"Shallow Throat": Is Obama Turning Into Bush Lite?
By Bernard Weiner,
Maybe this happens to you, too. You go away on vacation for a few months, come back and sort through your snail/email
and back copies of magazines and 'net stories, only to find that a good share of the mail is third-class junk/spam and
not all that much has changed in the news.
That's the way I feel these days. After pumping out about 300 essays since 9/11, recently I more or less took a
three-month leave from publishing political analyses on the internet in order to reconnect with other aspects of my
life, in particular to focus on three major creative projects: a new play (in February), a photo exhibit of new work
(April), and a music concert based on my poetry (May).
Now I'm back, sort of, only to find that much of the political news remains the same as when I took my creative break:
Obama is maintaining his high national approval ratings as he moves his agenda forward, the clueless Republicans
continue as little more than the obstructionist Party of No. But some shiftings are beginning to happen in Washington
that I don't fully understand.
So I arranged a meeting with Shallow Throat to see if the moderate Republican mole (who has been such a helpful source
in the past**) could fill in the blanks in my knowledge while I was absent from the political scene for three months. We
met at a noisy end-of-the-Metro-line cafe.
"So much of what President Obama is doing is right on track with the good things he promised to do during the campaign,"
I said, "so I am mystified why, in the past few months, he has moved away from other important positions he took as a
candidate on a wide variety of subjects: canceling the promised release of more torture photos, defending CheneyBush's
'state secrets' positions in court, ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan big time, agreeing to 'military commissions'
for show trials of terror suspects, keeping the murders of interrogated detainees out of the news, etc. etc. All of this
caving to rightist positions makes him look like a typical political chameleon or, worse still, a hypocrite, or even
worse, not much better than Bush Lite."
"I gather," said ST, "that you're talking about his willingness to give Bush and Cheney and the crew a total walk on
their unconstitutional behavior and on their war-crimes. In effect, if my guess is correct, you and your liberal friends
think on these issues he is selling out his principles and his base."
ACCESSORY AFTER THE FACT?
"Exactly," I replied. "The law is explicit: If you know of a felony (such as state-sponsored torture) and refuse to
report it to the appropriate authorities for action, or impede investigations by covering up the facts, you can be
charged as an accessory after the fact in those crimes -- domestically and in international courts. I still support
Obama and the great bulk of what he's trying to do domestically, but I need to try to understand why on earth Obama is
behaving this way. Hundreds of thousands of people have died as a result of the lies, deceptions and illegal activities
of the previous administration, and Obama, by doing nothing, is letting them all walk away from their crimes, setting a
terrible precedent for more law-breaking by future presidents and their underlings."
"Well," said Shallow Throat, "since I'm not in the Obama Administration, I'm sure I know less than your Democrat friends
in power. But I've got some reasonable speculations based on the scuttlebut I'm picking up and my own sense of how the
Beltway operates.
"First of all, it's essential to realize that Obama is not an ideologue. He has ideals and goals, to be sure, but as you
yourself wrote repeatedly during the campaign, he's mostly a pragmatist with some liberal leanings. As a realist, he
knows there is a big difference between the nation at large, where he and his programs are massively popular, and the
D.C. island, where his policies have to make their way through the dragons of special interests and win approval in a
Congress beholden to those interests.
"Obama knows he can't do it all, can't fix the economy and everything else as well, in one fell swoop. He wants to get a
few major initiatives enacted into law during these first two years -- health-care reform, for sure -- and he needs some
Republican votes. So he's, in effect, trying to take national-security concerns out of the equation -- torture,
war-crimes, terrorism, military tribunals, surveillance -- in order to smooth the way toward passage in Congress of his
major agenda items. He isn't kidding when he says he doesn't want his first term to get bogged down by turning to time-
and energy-consuming investigations into the nefarious crimes of Cheney/Bush-era.
"But Obama simply doesn't yet understand how things work in Washington. The partisan politics of any situation will
always out -- starting with damaging leaks -- especially so in a situation where the opposition, in this case the
Republicans, is looking for anything to drag Obama and the Democrats down. Hell, they've already announced their
oppositon to his nominee to the Supreme Court and that person hasn't even been named yet! And they sure as hell are
going after Obama and his proxies, or are trying to, on national-security issues."
HELPING OBAMA FAIL
"That's what I don't get," I said. "What can the Republicans hope to gain by playing this obstructionist game and by
using the despised Dick Cheney as their spokesman? Surely, they read the polls. The American people are not buying the
extreme politics they're selling. So why not make some alterations in their leadership and policies and move more toward
the center?"
"You are so naive sometimes, Bernie," said Shallow Throat. "My party, still under the control of the extremist
neanderthals, is buying time, bolstering their base, while waiting (and working) for Obama to fail. The leaders of the
party, who enjoyed the perqs of power for the past eight years, are not about to give them up without a fight. They
still think their brand of 'pure' conservatism can climb back into power in the foreseeable future, maybe as early as
2010. So, the politics of destruction, of obstructionism, of moving to rename their opposition the 'Democrat Socialist
Party,' for example.
