Locker Room has an Obama as FDR opinion piece from Emory University professor Paul Rubin, which isn’t any more reassuring than the recent Obama as Hoover theme, considering the fact that FDR’s policies prolonged the Great Depression.
Interesting that Locker Room’s George Leef mentions Bill Clinton in his post, noting how Clinton “used to talk the talk of leftist anti-capitalist resentment, but he seemed to grasp that public policy can ruin the environment for production. In Obama, however, the socialists have the real thing.”
With that in mind, let’s go back to the Obama as Clinton theme, falling back once again on Jonah Goldberg and his “deeply silly” book Liberal Fascism. Liberals keep falling back on the strong economy during the Clinton administration, but Goldberg reminds us of the Clintons’ early years when, high on power and with the media was on their side, they sought to institute radical reforms such as nationalized health care. Here, Goldberg focuses on Clinton friends Ira Magaziner and Robert Reich toward that end:
Now, does it seem likely that the Clintons, who’d known Magaziner for twenty years, expected that he’s come up with anything other than a corporatist strategy for American health care the moment they picked him? All of the studying, the meetings, the towers of briefing books, and the forest of file folders: these were all props in a Kabuki dance that had been scripted and blocked out well in advance.
Or consider fellow Yalie Robert Reich. We’ve already touched on his views on industrial policy and the Third Way. But it’s worth looking at Reich as a true acolyte of the religion of government. I have been openly disdainful of psychological theorizing in earlier chapters, but how can we see Robert Reich as anything but a walking Sorelian myth, a one-man band belting out noble lies for the cause?
We know Obama’s record, one of the most liberal in the Senate, and we know who his friends are. And though complaints about lack of vetting by the mainstream media are still valid, word’s getting out (although possibly too late for McCain) about where his economic policies could take this country. So just what do we expect Obama to come up with once we pick him? Obama’s talking the populist talk right now, but we shouldn’t be surprised when we discover it’s part of his own Kabuki dance.
