This is the reading/writing assignment for our final class.
The following is a series of mostly long excerpts from recent interviews with progressive journalists, academics, and activists on Democracy Now. This is not designed to be “fair and balanced.” Rather, it’s intended as a provocation, and as a follow-up to Leon’s post(s) and last week’s class discussion about Obama’s choice of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State.
I’ve interspersed 12 reading questions below in bold print and upper-case type. Please come to class prepared to discuss these.
The following is from a Democracy Now interview with Robert Dreyfuss on Obama Cabinet Appointments:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/2/change_or_more_of_the_same
ROBERT DREYFUSS: …it is important to point out that the people who are not named, the people were not picked by Obama or the people who were not on the stage yesterday with the president elect. There was nobody there from the anti-war wing of the Democratic party. There were none of the liberal Senators or even people like Jim Webb who spoke out against the war. John Kerry and Al Gore were not there. Bill Richardson was not there. You can go down a long list of people who he did not choose. Instead, he chose what the Wall Street Journal and many other publications are calling a war cabinet. The problem is, in order to fulfill his central campaign promise, which is to get our troops out of Iraq, he is going to have to do some direct hand-to-hand combat with people like Robert Gates and General Petraeus who has political ambitions of his own, Admiral Mullen at the Joint Chief and elsewhere, who are going to be urging him to slow down, to take a step back, to relax, and not mess up the surge that Gates has spent the last two years overseeing. I think he’ll be under a lot of pressure from the national security team that he himself is creating, to slow down the withdrawal from Iraq. He certainly left the door open for that. More generally, he pledged during the campaign to escalate the war in Afghanistan, which I think the rest of his team is fully in support of. Certainly, Robert Gates and general Petraeus have endorsed the notion of adding another 20,000 to 25,000 troops to that failed war, which I think is another catastrophically bad decision. He may find himself turning what had been Bush’s failed war in Afghanistan into his own failed war, especially if he carries it over across the border into Afghanistan. I think the problem here is that the Obama that tilted to the right during the election campaign, supposedly to protect himself against Republican criticism, in fact, turns out to be the real Obama. When he says, change comes from me, we are seeing the kind of change he believes in by appointing this centrist pro-military cabinet. That means, in effect, that it is change that they’re not neoconservatives, certainly they are not going to look like John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feif, but it will look very much like the national security establishment of the Cold War and the post cold war 90’s….
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, there are a few things to say here. First of all, there is a connection between national security and energy, and General Jones [Obama’s appointment for National Security Advisor] is at the very heart of that. When he was at NATO as the NATO commander, he did what he could to steer NATO in the direction of taking on responsibility of out-of-area action in regard to securing energy supplies, which points NATO in the same direction that the Bush Administration and of course many other administrations have gone in terms of taking military responsibility for the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, which is really what the aftermath of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is going to be about. To the extent the United States believes and NATO believes that it is responsible for securing that part of the world and protecting energy supplies. It is not necessarily a cooperative approach where we then go to the big energy users like Japan and China and India and talk to Russia as well about a cooperative effort to stabilize that part of the world, but a more unilateral one. That’s a concern.
The second point I would make, is that the people [appointed at] the next levels down at both the State and Defense Department is going to be very, very important. And there is no indication at all the Barack Obama intends to oversee that process. Who Robert Gates keeps on at the Defense Department, including some fairly troubling characters in important posts there, is something that we’re going to have to watch very closely, and as well at the State Department. Whether Hillary Clinton turns to people, including some of the muscular democratic hawks like Richard Holbrooke and in particular Dennis Ross, who is now ensconced at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is an AIPAC spin-of, and brings these people in to help run the State Department is another big question. So, there’s a lot of aspects of managing a huge foreign policy apparatus that cannot reside in the hands of Barack Obama alone. He is not going to do this; change will not come from him personally except in the broadest outline. The implementation of foreign policy is going to come from the people that he picks.
[Question 1: How does Dreyfuss understand the relationship between cabinet appointments and foreign policy?]
