John Kennedy, Barack Obama and the ‘Triple Evils That Are
Interrelated'
by
Paul Street
"The cunning, corporate and imperial Kennedy legacy is
actually what Obama is all about."
In completing a recent book on the Barack Obama phenomenon,
I found much to dispute in the Obama campaign's description and marketing of
the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois. Among the more dubious aspects of his
biography and "branding" that I criticize and expose as deceptions are his
claims to: come from a disadvantaged and alienated background; to be "from the
South Side of Chicago;" have been conceived as a result of the early victories
of the Civil Rights movement; have been consistently against the Iraq War from
the beginning; represent a popular challenge to big money and corporate control
of American politics and policy; "transcend race;" lack an ideology; and embody
the spirit and lessons of Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr.
The Obama portrayed in my study is an openly (for those able
and willing to look beneath the marketing campaign) imperial and
corporate-neoliberal symbol and agent of business rule, Superpower hegemony,
and racial accommodation and denial. Obama, I show, has consistently lined up
on the conservative, that is, power-friendly side of each of what Dr. King called
"the triple evils that are interrelated": racism (deeply and institutionally
understood), economic exploitation (capitalism), and U.S. militarism.
It's all very consistent with mainstream journalist Ryan
Lizza's statement at the end of a recent New Yorker article on Obama's
early political career in Chicago: "Perhaps the greatest misconception about
Barack Obama," Lizza notes, "is that he is some sort of anti-establishment
revolutionary. Rather, every stage of
his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to
existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them" [Ryan Lizza, "Making It: How Chicago
Shaped Obama," The New Yorker, July 21, 2008]. (Revealingly enough, this
does not stop Lizza from saying that Obama is "ideologically a man of the
left.")
"JFK inhabited much the same power-serving
faux-progressive ideological space in his time as Obama does today."
One aspect of the Obama mystique I do NOT question, however,
is the Obama campaign's effort, largely successful, to link its candidate to
the record and "Camelot" legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK). It's a
reasonable linkage, I think, but not for admirable reasons. Besides also being a relatively young, agile,
telegenic, and articulate, Harvard-educated U.S. Senator with little record of
substantive policy accomplishment and a taste for the lofty and outwardly
idealistic, JFK inhabited much the same power-serving faux-progressive
ideological space in his time as Obama does today. Also worshipped by many
liberals and enjoying a strong following with academics and intellectuals, the
proto-neoliberal President Kennedy spent much of his time on the cunning, right
(starboard), and power-serving side of King's "triple evils." This hardly
prevented him from being adored as a man of peace and justice by millions at
home and abroad - something worth recalling as Obama embarks on his explicitly
Kennedy-esque tour of Europe and the Middle East and as preparations continue
for Obama to accept his presidential nomination before 70,000-plus chanting
fans in a mile-high football stadium that will have to suffice since Mount
Sinai is unavailable.
Class: "In the service of corporate capitalism"
Take JFK and economic injustice,
the second of King's "triple evils." More than a decade before officially
neoliberal Democrats emerged to explicitly steer the Democratic Party to the
corporate center, JFK's frequently declared sympathies for the poor and working
class took a back seat in his White house to what political scientist and
Kennedy chronicler Bruce Miroff called "the real determinants of policy:
political calculation and economic doctrine."
As Mirroff noted in his brilliant and largely forgotten study Pragmatic Illusions: The Presidential
Politics of John F. Kennedy (New York: Longman's, 1976), "political calculation led Kennedy to appease the
corporate giants and their allies in government. Economic doctrine told him that the key to the expansion and
health of the economy was the health and expansion of those same corporate
giants. The architects of Kennedy's
‘New Economics' liked to portray it as the technically sophisticated and
politically neutral management of a modern industrial economy. It is more accurately portrayed as a
pragmatic liberalism in the service of corporate capitalism" (Miroff, p. 168).
