February 18, 2008
Column: Fine words and the economic reality
With eight wins out of eight in the most recent contests and another expected on Tuesday in Wisconsin, Barack Obama is for the first time the clear favourite to win the Democratic nomination. His support continues to broaden: beyond the affluent, who liked him from the outset; beyond blacks, who switched wholesale from Hillary Clinton starting in South Carolina; lately even to the white working class and Latinos.
Those are the constituencies that Mrs Clinton is relying on to win the crucial primaries in populous Texas and Ohio on March 4. As that showdown approaches, contrary to Mrs Clinton’s claim to be the better manager, Mr Obama is running a more effective campaign, with more and better organisers in the right places and more and better advertising at the right times. The Clintons thought it would be all over by now: their planning beyond “Super Tuesday” was perfunctory and they are short of money. It is too soon to count Mrs Clinton out. She is nothing if not tenacious. But for the moment, she and her team are scrambling.
As I argued last week, this is good news for the Democrats. Mr Obama is so much the better candidate that I find the party’s hesitation difficult to credit. But I made the case for Mr Obama in terms of vision, temperament and appeal to uncommitted voters, not policy – where his differences from Mrs Clinton are slight. A fair comment, lodged by many readers, is that, as president, he would be judged by results, not speeches. The greater his appeal at the start, the bigger the disillusionment to come. In a low blow, Tony Blair was mentioned. With that, I knew how Mrs Clinton felt as she watched the results come in from Virginia.
The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post comments below.
Another issue in which it will be very interesting to follow the respective positions of the two Democratic candidates is immigration. It is ironic that Senator Clinton has such wide support among Latinos, because the Clintons’ record on immigration is mixed at best.
The New York Senator’s waffling over driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants during a presidential debate was not merely due to her being taken by surprise by the question. It was part of a history of ambivalence and reluctance to take a clear stand for immigrant rights during the Clinton administration that is consistent with its “centrism” and “triangulation” on other issues as well.
On the plus side, during the Clinton presidency, there were a number of badly needed steps taken to increase visas for skilled and professional workers (H-1B) and to make it easier for these workers to obtain green cards. However these steps came only near the end of President Clinton’s second term, and, unfortuntely, the increase in visas was only temporary. After three years, the number of visas went back down to the old levels, causing chaos in the system that becomes worse each year.
Again on the plus side, when the then Republican dominated House of representatives passed a bill in 2006 that would have criminalized the entire immigration system, making overstaying a visa by one day into a felony punishable by five years in prison, Hillary Clinton rightly spoke out and called the proposal a “police state” measure.
However, in 1996, President Clinton, giving in to Republican pressure, signed the so-called “Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act” containing drastic penalties, including lifetime banishment for minor crimes, that were made retroactive, against all of the basic principles of American justice. This was only one of a number of harsh measures in the law adopted, not as a response to 9/11, which was still five years in the future, but to the growing anti- Latino and anti-Asian backlash that was already being stirred up by hate groups on the far right ( even before immigrant-bashing became such a gold mine for Lou Dobbs).
Most disgracefully of all, President Clinton used the US military to blockade Haiti in order to stop refugees from getting out, in the fear that they would wind up in Florida, costing the Democrats votes. True enough, he later “solved” the problem by invading Haiti and installing a more democratic government (since ousted by President Bush), but this was a terrible precedent nonetheless, especially coming from from America’s first “black” president.
In contrast, Senator Obama has spoken out clearly in favor of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. With his strong committment to justice and minority rights, there is little doubt that he would be a great president for Latinos on the immigration issue, but by the time Latino voters becme aware of this, it may already be too late.
By that time, Latinos may already have helped to swing the nomination to Hillary Clinton (along with some back room deals by the machine dominated superdelegates), who will then become toast for the Republicans in the general election. In that case, a “police state” immigration bill of the Republican 2006 variety may eventualy become law under a Republican president, even one with a generally pro- immigration record like Senator McCain.
Posted by: algasema | February 18th, 2008 at 2:41 pm | Report this commentSorry for my misspelling of “eventually”. One of these days, I’ve simply got to get all the typos corrected before posting.
Posted by: algasema | February 18th, 2008 at 2:44 pm | Report this commentTwo other typos need correction: I should have written “House of Representatives” and “become aware of this”. My apologies again!
Posted by: algasema | February 18th, 2008 at 2:53 pm | Report this commentMrs. Clinton early in the campaign claimed she was better at handling the Right’s attack machine, that she was ready for the fight. She seems to have missed the point. Most Americans are tired of “The Fight”. We want a government by the people, for the people. We are of course aware that politics in it’s nature is adversarial, but it doesn’t have to be divisive. I support Obama for a littany of reasons, but mainly it is because I want change. Not just a Republican to Democrat change, but a cleansing of politics of the past.
Posted by: Frank | February 18th, 2008 at 3:12 pm | Report this comment“It makes him an electrifying candidate – one the Democrats would be crazy not to nominate – but also, to be sure, a gamble. If Mr Obama is elected, it might turn out that there is no “there” there.” — Clive Crook
Gambling is for the racecourse - let’s not gamble with global security.
Posted by: Ron Cohen-Seban | February 18th, 2008 at 5:04 pm | Report this commentWhat (typical FT) Lunacy,
CC shows that he has passed entry level Economics, supporting Free Trade, moderate taxes, etc…and even goes the extra yard noting that Sen. Obama votes partisan and leftist, contrary to the his campaign of unity and centrism.
