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Academic

: Essentially Contested America

Barack's Blunder

By Robert Justin Lipkin

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Senator Barack Obama, championing a unifying progressivism, or so one thought, praised Ronald Reagan for in effect blocking the cultural dynamism of the sixties, namely, a greater concern with racial justice and the role of woman in American culture. Check out Democracy Now's report: "In campaign news, Senator Barack Obama is coming under criticism for appearing to slight the civil rights and feminist movements while expressing admiration for former President Ronald Reagan. In an interview with the editorial board of the Reno Gazette, Obama lauded Reagan's challenge to what Obama called the 'excesses' of the 1960s and 1970s.

Senator Barack Obama: 'I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path, because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown, but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people--he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.'

Obama did not specify what he believes those 'excesses' were. But Reagan is widely credited with leading a rightwing backlash against the gains of the civil rights and feminist movements that preceded his 1980 election.'"

Who is this? George Will? Robert Bork? Is this Senator Obama's paradigm for change? Senator Obama has made a major mistake in this interview which needs to be clarified and retracted if progressives are to support his candidacy for the presidency. He's quite right that Ronald Reagan put us on a different "trajectory" but it was a trajectory of reaction to some of the most important constitutional and political accomplishments of the 1960s and 1970s. Reagan was opposed to the needs and rights of the working class and of the poor. Indeed, his was a "kinder, gentler" rejection of economic justice than is George W. Bush's. He was a kinder gentler George W. Bush. More importantly, Regan's trajectory renounced the spirit of the American Founding which included the idea that we can make the world anew. Instead, Reagan's trajectory reflected a Burkean commitment to bu: incremental change, and contempt for deliberative reflection to battle the face of oppression and injustice. For Reagan a commitment to calcified traditions and what was thought to be "natural" determined moral and political values even in the face of substantial contradictory evidence. Let the market solve all of our problems and stick to the nuclear family. Government for Reagan was not "the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Reagan's legacy is certainly a major part of our present quandaries. Is this Obama's ideal? Senator Obama needs to clarify his disturbing commitment to one of the most reactionary forces in the modern era. Keep in mind that clarity in the name of reaction is no virtue, and complexity in the name of racial, sexual, and economic justice is no vice. For Senator Edwards response to Obama's blunder clock here.

To understand Obama's views on Reagan as his paradigm for political change one should read his Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. His treatment of Reagan is decidedly multi-sided, but on two many vital issues he seems to have no quarrel with Reagan and he candidly applauds Reagan's "soaring rhetoric." No savvy progressive would be taken in by this rhetoric. So just who is Senator Obama? Should progressives worry? Will our choice in November be between a Republican for whom Reagan is a god and Senator Obama who idolizes Reagan's approach to change and some of Reagan's substantive commitments as well? Heaven help us.

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Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on January 18, 2008 (boomark / email).