AMY GOODMAN: It’s been interesting watching the networks now. I can’t figure out who is more laudatory in the discussions on the networks, the Democrats or Republicans, of Barack Obama’s choices. There is hardly any debate around this. I want to see what you think of this, Robert Dreyfuss, Steve Zunes piece on Alternet saying Hilary Clinton “allied herself with the Bush Administration and many of its most controversial actions, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, threats of war against Iran, support for Israel’s 2006 offensive against Lebanon and 2002 offensive in the West Bank, opposition to the International Criminal Court, attacks against the International Court of Justice, and support for the unrestricted export of cluster bombs and other anti-personnel munitions used against civilian targets.”
ROBERT DREYFUSS: Well, it is true that she supported all those things. In part, though, the trauma of 9/11 shifted politics radically toward the right and a lot of people–and I’m not excusing Clinton’s decisions, but a lot of people got caught up in that avalanche period. Obama distinguished himself by not being caught up in it. I think the fact that Clinton supported that long litany of things, is troubling to me and to many other people who are hoping for a clean break, to use a term the Bush Administration got caught up in, to make a clean break with a lot of those past policies. I think its going to be difficult for him to execute that pivot. I think its going to be a battle on many of these issues with Senator Clinton to make sure that she stays on message.
AMY GOODMAN: You have written about it possibly being a moment for Barack Obama to distinguish himself outside of the Cabinet he has chosen, that people could possibly be expecting this.
ROBERT DREYFUSS: I think people put too much faith in Barack Obama the person. I think he is asked us to make the leap of faith in thinking he can be the embodiment of the change of people have been hoping for. In fact, it cannot be done by one person. In fact, it is not clear yet that Barack Obama is the person to bring that change. I think the message of this war cabinet he has named is that critics of the Bush Administration policy and people in the peace and justice movements are going to have to continue to mobilize, that it is not a time to relax. It is a time for demonstrations and letter writing and grassroots of activities to make sure what we hope to be a more responsive administration to those kinds of activities will start to pay attention to them [unlike] the Bush Administration, [where] we were clearly knocking on a locked door….
[Question 2: According to Dreyfuss, what is the message of the foreign policy (“war”) cabinet that Obama has assembled?]
The following is from a Democracy Now interview with Ralph Nader on the same subject:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/5/ralph_nader_and_medea_benjamin_on
AMY GOODMAN: I want to stay with Ralph Nader…. Juan and I have some questions….
Just go through the cabinet picks—again, they have to be approved—of Barack Obama, your, well, former opponent. You ran for president, as well, Ralph Nader.
RALPH NADER: Well, it’s symbolized in an article in the newspapers a day or two ago. The headline was “Obama Turns to Consider Liberals for Cabinet Positions.” I mean, you know, after appointing all the heavyweights, keeping Gates as Secretary of Defense, Hillary Clinton at State Department, and other positions—Treasury, for example, coming from Wall Street—the article said, well, it’s time now to consider some liberal appointees. Well, what’s left? Department of Labor. Now, will David Bonior, who is a genuine progressive and spent many years in the House of Representatives from Michigan, get the job? That remains to be seen. It’s really interesting. As long as liberals and progressives gave Obama a pass during the election and didn’t demand anything in return, he knew that he had their votes and he had their support regardless and moved right, moved to the corporate. And that’s reflected in the appointments that he has been putting in place. Now we look forward to the second level. Who’s going to be Food and Drug Administration head? Who’s going to be the head of the Auto Safety Agency or EPA? Will so-called liberals and progressives get their share of the Obama administration at that second level? It remains to be seen. But the signs are not very auspicious.
[Question 3: What is the connection Nader draws between popular support for Obama during the election campaign and his top-level cabinet appointments?]
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, the New York Times was reporting today that he may name California Congressman Javier Becerra to be the US trade representative, and Becerra has been a critic of free trade agreements in the past. But, in general, have you been surprised by the number of former Clinton administration officials that he has named?
RALPH NADER: Who hasn’t? You know, he defeated Hillary Clinton in a close race, and now he’s reinstalling the Bill Clinton administration. Now, there are two interpretations, briefly, here. One, it could reflect his insecurity. That way, by putting Clintonites all over the government and keeping Gates, he is basically eliminating a lot of potential centers of criticism and challenge to his administration after January 20. The second interpretation is more benign, and that is that he wants to elevate the State Department, so it isn’t dominated by the Defense Department and the security apparatus, and push for a more benign foreign policy, with more vigorous diplomacy instead of brute force, more attention to infectious diseases, environmental issues, land erosion, agricultural cooperatives, etc., which are much cheaper than ballooning a huge wasteful military budget. And if that is his goal, then the fact that he’s put Gates there for at least a year means that there isn’t a new Secretary of Defense to build up a powerful base to dominate State Department, and putting Hillary, who’s a world-recognized figure, regardless of her policies, into State Department, which will elevate the State Department. That’s the more benign approach. But we’ll see how it plays out.
