Browsing the archives for the policy tag.

From relief to suspicion and back: Eyeing up Team Obama

Economy, Politics, US Economy, US Politics

Again with the caveat that I haven’t really caught up yet with the transition news of the last week, the confirmations from before surely mean that there’s one man who must not be happy. On the day after Obama’s victory, Dissent‘s Mark Engler celebrated:

Obama rose to the top of a Democratic pool that, as a whole, positioned itself notably to the left of what we had come to expect in the Clinton-Gore years, when top officials scrambled to prove their pro-corporate bona fides and to declare their allegiance to the Democratic Leadership Council. Today’s contenders, while far from perfect from a progressive perspective, campaigned as opponents of an unjust war and of faulty trade agreements such as NAFTA, as advocates of pro-worker labor law reform and of serious national health care.

But he already warned:

To be sure, the .. more contemporary fight to thwart the rightward-pushing forces within the Democratic Party .. is not over. The likes of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers hover over Obama’s victory.

Larry Summers at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, 2007

Larry Summers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2007

I bet he didn’t realise just how much they’d “hover”. With the appointments of Geithner, Summers and Orszag, I’m guessing Engler must have gotten a lot more worried still. As Ezra Klein noted:

For critics of so-called Rubinomics, [..] watching Rubin’s proteges step into every major economic staffing position in the new administration has been concerning. Watching them do so as Goldman-Sachs, which Rubin once led, and Citigroup, which Rubin recently advised, get buffeted by the subprime collapse is almost perverse.

To be fair, however, the opposition within the Democratic Party between the neoliberal, Rubinite cheerleaders of deregulation and the progressive sceptics of free market solutions no longer has the bitter edge it had in the 90s. And the main reason for that is that experience has taught Summers et al. to be more sceptical themselves.

Consider what The American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner, himself a progressive critic of Rubinomics, wrote about Geithner last September:

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“What a Progressive President Might Say”: How will Obama match up?

Politics, US Politics

I didn’t have any spare online time the last week or so, so I’m no longer current on the latest transition news. This was a good find just before, however. After it was confirmed that Melody Barnes would be the Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Obama, TNR The Stump dug up a link to an op-ed she wrote in January 2007 for the WaPo — which was framed as the State of the Union address a progressive president might give.

She gives fashion advice too.

She gives fashion advice too. Not kidding - the Washingtonian profiled her as one of "Ten Well Dressed Women".

Most striking about the piece is just how on message she already was for what would become the framing of Obama’s candidacy and presidency. No wonder she was picked for a top post.

Most encouraging is how she placed escalating income inequality right at the top of domestic policy priorities. What’s hopeful in particular is the way she presented it as the container issue through which other domestic policy questions are framed. Tackling the rapidly increasing concentration of resources in the hands of the few is not just a question of upping the minimum wage. It’s the basic challenge of socio-economic policy that major social issues like education and health care all tie back into.

The acknowledgment of this in Barnes’ piece does warm the progressive heart – both the urgency with which she posits the issue and the ability (and political will) to contextualise pressing sectoral issues like health insurance as more than just individual issues that have come up. Implicit is the understanding of these issues as part of a broader failure of the market economy, or at least of the lurch toward an ever less regulated market economy since the eighties.

A somewhat disappointing part of the piece is the contrast between the paragraphs on Iraq and health care. In both cases, the general diagnosis is solid. For Iraq, however, there is an unambiguous plan of withdrawal. On health care, on the other hand, it’s mostly what’s not mentioned that’s interesting. What to do about the uninsured? Who should ensure them? A state program or private insurers? If a state program, one that’s open to all, or just those without coverage now? Funded how? And if private insurers, how would they be compelled to do it? What about mandates?

A State of the Union obviously doesn’t need to dig way into the details, and a brief op-ed posturing as one cannot possibly do so. But some idea of what path of action she was imagining would have been instructive, especially since her portfolio will include health care and education.

The same goes for energy. The op-ed raises all the right points, but it’s wildly vague on courses of action and priorities. While the paragraph on science underneath includes a pointed reference to embryonic cell research, there’s nothing in the way of even a general approach (say, cap and trade) here.

Still, the fact that one of the top domestic policy advisors to President Obama actually authored an op-ed specifically imagining a progressive presidency is definitely encouraging. Barnes comes from the Center for American Progress, which might calm some nerves about the lack of progressive Obama appointments. The post she will fill is potentially a very powerful one. Now the only question is, what kind of influence will she be able to exert?

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