When Bill Clinton returned from his outing to Martha’s Vineyard in the late summer of 1993, the collapse of his administration was already three months old. He was well into his rebirth cycle as a committed Republican. As a progressive challenge to business as usual, even by the wan standard of its own timid promises, his presidency had decisively failed by the closing week of May, on the last Saturday of which he signaled surrender by recruiting the old Nixon/Reagan/Bush hand David Gergen as his new public relations chief.
Jimmy Carter achieved his zenith as an agent of positive change on his third day in office: “I, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, do hereby grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to: (1) all persons who may have committed any offense between Aug. 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973, in violation of the Military Selective Service Act ... and (2) all persons heretofore convicted, irrespective of the date of conviction, of any offense committed between Aug. 4, 1964, and March 28, 1973 in violation of the Military Selective Service Act, restoring to them full political, civil and other rights.”
On Aug. 6, 1979, Carter formally surrendered power by installing Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve, tasked with waging war on inflation, with large sacrifices imposed on those who had voted for Carter.
In terms of popularity and political strength, Clinton peaked at the time of the Democratic Party convention in New York. Decline was not long delayed. By the time of his official election in November, the long sunset had already commenced. By the time of the inauguration, the Clinton administration was already low in the water. The president-elect and his advisers had destroyed their room for maneuver in the formulation of economic policy. They fanned budget-cutting hysteria by accepting the silly Republican claim that — surprise! — the prospective deficit was going to be more severe than expected.
By the time he gave his presidential oath, Clinton’s presidency was, as anything other than a vehicle for economic orthodoxy and Wall Street wisdom, in the ditch. A few days later, he pushed the wreck into the crusher by catastrophic handling of the issue of gays in the military. Before the week was out, the Pentagon had its majority in Congress and the Christian right was trumpeting renewal and victory. The health insurance debacle toppled all surviving hopes for constructive change.
It’s hard to know when Obama peaked. Was it at the convention in
Denver? Or the Election Night rally in Chicago? Or his formal
inauguration in January? But by the day of his election, he had already
signed on to Paulson’s bailout of the banks. By the hour Chief Justice
Roberts swore him in, he’d chosen as his chief economic advisers the
bankers’ men, Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner, with Volcker on the
sideline. By the end of his first month, we knew Wall Street and
Goldman Sachs were firmly in control.
Here we are in September and what have Obama’s liberal supporters got
to cling onto, by way of evidence that positive change is on the way?
Economically, we seem to be heading — well ahead of schedule — into
1937, the year the New Deal crashed onto the rocks.
The energy bill, driven by junk science and junk nostrums, has been a
detour into disaster. Health reform is levitating towards the
graveyard, borne along by Blue Dog Democrats, nerveless salesmanship by
the White House and as ripe an eruption of insanity by the knownothing
legions as I’ve ever witnessed.
In a way, it’s inspiring to see ideological principle trump raw
self-interest. Night after night, one can see men tottering out from
million-dollar life-saving procedures in the VA hospital to hurl
invective against “socialized medicine.”
Who’d have thought that the “health care debate” would be the beard for
Klan rallies? Many Obama dreamers hoped that their man would introduce
some minimal shift for the better in America’s relationship to the rest
of the world. Now all they have to look forward to is Gen. Stanley
McChrystal marching up to Capitol Hill and into the Oval Office to
demand more troops for Afghanistan. In relations with Russia, Obama and
Vice President Biden have remained substantively committed to NATO
expansion ism.
In
Latin America, the handling of the coup in Honduras and warm relations
with Colombia’s Uribe suggest a sinister larger strategy of
counter-attack on the leftist trends of the past few years.
It’s
a dark vista overall. Some big opportunities — like a frontal assault
on the power of the banks and of Wall Street — will never return. What
can Obama do to regain the initiative? There are two men capable of
uniting large numbers of Americans in detestation: Dick Cheney and
George Bush, in that order. Typically, Obama has hopped from foot to
foot on his administration’s posture towards our Home Team torturers.
Now, Attorney General Eric Holder has gingerly inclined to the view
that maybe, perhaps, the US government should inch toward the legal
standard on prosecution of torturers required of it by a law signed by
Ronald Reagan, not to mention the Geneva Protocols.
With their
drive for impeachment, the Republicans dominated the headlines and all
but paralyzed the Clinton White House for two years. Now it should be
payback time. Obama’s pledge to the American people: Cheney and Bush
behind bars by 2012, plus Gonzales, Yoo, Addington and the rest of the
pack. We crave drama. From Obama, we’re not getting it, except in the
form of racist rallies. This is his last, best chance.
Alexander Cockburn is co-editor with Jeffrey St. Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. He is also co-author of the book Dime’s Worth of Difference: Beyond the Lesser of Two Evils, available through www.counterpunch.com.
To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other
columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www. creators.com.
Copyright 2009 Creators.Com