[Question 4: What are the two explanations/interpretations Nader offers for Obama’s decision to “reinstall the Bill Clinton administration?”]
AMY GOODMAN: What about Marine General Jim Jones nominated as National Security Adviser? Interestingly, President Bush’s first National Security Adviser, of course, was Condoleezza Rice. She came from the board of Chevron. That’s exactly where Marine General Jim Jones comes from. Jim Jones comes from Chevron and the board of Boeing and the chief executive of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, which has been criticized by environmental groups for, among other things, calling for the immediate expansion of domestic oil and gas production and issuing reports that challenge the use of the Clean Air Act to combat global warming.
RALPH NADER: Well, Jim Jones is basically the representative of what President Eisenhower cautioned us about, the military-industrial complex. He is experienced. He’s clever. And now he’s in the White House. So the question is, who’s going to run what? Is Obama going to transform Jim Jones? Is Obama going to transform all these establishment appointees? Or are they going to, in effect, transform him, in contrast to his more liberal rhetoric?
It’s very hard to appoint people with fixed opinions, fixed constituencies around the country of vested power, and say, well, we’re going to use these to change America, because if they change, that will give great credibility, and that will offset the corporate power structure from Washington, D.C. You know, that’s never been done before, Amy. Usually, when you appoint people who have fixed positions, who have experience in set ways, who represent the power structure, they’re not about to be steered into a progressive path of hope and change by someone at the top in the Oval Office.
[Question 5: Why is Nader not optimistic about Obama’s cabinet appointments changing their views?]
The following is the link to an Alternet post by Stephen Zunes in response to Obama’s naming Rahm Emanuel his Chief of Staff, which is something we haven’t discussed. Zunes is a professor of politics and the Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/106189
[Question 6: What are a few of the reasons Zunes is critical of Rahm Emanuel’s appointment as Chief of Staff?]
The following is from a Democracy Now interview with Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner, and Michael Hudson about Obama’s economic appointments. Kuttner is a veteran economic journalist and the cofounder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine. Klein is an investigative journalist and columnist for The Nation magazine. Hudson is president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/naomi_klein_robert_kuttner_and_michael
AMY GOODMAN: We welcome you all to Democracy Now! I wanted to begin with the appointments. This is how president-elect Obama introduced the next Treasury Secretary, if confirmed, Timothy Geithner.
BARACK OBAMA: Tim Geithner offers not just extensive experience shaping economic policy and managing financial markets, he has an unparalleled understanding of our current economic crisis in all its depth, complexity, and urgency. Tim will waste no time getting up to speed. He will start his first day on the job with a unique insight into the failures of today’s markets and a clear vision of the steps we must take to revive to them.
AMY GOODMAN: And Lawrence Summers, named the Director of the National Economic Council in the White House.
BARACK OBAMA: One of the great economic minds of our times, Larry has the global reputation for being able to get to the heart of the most complex and novel policy challenges. With respect to both our current financial crisis and other pressing economic issues of our time, his thinking, writing, and speaking have set the terms of the debate. I am glad he will be by my side, playing the critical role of coordinating my administration’s economic policy in the White House and I will rely heavily on his advice as to navigate the uncharted waters of this crisis.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin with Naomi Klein. Your response to these appointments, and what they signify. If you could begin with Larry Summers, the former Clinton Treasury Secretary.
NAOMI KLEIN: Hi Amy, its good to be with you. Well, I have to say it is a profound disappointment. It really does represent a very safe choice, but let’s remember Barack Obama won this election saying that taking the status quo, that staying with the same policies that have been governing the country for the recent past, was actually a very dangerous course. I think in many ways we are paying the price of the frankly intellectual dishonesty of the progressive liberal left during the Bush years. Because Obama said again and again during the campaign that the crisis on Wall Street represented the culmination of an ideology of deregulation and laissez-faire trickle-down economics that had guided the country for the past eight years.
