Naomi Klein: Obama’s Chicago Boys
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080630/klein (Ironically, there was an Obama ad underneath this article)
Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, “Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”
Now is the time to worry about Obama’s Chicago Boys and their commitment to fending off serious attempts at regulation. It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then-Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, “President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy.”
Hot on the heels of her amazing book, “The Shock Doctrine,” Klein extends her critique of Friedmanism and unrestrained capitalism to Obama’s campaign. For sure, Obama is not the messianic progressive his supporters hold him up to be; and instead of ushering in an era of change, it is much more likely that he will instead bring in more of the same under the cover of darkness. As Klein points out, he is unwilling to confront the capitalist doctrine which is what truly needs to be changed, nor is he willing to break the status quo on Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, and Cuba; gay rights; health care; unions; or poverty. At that point, really: What is it that he’s changing? Sure, he is making some cosmetic changes, but it’s the political equivalent of putting lipstick on a pig–at the end of the day, it’s still a pig, and a bourgeois, capitalist one at that.
I often wonder, after seeing first-hand elections in Mexico and seeing reports and photos and videos from around the world, why there isn’t the spectacle of elections seen elsewhere: the color-based loyalties, the street celebrations, the bitterness of defeat, and the contestation between elections… there is none of that here. Neither Gore nor Kerry held a months-long occupation of Washington’s streets and institutions following purported fraud, nor did they form a “legitimate” shadow government; in fact, they did nothing. I saw some people cry following Kerry’s loss, but there were no riots or protests or outbreaks of pointed violence as is typical elsewhere. No one takes to the streets, driving around the city just to honk and cheer and wave their party’s flag or colors. And in fact, there remains virtually no animosity between parties after elections, except for the elements of the parties that tailor to discontent to save some support for the next election. And why is this?
If I might venture a guess, it is because each party is peripheral to the average person’s life, and aside from personal pride not too different from support for football teams, there really is little at stake. The differences between the candidates are magnified, so that only these differences form the political spectrum of right and left, while ignoring the differences between these candidates and the people they claim to represent. In this light, the differences between candidates are microscopic. And as such, there is really nothing to celebrate or mourn on the morning after.
From Behind the Orange Curtain 