Obama's mid-term adjustment

Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

The United States (US) electorate has spoken. Pundits pontificated, yet the meaning of the culmination of two years of Republican, Tea Party and special interest group opposition to Barack Obama and the agenda of the Democratic Party seems to elude a broad section of allegedly informed opinion in the US.

Obama went to the White House and Washington with the express intention of transforming habitual posturing and opposition merely for the sake of it.

He insisted there would be not little, but no, room for lobbyists in his Cabinet. Yet seemingly, he made two big errors. His choices in the critical area of economic policy reflected the same connections, revolving door of corporate, and Wall Street interests interchanged with Washington.

To deal with the September 2008 meltdown and Detroit's implosion, he had to dig deep. This he did, but extracted nothing from the Wall Street moguls.

Washington made them whole before asking whether they would embrace financial regulatory reform.

Whereas you could treat union contracts with the automakers like valueless, indeed worthless, rotting papyrus, compensation package contracts, derivative contracts and other esoteric shenanigans remained sacred. If you touched them, meltdown would surely morph into flaming hot, endless glowing lava flow across the world.

Wall Street could keep its unearned bonuses, hide misbehaviour that ruined pension funds and pensioners, get Fed funds at almost zero per cent interest and carry on as usual.

Hoodwinked and unsuspecting underwater homeowners he offered a sop - renegotiation of their mortgage. Both borrowers and lenders would suffer the haircut - losses from sour loans. There was to be no such luck. The big banks revolted even after feigning support for the idea.

'Tea'd off'

So to stimulus he turned, but Republicans and Tea Partiers claimed it was big government and an absolutely failed policy even as they went to their districts boasting of the funds garnered to keep schools open and firehouses operational.

He got health-care reform passed in face of an expensive and fact-free campaign that spoke of death panels and other moves expressly compared to Hitler's Germany. The venom of this opposition was perhaps, unprecedented with town hall meetings attended by Tea Partiers bearing assault rifles and assorted loaded firearms.

Yet Obama persisted with his effort to get Republican - bipartisan - support. He would never succeed. Mistake No. 2, you might say.

The economy is in the tank. This is no surprise for the simple reason that even if you give regular people a tax break while they enjoy no job prospect, while they live in an underwater mortgaged home, they will not, cannot spend.

Add to this the conservative Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission that allowed corporate America, indeed corporate global, to advocate 'directly and expressly', support for or opposition to candidates for federal office, as long as they did not coordinate their efforts with political campaigns or parties.

Effectively opening the spigot, the fire hose, of corporate campaign spending which Karl Rove exploited, provides a recipe for the record-breaking turn of fortune of the Democrats and Barack Obama.

We need not even mention the fact that Obama, viewed as black, Muslim, foreign born and 'not one of us' by many in the Tea Party makes the recipe begin simmering on steroids. 'Take back our country' is powerful code for all the former. The gurus of the world's political advertising Mecca know this.

Obama has been a radiant breath of fresh air after George W. Bush and America is the much better for his accession to the presidency.

The Nobel Committee obviously feels so too is the world. Yet an almost venomous section of opinion in America does not share this view. Their venom, fuelled by an entirely self-serving billionaire class, reflects an overdose of ignorance effortlessly exploited as it admits not even the notion of self-interest.

This set of circumstances in the country recognised as the 'leader of the free world' surely gives pause to many in the international community. It is an apprehension, however, which it is politically incorrect to voice.

The Chinese must spend countless hours and days in contemplation of their diplomatic and economic policy responses to a Washington ostensibly under threat of governance by the inept.

A body meant to reflect and display sound judgement must be careful of what tendencies it allows, endorses and advocates.

wilbe65@yahoo.com