The baffling statement is where Clive Crook goes on to recommend Sen. Obama. Being a Leftist stuck in the failed policies of 1971 does not sound to me like a very good reason to support a candidate.
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | February 18th, 2008 at 5:40 pm | Report this commentthe u.s. chose john f. kennedy jr over richard nixon in 1960. nixon’s argument at the time was that he was tested (having been eisenhower’s vice president) and that JFK was too young and too inexperienced. i personally am not a big fan of JFK, but he did transform american society.
similar arguments were lobbed at ronald reagan when he ran against george h.w. bush (who had a mountain of experience and security credentials) in the republican primaries. although i have problems with ronald reagan as well, he too managed to transform american society and is credited with helping to end the cold war.
if you know the collective legacies of richard nixon’s presidency and that of george h.w. (no were not in a recession) bush, you will see that the american public’s first impressions of both men were right.
Posted by: Michelle | February 18th, 2008 at 6:47 pm | Report this commentI need to make one more correction: The Republican “police state” immigration bill was passed in late 2005, not 2006. Fortunately, because the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, the bill, which was so broad that it would not be much of an exaggeration to say that it could have sent American citizens to prison just for talking to an illegal immigrant, never became law.
To Michelle: Thank you for the wise comments about the limits of being the “experienced” candidate. The first time I ever voted in a presidential election was for John F. Kennedy, and he won (narrowly, and only with the help of votes produced by the Chicago Democratic machine that probably only Martin Lukes would have called authentic) precisely because of widespread revulsion against Nixon’s “experience” as a red-baiting demagogue, which had already earned him the label of “Tricky Dick”.
However, we should be careful about extrapolating too much from the past. Barack Obama, unlike JFK, does not come from a family of tough political operatives. His father was a Luo tribesman from Kenya, not an ambassador to the Court of St. James whom many considered to be sympathetic to Hitler. And, whatever Hillary’s shortcomings, even her arch-detractor, Dick Morris, has not (yet) compared her with Nixon, as far as I know.
Posted by: algasema | February 18th, 2008 at 8:35 pm | Report this commentPolicy proposals from Senator Obama are generally weak and too middle-of-the_roadish. However I believe that his policy proposals - unless he were to propose something of the nutcase variety like those of the remaining and erstwhile Republican candidates - are of secondary importance to his innate intelligence, unusual personal experiences and personal characteristics not the least of which is being a second-generation African, a Kansan and having a name that sounds remarkably like both Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden, twin betes noires of the current USA regime.
His opposition to “free” trade is not necessarily a bad fact - protectionism when applied judiciously has its benefits for a society. At the least an equalization of the benefits of free trade across society could be instituted so that the gains to one group are spread to those who lose out - something that has not occurred in the USA to say the least. The benefits have universally gone to the wealthy in the USA, the negatives have only impacted workers whose places of employment have quite literally been carted just south of the US border once NAFTA was approved. Also the benefits of the Bush tax cuts went grossly disproportionately (almost 45%) to those with incomes in the top 1% of all income recipients.
A competitive-market economy does work in reality according to theory, i.e pure-competitively determined prices do in fact allocate resources to everyone’s benefit. However there are so many exceptions to pure (or close to pure) competition that government intervention is essential to allocate resources beneficially. Resources can be allocated beneficially only to the wealthy through government action, as has been the case since the Reagan Administration, but the reverse is also possible. A brave, insightful and intelligent President - someone like Senator Obama - advised by knowledgeable content specialists with no ideological axe to grind could do wonders for the American citizenry. Straightforward examples are: raise income tax rates for the very wealthy, institute a rational healthcare financing and payment system that can drive hundreds of billions of misallocated dollars out of that system while providing much improved healthcare coverage, eliminate the absurdly excessively spending on the USA military by withdrawing occupying American troops from are the world and eliminating utterly wasteful acquisition of weaponry, proposing and acting on elimination of USA weapons of mass destruction and so on.
Whether Senator Obama as President would come through on such issues is an unknown, but he is the only candidate with any chance of acting and gaining results that benefit the bulk of the American populace as opposed to narrow elites: from the wealthy to big business to the military who would be the only ones to benefit from the Presidency of any other current candidate.
Posted by: Wendell Murray | February 18th, 2008 at 10:12 pm | Report this commentAs far as I am concerned, Wendell Murray’s brilliant comment belongs in the “I wish I had said that” column. I cannot think of a better and more succinct description of what is wrong with America and what needs to be done to fix it.
I would only add that even with Barack Obama as president, the Democrats need a filibuster-proof majority of 60 senators to be able to accomplish any change at all. Otherwise, even with the best of motives on President Obama’s part, if he is elected, “change” will just be a useless word.
How can the Democrats get such a majority? Only by uniting behind a strong candidate who has a real chance to win. Hillary is not that candidate. She should withdraw now for the good of her party and the good of the country.
Unfortunately, this will never happen. Instead, the Clintons’ egos will in all probability shatter the Democratic party, leaving it weak and divided and guaranteeing eight more years of misrule by the wealthy corporate and military elite that has run this country ever since the fateful day in 1981 that Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.
Posted by: Roger Algase | February 19th, 2008 at 12:41 am | Report this commentWendell and Roger,
So lets make it clear then, you support Sen. Obama as a Leftist. No Free Trade, Higher Taxes, Nationalized Health Care, which is fine…any backwards Socialist demagogue from 1971 would do the same.
Now how does that line up with his nutty image in the press (including the FT) as some kind of unifying force?
JBP
Posted by: John Powers | February 19th, 2008 at 2:59 am | Report this comment