Numerous Kennedy administration
economic programs followed closely along lines that favored and had already
been marked out by the corporate sector. As Miroff noted:
"His wage guidelines, and other efforts
at terminating labor-management conflict over the distribution of income, fit
neatly with business's longstanding objective of holding wage costs steady. His
liberalization of depreciation allowances furnished business with a tax break
which it had sought unsuccessfully from the Eisenhower administration. His
proposed reduction in corporate income and personal income taxes in the higher
brackets approached tax reductions earlier proposed by the National Association
of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Corporate executives may not have had Kennedy's ear, but the
functional result was not so different than if they had. Economic doctrine and political calculation
were enough to make him respond more often to business desires than to those of
the economic constituencies that actually supported him."
"JFK's
administration's record on economic equity was less than progressive."
The Kennedy administration's
"economic growth" policies conferred significantly greater advantage on the affluent
than they did to working-, middle- and lower-class Americans. Seen against the
backdrop of JFK's frequently expressed empathy for America's underdogs, his
administration's record on economic equity was less than progressive. The
regressive nature of his "New Economics' was cloaked by his recurrent,
much-publicized spats with certain members of the business community (the
executives of U.S. Steel above all), his repeated statements of concern for
labor and the poor, and his claim to advance a purely "technical" and
"pragmatic" economic agenda that elevated "practical management" and
administrative expertise above the "grand warfare of ideologies" (Miroff, pp.
182-183, 217-218). It was for doctrinal
as well as for emotional and calculated political reasons that many of the
early proponents of what later came to be known as the Democratic neoliberals
(e.g. Senators Gary Hart and Bill Bradley, Governors Bruce Babbit, James Hunt,
Richard Lamm, and Bill Clinton, Congressmen Al Gore and Timothy Wirth) made JFK
their inspiring role model (see Randall Rothenburg, The Neoliberals: Creating the New American
Politics [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984]).
Consistent with the JFK legacy on class, "Obamanomics" has
been business-neoliberal from the start. The Wall Street-sponsored Obama
appointed the pro-corporate Democratic Leadership Council and University of
Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee (the fellow who told Canadian diplomats to
discount Obama's "campaign rhetoric" against the North American Free Trade Agreement)
as his chief economic adviser during the primary campaign. "Obama, Inc." has
brought in the Wal-Mart-applauding economist Jason Furman from the corporatist
and aptly named Hamilton Group to serve as his economic policy director.
Obama's health care, economic stimulus and mortgage/foreclosure crisis
proposals have all been positioned to the right of those of John Edwards and
even the centrist Hillary Clinton, not to mention Dennis Kucinich, the only
actually Left candidate in the primaries. And just like JFK, Obama has falsely
sold this conservative economic agenda as a form of neutral "get things done"
pragmatism emphasizing "technical expertise" over and beyond mere "ideology."
Race: Caucasian-Friendly Caution and Calculation
JFK inhabited the same centrist, cautious, cunning, and
"pragmatic" place on race, the first of King's triple evils. He found it politically useful to intervene
on Dr. Martin Luther King's behalf during the latter's jailing in the election
year of 1960 and, later, to wrap himself in the aura of racial progress and
equality by offering some partial and belated federal protections to
participants in the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). But the Kennedy administration
worked hard to discourage, dilute, and divert the CRM and gave some elementary
shelter to activists and southern blacks only when Jack and (his youthful
brother and Attorney General) Bobby Kennedy calculated that rabid white
southern reaction was undermining their ability to sell America's capitalist
and imperial concept of "democracy" in the non-white Third World. Along the
way, the Kennedy brothers were inordinately obsessed with alleged Communist
connections to King and the CRM.
Subsequent
"Mississippi Burning" iconography and revisionism aside, Kennedy was no great
friend of the struggle for black equality during the late 1950s and early
1960s. His response to the movement was dominated by the tension between two
competing calculations of political pragmatism: (i) the threat of politically
alienating white Americans (especially traditionally Democratic white
Southerners; (ii) the risk of losing Third World hearts and minds in the
supposed U.S. struggle to advance "freedom and democracy" (falsely conflated
with capitalism and subjugation to U.S. influence) against supposed
Soviet-sponsored "communism" (national independence and social justice in the
"developing world"). The actual lives and struggles of black Americans were not
an especially relevant consideration in the Kennedy administration's behavior.