"They're willing to take the hit for seeming foolish now, in the hope that when Obama stumbles and falls -- perhaps when
the unemployment and credit situations are bad enough next year to cause a genuine Depression -- the public will lose
its enchantment for the guy, and, with no other viable alternative out there on the horizon, the voters will turn back
to the Republicans for stability and prosperity and 'tough love'. That's why the GOP leadership has no room under their
restricted tent for us moderate conservatives. That clown at the head of our party, Michael Steele, says he welcomes
everyone into the Republican Party, including us moderates, as long as we don't try to change it. That's the idiotic
point of view of our GOP leaders these days. I'm embarrassed for our party everytime they open their mouths."
DEMOCRATS' CIRCULAR FIRING SQUAD
"The other side of that issue," I said, "is that Obama is being pummeled by forces within his own party by Blue Dog
Democrats and so-called 'moderate" Dem Senators and House members. If they all stood together against the Republicans,
more could get done faster. But, regardless of what their personal motives and ambitions might be, they are effectively
acting in concert with the Republicans in messing up Obama's momentum and policies, the result of which is that little
of moment gets done. Yes, we can't."
"And," said Shallow Throat, taking a swig of a Dos Equis, "the result of this behavior by the likes of Bayh and
Lieberman and Baucus and the rest in the Senate, and the Blue Dogs in the House, is to join Limbaugh and Gingrich and
Boehner and that baggage-laden crew in trying to ensure that Obama does not succeed with any major initiative. Reminds
one of Will Rogers' famous statement: 'I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat'."
"OK," I replied, "Let's suppose that you're right about Obama's motivation for pulling back on so many hot-button
national-security issues in order to smooth the way to get his health-care reforms and other such legislation through
Congress. What does such behavior bring him? It seems clear to me that no matter what Obama does in the way of intended
mollification of the GOP, the Republicans, having no positive programs to offer, are going to attack him brutally
anyway; he might as well fight for what he really believes in, yes?"
ST smiled. "Millions of you liberals went into the presidential campaign thinking you had a progressive or radical ally
in Obama. You raised your expectations of him so high because you wanted to believe that at last, some real structural
changes would be made once he got to the White House. I hope you now are coming to realize that Obama is in no way
interested in upsetting the elite forces in place. Just look at his embrace and protection of the very financial
institutions that took the economy into the toilet, and his acceptance of the neo-cons' American exceptionalist
foreign/military policy.
"In short, Obama is no revolutionary, no anti-capitalist, no verbal bomb-thrower -- even if the far-right chooses to
label him and his policies 'socialist' and 'nazi-like' and 'communistic' and so on (that's how desperate they are to
find some awful epithet that will stick and drag him down). No, he's just a politician, one whose heart may be in the
right place on a good many issues, but willing to sell out his grandmother (and his liberal base) if he has to in order
to get a few decent pieces of legislation passed and another term in office."
FIGHT ON THE INSIDE OR GET OUT
"So what would you advise progressive Democrats and moderate Republicans to do?" I asked. "Neither one seems able to
affect the course of their party's leaders. And so nothing much changes in America, and the forces in control of the
status quo continue to prevail. Having lost a good share of their retirement funds, maybe even their jobs and homes,
more people grow disenchanted about the possibility for meaningful change in this country, grow tired of the usual
partisan games and corruptions. They drop out of the political process of democracy with a 'curse on both their houses'
mentality. Anger, despair, frustration grow. Whether that translates into violent, proto-revolutionary opposition is
uncler."
"I can speak to the moderate-Republican part of that question," said Shallow Throat. "From our point of view, our course
must be to build up our alliances and forces and hope that the self-destruction of the GOP continues so that if the
Republicans once again lose the national election in 2010, the extremists will be forced out and we can re-assume
control of our party. Our moderate center-right policies, devoid of all the extremist rhetoric, will look attractive
once more to a huge swatch of the American public -- independents, moderate former Democrats,
conservative-but-not-crazy-conservative Republicans."
"But," I responded, "your plan only works if after yet another humiliating defeat at the polls in 2010, the GOP leaders
either resign or are pushed out by you moderate conservatives. What if they simply continue to hold on and rule in their
suicidal way?"
"I'd say if things don't change for the better after the midterm election in 2010, then we moderate Republicans will be
in pretty much the same situation that you progressive Democrats might be in as well: disenchanted with your party
leaders, that is to say Obama and Reed and Pelosi and Rahm catering to the powerful elites who benefit from the status
quo and are not likely to make substantative changes to help out ordinary citizens.
"It might well be time for a mass withdrawal from the traditional two parties and the founding of a true and powerful
big-tent populist third party, one that could attract a huge upswelling of support from a wide variety of sources from
both left and right. If 2012 is the right time to run such an insurgent third-party candidacy, one with the real
possibility of winning (or, at the least, picking up 35% or more of the vote), the time to start thinking seriously
about such a prospect is fast approaching.
"But, for many, it's way too early to make any serious moves in that direction as both the moderates in the GOP and the
progressives in the Democratic Party seem still willing to fight for dominancy and influence within their respective
parties. Not until they are humiliatingly unsuccessful will they be open to the idea of jumping ship and planting the
seeds for a grassroots campaign to create a viable third party.
"Until then, prepare for some victories and many distressing defeats." And with that, Shallow Throat left the cafe,
leaving me with a hard pit in my stomach as I contemplated what I'd just heard.#
**To read earlier conversations with the Shallow Throat character, go here.
*************
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington State, worked as a writer/editor with
the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currenty serves as co-editor of The Crisis Paper (www.crisispapers.org).