And the truth is, it was not just eight years in which those policies guided US economic policies. They certainly guided them under Reagan and they certainly guided them under Clinton. That is where Larry Summers comes in because Larry Summers was the last Treasury Secretary under Clinton. And he along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin were really the key architects of the policies of deregulation that created the crisis that we’re living now. And those key policies, as you know, are the killing of Glass-Spiegel that allowed a series of very large bank mergers that created these institutions that are too big and too intermingled to fail we’re told again and again. The deliberate decision to keep the derivatives out of the reach of financial regulators- that was also a Summer’s decision. And also allowing the banks to carry these extraordinary levels of debt–33 to 1 in the case of Bear Sterns.
Now, in my book the Shock Doctrine I start a chapter with a quote from Larry Summers. The context in which he says it was 1992 and it was when he was making World Bank economic policy as it related to Russia, in the midst of a financial crisis. What he said and this is why I quoted him because it really shows the extent to which he is truly an ideologue, and truly a follower of the very ideology– not just a follower but a propagator of the very ideology that Obama ran his campaign against. And here’s the quote–this is Larry Summers in 1992: “Spread the truth. The laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” And then he laid out those laws a little bit later. He referred to the three “ations”, and those were privatization, stabilization, and liberalization. So he has been preaching the doctrine. He is by no means an innocent bystander. He is a dyed-in-the-wool privatizer, free trader. And he along with Tim Geithner, his deputy, played key roles during very important economic crises in Russia, during the Asian financial crisis, during the Mexican peso crisis. When these countries were suffering a profound economic crisis, created by deregulation, they preached more deregulation, more privatization and –this is key– economic austerity to disastrous results. So I think this is really troubling. One thing that Obama said is that Larry Summers set the terms of the debate for this financial crisis and that once again is very worrying. Because if Barack Obama thinks that these are the only terms, the parameters of the debate, then it’s very, very narrow.
[Question 7: Why is Klein so troubled by the appointment of Larry Summers as Director of the White House National Economic Council and Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary?]
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi’s assessment. But let me ask you something, Bob, William Greider had an interesting piece in The Nation. He said:
“On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government’s massive rescue of Citicorp-the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years- along with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton’s economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers’ money. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.”
And “ultimately,” Mark Ames also in The Nation writes ,“Summers was one of the key architects of our financial crisis. Hiring him to fix the economy makes as much sense as appointing Paul Wolfowitz to oversee the Iraq withdrawal.” Your response, Bob Kuttner?
ROBERT KUTTNER: I basically agree. The only thing I can say, and maybe this is because I am a congenital optimist and because I have some faith in Obama’s own leadership, and intellect–although I have to contradict myself and say if he’s such a smart guy why did he appoint these fellows–I do think Timothy Geithner is a competent technocrat. He is not an investment banker himself. He’s been a civil servant for almost all of his career. And secondly, when he was pursuing these failed policies, he was doing so as part of a threesome that included Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson. And of the three, Geithner was the most inclined to tough regulation as the price of bailout. But Greider is absolutely right about the intense conflicts of interest of which Rubin is both the emblem and substance.
And the question is, whether Geithner and Summers- in very different historical moments- can turn into different kinds of people under the leadership of a president who knows his own survival depends on pursuing a recovery. I certainly wish other people had got these positions. I am not quite prepared to conclude before the man is even inaugurated that this dooms the Obama administration to failure, but it certainly would have been better if he had appointed more progressive people.
[Question 8: How does Kuttner defend Geithner?]
NAOMI KLEIN: Just coming back to what we can expect from Summers and Geithner. I think it is clear there’s going to be a major departure from the ideology of the idea the government cannot do anything. We’ll see major economic stimulus, major investments in infrastructure, as Michael was discussing, and one hopes that there will be a lot of investment in infrastructure.
But the key issue—we also want to be optimistic. Part of what causes it to the situation that seems to be very disappointed appointments is the fact we have not been honest about the legacy of the Clinton years. So much misinformation was spread during the election campaign, because it was a nice message to present the nineties as these wonder years in contrast to the Bush years. That is exactly what created the situation where you could have Summers presented as the wise man instead of going down with Alan Greenspan. When Alan Greenspan’s reputation was raked over the coals, it should have Rubin and Summers along side him. And I think we have nobody to blame but ourselves for that failure. So essentially, it was an electoral strategy and it was an electoral strategy that relied on intellectual dishonesty and now to continue to make excuses for Obama is a real mistake, because he is not running for election anymore. He has already won, so there is no reason to be pandering in this way.