When southern racist authorities managed to defeat the black struggle for
equality without excessive televised bloodshed and bitterness, as in Albany
Georgia, JFK was more than happy to withhold support for the CRM.
"Obama
has made numerous speeches and comments suggesting the black
Americans are personally and culturally responsible for their disproportionate
presence at the bottom of the nation's steep socioeconomic and institutional
hierarchies."
Walking in JFK's cautious and calculating footsteps on race,
the technically black Obama has been careful to distance himself from the fact
and claim that racial oppression and white supremacy continue to pose steep
barriers to black advancement and racial equality in the U.S. He talks about the racism that stokes the
fires of living black anger as if it was merely a troubling overhang from the
past (Rev. Jeremiah Wright's ancient era).
Obama advances no relevant or explicit policy agenda to take on the
deeply entrenched institutional racism that lives on beneath white America's
readiness to elect a president who is "black but not like Jesse." He has made
numerous speeches and comments suggesting the black Americans are personally
and culturally responsible for their disproportionate presence at the bottom of
the nation's steep socioeconomic and institutional hierarchies. He has failed
to link himself strongly to contemporary Civil Rights struggles around the
small-town southern white prosecution of the "Jena 7" and the monstrous 50-shot
New York City police murder of Sean Bell. Obama responded to the exoneration of
Bell's killers with a terse statement lecturing black New Yorkers on the need
to respect "the rule of law." Such behavior has provoked the understandable ire
of Reverend Jackson, whose psycho-sexualized revenge fantasies are music to the
politically pragmatic ears of Obama's handlers in the "post-Civil Rights era" -
when racism is officially over.
Empire: "The American moment must be seized anew"
JFK's foreign policy record is militantly imperial and
militarist, contrary to his subsequent hagiographers' laughable efforts to
re-invent him as some sort of Sixties peacenik. That record includes the Kennedy administration's decision to dramatically and
dangerously escalate the international arms race after Kennedy campaigned on
the deceptive claim that the U.S. was on the wrong side of a mythical
Soviet-American "missile gap." Kennedy's nuclear machismo helped bring the
world to the brink of annihilation on at least two occasions.
Referring arrogantly to the U.S. as "watchtower on the
walls of [global] freedom," JFK undertook numerous provocative actions meant to
overthrow the popular revolutionary government of Cuba. He supported numerous
Latin-American dictatorships and oligarchies in the name of "progress" and "democracy."
He "raised the level of [U.S.] attack [on Indochina] from international
terrorism to outright aggression in 1961-62" (Noam Chomsky), justifying the use of U.S. airpower to
napalm social revolutionaries, defoliate Vietnamese countryside, and "kill a
lot of innocent peasants" (Roger Hillsman) with the false claims that "we are
opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless [Soviet-Marxist]
conspiracy" and that failure to stop "Communism" in Vietnam would open the
gates to Soviet world domination. Contrary to subsequent myths trumpeted by
JFK-worshippers like Oliver Stone (who needed to do a movie on the execution of
Dr. King) and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Kennedy had no intent of pulling back
from his mass-murderous assault until "victory" was attained (see Noam Chomsky,
Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture [Boston, MA:
South End Press, 1993], Chapter 1: "From Terror to Aggression").
"Kennedy's
nuclear machismo helped bring the world to the brink of annihilation on at
least two occasions."
Kennedy epitomized the strictly conditional
nature of "democracy" as a U.S. foreign
policy objective when he remarked that while the U.S. would prefer democratic
regimes abroad, it will choose "a [pro-American dictator] Trujillo" over "a
["anti-American" dictator] Castro" if those were the only choices. "It is
necessary only to add," Noam Chomsky noted in 1991, that Kennedy's "concept of
‘a Castro' was very broad, extending to anyone who raises problems for the
‘rich men dwelling at peace with their habitations,' who are to rule the world
according to [Winston] Churchill's aphorism, while enjoying the benefits of its
human and material resources."
Walking in JFK's imperial footsteps, Obama has advanced
mealy-mouthed and ever-shifting positions on Iraq, clearly (however) indicating
that an Obama White House will maintain the criminal occupation of oil-rich
Mesopotamia for an indefinite period of time.
