Page 1 of 2 Obama not a ghost of Clinton past
By Julian Delasantellis
It now seems probable that come next January 20 those in charge in Washington
DC will look very different to those in charge previously.
I'm not talking about the obvious factor of pigmentation chromatism, the issue
that convulsed the nation for both the more than 300-odd days of the campaign
as well as the more than 300 years history of the United States. During the
presidential campaign, most of the country seemed to have accepted the
possibility of an African-American president, with the possible exception of a
narrow band of the nation that stretched in an arc
from southwestern Pennsylvania across the deep south to Oklahoma.
This area, (along with parts of Republican Senator John McCain's Arizona and
most of governor Sarah Palin's Alaska) were the only parts of the country that
voted more Republican than in 2004; these places will suffer the culture shock
of having to accept a president who looks nothing like their favorite NASCAR
racing hero.
Although this is not really the change I'm talking about, it will also be a
welcome difference that government policy in all matters of science policy,
from stem-cell research to the search for intelligent life in the universe,
will no longer have to be vetted by focus groups comprised of high school
graduates bused in by Karl Rove from the Bible-belt megachurches.
Yes, this administration is going to be looking very different from all its
predecessors, including, and especially, that of Bill Clinton.
I've written many times previously here how political news in America is marked
by a surplus of stupidity and a shortage of sagacity; this pattern is being
once again displayed in coverage of the formation of the new administration of
Barack Obama. The blogs, cable news networks and all their zombie undead
talking heads can no longer fill air time with breathless coverage of the
latest poll results identifying "important trends" in presidential preference
among white divorced career college graduate amputees who attend Zen Buddhist
services in their pyjamas twice a month or more. Instead of passing superficial
judgments on election trends, they're being forced to pass superficial
judgments on the first personnel decisions of the incoming administration.
The most popular meme of this blather is the supposed similarity of the new
Obama team to the old Clinton team that ruled from 1993-2001. This commenced
with the selection of Chicago Congressman Rahm Emanuel as Obama's chief of
staff to be - Emanuel served as a senior policy advisor in the Clinton White
House from 1993 to 1998. The same comments were made concerning Obama's choice
for attorney general - Eric Holder, a deputy attorney general from 1997 to
2001.
Of course, like adding real cherries to a cherry pie, the easiest and most
direct method for making the incoming administration look like a third Clinton
term would be to include an actual real live Clinton in it; this will be the
case should Obama nominate Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state. The press
is full of stories reporting that this will soon be the case; the stories said
to be from "highly placed sources" close to Senator Clinton. The sources are
anonymous and unnamed, but it's reasonable to assume that most of them just
happen to have "HRC" as initials.
But anybody who tries to push the line that either the Obama economic team, or
the Obama economic program, is Clinton III is only shining a spotlight on their
own ignorance.
Much of Obama's economic program was leaked to the press over the weekend, and
at a Chicago press conference on Monday Obama introduced most of his economic
team.
"The news this past week, including this morning's news about Citigroup, has
made it even more clear that we are facing an economic crisis of historic
proportions," he said in his introduction speech. "Our financial markets are
under stress. New home purchases in October were the lowest in half a century.
Recently, more than half a million jobless claims were filed, the highest in 18
years - and if we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts now believe that
we could lose millions of jobs next year.
"Today, vice president-elect [Joe] Biden and I are pleased to announce the
nomination of four individuals who meet these criteria to lead our economic
team: Timothy Geithner as secretary of the Treasury; Lawrence Summers as the
director of our National Economic Council; Christina Romer as chair of the
Council of Economic Advisors; and Melody Barnes as director of the Domestic
Policy Council ... we need a recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main
Street, a plan that stabilizes our financial system and gets credit flowing
again, while at the same time addressing our growing foreclosure crisis,
helping our struggling auto industry, and creating and saving 2.5 million jobs
- jobs rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing our schools, and
creating the clean-energy infrastructure of the 21st century. Because at this
moment, we must both restore confidence in our markets and restore the
confidence of middle-class families, who find themselves working harder,
earning less, and falling further and further behind."
Last week, the financial markets were a grim, foreboding place. I noted last
Friday (see TARP
flip flop true to form, Asia Times Online, November 21, 2008), how
current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's decision to suspend the purchase of
illiquid mortgage assets focus of the TARP bailout was being reacted to very
negatively by the markets; on Thursday, the S&P 500 stock index fell to
lows not seen in a decade. With the Bush administration clearly up on deck
trying to edge the women and children out of the lifeboats, it seemed like the
markets were in for a bleak, far from festive holiday season.
During the campaign, right-wing ideologues such as Rush Limbaugh mocked the
media interest and hoopla surrounding the Obama campaign by calling him "the
Messiah". On Friday, Obama raised his staff, started the process of leading the
children of the markets out of the wilderness to the promised land.
It is customary that the first choice a US president-elect makes for his
cabinet is for secretary of state. This position represents the senior, most
respected member of the cabinet. The US constitution has placed this official
as first in line of cabinet officers in the line of presidential succession.
Still, it was on Friday afternoon that word leaked that Obama's choice for
Treasury secretary was the current head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank,
47-year-old Geithner.
That was it, for, at least for the time being. The markets accepted that the
rescue that the current George W Bush/Henry Paulson administration had proven
unable to conjure would instead be delivered by the Obama administration in two
months time. The Dow Jones Industrials rallied over 500 points off their lows
in the last hour of trading on Friday, then tacked on another 396 points on
Monday. This was on the back of carryover ebullience from Friday as well as yet
another financial system rescue/quasi-nationalization, that of the nation's
largest financial institution, Citigroup.
Geithner is a particularly appropriate choice for these troubled times. As
president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the regional Fed bank charged
with riding herd over the US financial markets, Geithner has been right there
at the table bolting together rescue package after rescue package as the
financial system has collapsed this past year - first with Bear Stearns in
March, then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the summer, then the failed salvation
of Lehman in September.
Hunting out and finding the few Geithner critics, the media have spotlighted
those who criticized him for rescuing Bear and not doing the same for Lehman,
although both were undoubtedly more Paulson's decisions. It may not easy to win
with the chattering classes of the political media, but as for Wall Street, it
clearly has Geithner's back.
Media reports had the other potential pick as former Harvard University
president and Clinton-era (1999-2001) Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers. This
would have been a much more problematical Treasury pick for Obama; Summers
lacks the in-depth markets experience of Geithner, and, as a Clinton cabinet
officer, would have had the press continuing to gnaw contentedly away at the
Obama as Clinton III bone.
Also, even in an era when not much concern is being shown for the federal
government's fiscal deficit, the cost of widening all the doorways at the
Treasury, as well as at the White House cabinet room, sufficient to accommodate
Summers's massive, swollen, gargantuan head would undoubtedly have been
astronomical.
But it's not so much in personnel choices that Obama is striking out on a
different course than Bill Clinton. It's in policy.
In some ways, the situation 16 years ago as Clinton prepared to assume office
bears a striking resemblance to that of today. A young Democratic president had
been elected to great hope and optimism, as the outgoing Republican regime, led
by someone called George Bush, had led the economy into unemployment and
despair because of excessive investment and speculation in the real-estate
sector. This was the savings and loans crisis, the subprime fiasco of the late
1980s and early 1990s.
Clinton's 1992 campaign revolved around two main points - that he was a "new",
centrist Democrat, unconnected to the now
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