[Question 9: what does Klein See as a popular misunderstanding of the Clinton presidency?]
In terms of the real issue here, yes there will be stimulus. But how will it be paid for? Obama ran an election campaign promising to increase taxes on the wealthy, and Rahm Emanuel has already hinted that he might not do that right away. We are already seeing hesitation about the commitment to not renew the Bush tax cuts. Then there’s a huge fight over capital gains tax and the kinds of taxes paid by hedge funds. Here I think it’s important to remember Larry Summers is coming straight from a hedge fund. He’s managing director of one of the most secretive hedge funds around. So the real question is not whether they will spend taxpayer money, they will on infrastructure, but the point is will they just rack up huge debt and deficits or will they actually pay for this with taxes on the wealthy, which is what they promised to do and what we’re seeing Gordon Brown begin to do in Britain. Because if they do not pay for this in an equitable way, in a progressive way, then what will happen is this huge investment in infrastructure will create huge economic crisis down the road. It will be blamed on Obama. And then there will be a wave of privatizations, these new investments in public spending. There will be a whole new bubble.
[Question 10: What does Klein predict will happen if Obama’s economic stimulus package is not paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy?]
MICHAEL HUDSON: I think the idea that Obama will change his economic philosophy is quixotic. In Berlin, almost everybody there was sure that Obama would be another Gorbachev, somebody laying low, somebody going along with, seemingly conforming so that all of a sudden when he was in he could do a revolution. Almost everybody was hoping against hope that would be the case. And instead of looking like Gorbachev, now all of the sudden Mr. Obama is looking like Yeltsin. Just the umbrella for these kelptokrats to come back in. The point that Robert Kuttner made, the bottom line for that is the fatal alliance between the American auto industry and the oil industry. It was the auto industry that bought up public transportation in Los Angeles and other cities after the World War II, and tore it down some people would not have public transportation and would have to have oils to drive cars.
[Question 11: Why does Hudson suggest it’s not Gorbachev but Yeltsin who seems to offer a better analogy to Obama at the moment?]
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, when you were last on, you were talking about structural adjustment programs for banks in the auto industry. But if the U.S. taxpayers are going to bail out the wealthiest corporations and banks in this country, why aren’t demands being made, like, all the boards have to resign, the leadership has to be thrown out, and if the US has to inject money, sometimes the poorest people in this country, there have to be certain rules which include you cannot build another SUV? Naomi Klein.
NAOMI KLEIN: Exactly. The point I made before, when anybody comes looking for a loan, whoever has the money has the leverage. We know that from the International Monetary Fund and you know that from your local bank. They set the conditions for that loan. When you look at deals that have been negotiated, not just by Henry Paulson, but also by Tim Geithner, you know he’s the one that negotiated, really the key person on the JP Morgan-Bear Sterns deal. He was also central in the AIG deal. And what we see again and again, taxpayers have taken on enormous risks from these companies. But they have not been exerting control in terms of reregulating the sector as a whole. When exactly is the Re-regulation going to happen? This is the moment of high leverage. It is not just about firing the boss and seats on the board, it is about re-regulating exactly what Larry Summers and Tim Geithner de-regulated under the Clinton administration. The real question is, do these people have the humility to fix their own mistakes? My question is, is Larry Summers’ ego too big to fail? These guys should not be promoted at this point. Their reputations should really be destroyed by their own track records. All these people are constantly talking about how brilliant they are, despite their dismal track record in this country and other countries in which they have meddled, including South Korea and Russia.
The key issue here, I think, is whether Obama is coming to these decisions because he is under enormous pressure from above, Wall Street. How do you transition from a pro-Obama campaign movement to an independent social movement that puts counter-pressure on him from below? Those are the conditions under which Roosevelt sold the new deal as a compromise to elites. We do not have those dynamics right now. We have a situation where we have super-fans for Obama, constantly apologizing for every decision that he makes versus a gloves-off elite who are putting real pressure on him behind the scenes. And we are seeing the result.
[Question 12: in closing, klein sets up an opposition between Obama’s popular supporters and the elite? What is the basis for that opposition and why is she critical of his popular supporters?]
Admiral 
UCC Honors: Blogging the '08 Election 
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