He takes brazenly imperial positions on Israel/Palestine, Columbia,
Cuba, Afghanistan, Iran, the "defense"
(Empire) budget, and the broad role of the United States (which Obama absurdly
calls the "last and best hope of the world") in the world. Here is an interesting formulation from an
essay Obama published in the U.S. Council of Foreign Relations' journal Foreign
Affairs in the summer of 2007:
"The American moment is not over, but it must be seized
anew... A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace.... we
must become better prepared to put boots
on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly
adaptive campaigns on a global scale...I will not hesitate to use force
unilaterally, if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital
interests ...We must also consider using
military force in circumstances beyond self-defense, in order to provide
for the common security that underpins global stability - to support friends,
participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass
atrocities."
The article in which these words appeared was published
while liberal and left peaceniks all over my home town (Iowa City) were putting
up Obama signs next to peace posters quoting Dr. King on how "War is Not the
Answer." Ronald Reagan or JFK couldn't
have given more brash forewarnings of imperial adventurism to come!
In the openly imperial foreign policy chapter of his
Kennedy-esque campaign book The Audacity of Hope, Obama criticized
"left-leaning populists" like "Venezuela's Hugo Chavez" for thinking that
developing nations "should resist America's efforts to expand its hegemony" and
for daring (imagine!) to "follow their own path to development." Such
dysfunctional "reject[ion] [of] the ideals of free markets and liberal
democracy" along with "American" ideas like "the rule of law" and "democratic
elections" - interesting terms for the
heavily state-sponsored U.S. effort to impose authoritarian and corporate-state
capitalist policy imperatives on impoverished nations - will only worsen the situation of the global poor, Obama
claimed. Obama's bestselling book and
supposed proclamation of "progressive" faith (the candidate used that word to
describe himself on numerous occasions in the volume) ignored a preponderance
of evidence showing that the imposition of the "free market" corporate-neoliberal
"Washington Consensus" has deepened poverty across the world in recent decades.
Billions are forced to live in ever-more extreme poverty as Obama's book
audaciously instructed poor and exploited states that "the system of free
markets and liberal democracy" is "constantly subject to change and
improvement."
"Obama criticized ‘left-leaning populists' like
‘Venezuela's Hugo Chavez' for thinking that developing nations ‘should resist
America's efforts to expand its hegemony.'"
Obama did not comment in Audacity on the remarkable
respect the U.S. showed for "democratic elections" and "the rule of law" when
it supported an attempted military coup to overthrow the democratically elected
Chavez government (because of his opposition to the U.S neoliberal agenda) in
April of 2002. It is doubtful that Obama's concept of the democratically
elected Chavez is much different than Kennedy's concept of "a Castro."
Those who have the time and energy to examine the
overwork-plagued U.S. "homeland" might want to note the ever-escalating
inequality of U.S. society and the related, ever-deepening insecurity
experienced by American working people.
Such is the ugly reality of "life," even in the U.S. - home to what
Obama's book obsequiously called "a prosperity that's unmatched in history" -
under the rule of the neoliberal doctrine that big business upholds and which
Kennedy helped advance before the last embers of the social democratic and New
Deal traditions had died out in U.S. political culture. Those traditions were snuffed out with no
small help from the criminal Vietnam War that Kennedy did so much to escalate.
Obama can have the Kennedy mantle that he craves and hopes
to don for the world to see at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin (or some other
suitable historic location in Germany). Look for Obama to be crowned the new
King of Camelot by the last living Kennedy brother on the centrist 50-yard line
in Denver next month - a sight to be anticipated with trembling souls by
hopeful and dreamy masses at home and abroad. The cunning, corporate and
imperial Kennedy legacy is actually what Obama is all about, morally and
ideologically speaking, something that would cause trepidation in a western
political culture that hadn't been subjected to the relentless Orwellian
erasure of the richly bipartisan crimes of American Empire and Inequality.
Veteran left historian and activist Paul Street
([email protected]) is the author of Empire and Inequality (2004) and
Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (2007). His next book is "Barack
Obama and the Future of American Politics" (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers,
August 2008 advance order at
www.paradigmpublishers.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=186987)