Cass Sunstein, a member of Obama's kitchen cabinet. The occasion was the fall kickoff event at Boston's JFK Presidential Library, where Sunstein, former Clinton official Joe Nye, and I, had been invited to discuss "Transformative Presidencies."
Sunstein is perhaps America's pre-eminent liberal law professor, having just moved to Harvard after a long career at the University of Chicago (and having just married fellow Harvard eminence Samantha Power.) Sunstein was also a founding editor of the Prospect, and we have published his brilliant essays on several occasions.
Sunstein was quoted in David Leonhardt's recent New York Times magazine piece on Obama-nomics, to the effect that Obama had absorbed a fair amount of Chicago free-market economics, which in turn blended with his own wish to bridge differences.
Here is part of what Leonhardt wrote, describing Obama's "post-partisan" impulses:
Compared with many other Democrats, Obama simply is more comfortable with the apparent successes of laissez-faire economics.
Sunstein, now on the faculty at Harvard, has a name for this approach: "I like to think of him as a 'University of Chicago' Democrat."
It's a useful label. Today's Democratic consensus has moved the party to the left, and on issues like inequality and climate change, Obama appears willing to be even more aggressive than many fellow Democrats. From this standpoint, he's a true liberal. Yet he also says he believes that there are significant parts of Reaganism worth preserving.
(Er, exactly which parts of Reaganism might those be?)
On the other hand, according to Leonhardt, "[I]n Obama's view, the risks to market-based capitalism now have more to do with too little regulation than too much."
Well, yes. The policy of letting markets run riot has wrecked the financial system and ravaged the economic security of most Americans. And if the Democratic candidate does not at least know that, then he is in a deep coma.
Leonhardt went to great length to explain that Obama-nomics was something new, something post liberal and conservative, one part free-market, one part regulated market. But there is in fact nothing new about this view. With different nuances, it describes the view of every Democrat since Roosevelt.
No Democrat has been for socialism, and no Democrat has been for laissez-faire. The vexing political and policy questions are how much free market, and how much government intervention, and of what kind. That's what distinguishes, say, a Roosevelt Democrat from a Clinton or a Carter Democrat.
I asked Sunstein if he had been accurately quoted, and he confirmed that had. And Sunstein went on to explain to the Kennedy Library audience that Obama in fact was a "minimalist-as-visionary." By that, Sunstein explained, he meant that Obama hoped to bring about large-scale change, but without frontally challenging or insulting people who held views different from his own.
A University of Chicago Democrat evidently embraces some of what is dear to Republicans, but turns to financial regulation or to social outlay to help the market along. Still he has great respect for markets for people who believe in them. But not in all circumstances. On the one hand, on the other hand, on the third hand, on the fourth hand...zzzzzzzz.
It's hard, ultimately, to know how much of all this is really Obama, and how much is Leonhardt and Sunstein reading their own views into Obama.
In any event, the last thing Obama needs right now is to revert to law professor. For this may be the kind of elegant distinction that fuels debates in Chicago seminar rooms--but judging by recent events on the campaign trail, it is far too effete for the rough and tumble of politics.
America's working families are hurting, and they crave someone who will be their pocketbook champion--someone who can explain passionately why right wing politics have caused wide distress and are unlikely to produce improvement. If swing voters don't get that clear message from the Democrat, they will turn to the maverick patriot who did hard time in Hanoi and the small town governor-mom who knows how to shoot a moose.
Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, has just published Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency (Chelsea Green). He is blogging daily about the election and the economic crisis at www.obamaschallenge.com
And now what’s more. She’s going to give the country a redneck son-in-law, once she actually becomes VP. What could be more representative of a true American. We’re a REDNECK COUNTRY and now can be proud of it and flaunt it!
I did find the ‘psychology of the workplace’ quote to be a bit fuzzyheaded. I would have liked Obama to elaborate a bit on how he views his proposed infrastructure improvements helping to provide an economic boost beyond the obvious short term job creation. I found the attempts to connect those proposed improvements to the dawn of the internet to be tenuous at best, intellectually dishonest at worst. I note those objections because I don’t have a MBA, I didn’t study at the University of Chicago or any other prestigious economic institution, and I didn’t find any of the piece over my head.
I for one was glad to read a piece that defined Obama more as a free market thinker and less as a class warrior. He can at times seem more the latter in his speeches. I also do not believe he should embrace an attack philosophy in the last two months of this election. Simply put, he isn’t very adept at the role. It is my impression (and generally backed by those I have spoken to) that when thrust into attack mode Obama can come off as snide and condescending not only towards his political opponents but towards voters as well. As I understand it, it was that tendency that cost Obama a Congressional seat in 2000.
We have serious philosophical differences with the Republican ticket and it's important to articulate these differences in a cogent and hard-hitting way, without bringing personalities into it. Anything else is mere distraction and playing to their new game. So I say: stay cool and stay on point.
I esp. think we need to forget Gov. Palin, who has torn into the national zeitgeist in a big way. But going after her only ticks off those who like her because they like her. They don't wanna hear about some bridge to nowhere. They just like her and don't want Obama telling them they shouldn't. Biden should only fence sparingly; it's a tricky game. Don't get personal. Let the journalists do their work but stay out of it.
Turning all this energy away from recent distractions and getting into the issues in a big way is what is needed, and now.
Yeah, the Repub ticket is all about change, in a sense. They both seem to want to clean up Washington. But Obama needs to keep stressing that these sorts of changes have nothing to do with the huge differences in political philosophy that underlie these two very different campaigns. The country is not in the mood for far-right fiscal conservatives right now. People generally want to put the Republicans in time-out now and they need to be reminded why this is the wrong ticket at the wrong time for this country. Nothing personal.
In the provision approach, economic inequality is mitigated by providing services that aid the disadvantaged. This is the entitlement mode of what Americans call liberalism. Obama isn't a huge fan of government as a service provider. He's a free-market redistributionist.
In the redistributive or empowerment mode of liberalism, the market is seen as overwhelming superior to government at organization, administration, and execution but not always capable of investing toward innovation, properly valuing labor, or operating in a socially responsible manner.
Free market capitalism benefits the establishment at the expense of outside innovators and focuses on output while ignoring income. But as long as we understand that it's the government's role to empower innovation, promote the value of work, and strengthen the social fabric, then free markets work.
The redistributionist theory is to let the market do its thing, use a progressive tax to redistribute income from those who profit from employing or financing undervalued labor to those who earn a living by provide undervalued labor, and invest these revenues in the foundations and means of domestic innovation.
The market is the engine that burns the fuel and generates the power, and the government is the transmission that converts that power into the torque that turns the wheels of broad-based prosperity.
The "bittergate" nonsense might have been a cheap shop taken at out-of-context comments, but BO's Adlai-Stevensonesque hyper cerebralism is right there on display for everyone . . . either to admire or to despise, as one's taste dictates.
That weird place called Middle America doesn't like Professor Brainiac. How many times must Democrats relearn that lesson?
That's an eye opener.
I was hoping he was beyond the DLC mode of burning the village to save it.
I know not what to say.
So he rubbed shoulders with steel workers on the South side of Chicago?
He needs someone like a retired union offical who was selected by other steel workers for speaking up. He needs somebody who has nothing to lose and can tell him when he is giving the impression that he is being too weak.
Is JFK one of Obama's heros? If so, remind him of that. JFK never put on a weak show like this.