I thought Obama's new general-election ad was interesting. To make it more conservative, he would have had to attack gay marriage and call for nuclear waste to be stored in Yosemite. He stands for "values straight from the Kansas heartland where I grew up..." My theory is that he might be courting independents.
And this trailer from Fortune for a soon-to-be-published interview with Obama ("Nafta not so bad after all") would seem to support that theory.
The general campaign is on, independent voters are up for grabs, and Barack Obama is toning down his populist rhetoric - at least when it comes to free trade.
In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA."Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Does that mean his rhetoric was overheated and amplified? "Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself," he answered.
All this and Jason Furman too. I thought that a fine appointment, by the way, but never dreamed how significant until I read Naomi Klein.
Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."
Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony."Obama's love of markets and his desire for "change" are not inherently incompatible. "The market has gotten out of balance," he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama--who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade--is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.
Ms Klein rightly draws attention to the irony--I mean, the irony--of Obama's lurch to the right:
The irony is that there is absolutely no reason for this backsliding. The movement launched by Friedman, introduced by Ronald Reagan and entrenched under Clinton, faces a profound legitimacy crisis around the world. Nowhere is this more evident than at the University of Chicago itself. In mid-May, when university president Robert Zimmer announced the creation of a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute, an economic research center devoted to continuing and augmenting the Friedman legacy, a controversy erupted. More than 100 faculty members signed a letter of protest. "The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive," the letter states. "Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world's population."
When Friedman died in 2006, such bold critiques of his legacy were largely absent. The adoring memorials spoke only of grand achievement, with one of the more prominent appreciations appearing in the New York Times--written by Austan Goolsbee. Yet now, just two years later, Friedman's name is seen as a liability even at his own alma mater. So why has Obama chosen this moment, when all illusions of a consensus have dropped away, to go Chicago retro?
Why indeed? Why oh why? More than 100 faculty members have signed a letter of protest! The rest of Ms Klein's richly nuanced analysis is here.
Kansas values, Chicago retro. Whatever next?
Holy shit, I thought I clicked on Goldberg's blog link but landed here instead, and lo and behold, to my great surprise, the Atlantic has a mysterious EIGHTH blogger. I was intrigued until I read this article and found out that Megan McArdle must have asked the boss for a sidekick. It's okay Robin, someday someone will give your blog the attention it deserves and put your "analysis" in its place.
The non-trivial fact that India and China are becoming prosperous, slowly but surely lifting one-third of the world population out of poverty, while invalidating every socialist position on what is good economics, is something Ms Klein tends not to mention. So is the fact that there are several explanations to what ails much of Africa and Central Asia and Latin America, including corruption and the persistence of socialist-inspired policies.
And yes, oh Goody, what a surprise that there are non-conservative academics. It does take some insight beyond what mere mortals usually are endowed with.
Correction:
He says, "... where they grew up," not "... where I grew up."
@Only Commenter:
Nothing against Meg McArdle whose blog I enjoy very much, but c'mon dude, this is Clive Crook! He's been her boss at just about every job she's held. On second thought, you must be one of Mr. Crook's buddies given him a hard time. That said, it is really hard to get my mouse pointer all the way to this blog, especially with a touchpad.
That said, I really dislike pandering. At least I used to dislike pandering until Barack Obama came along. Now he simply announces that he was pandering. This is causing me concern though because now I'm becoming less sure as to when he is pandering and when he is professing ideals that he will carry with him into office. For example, I like NAFTA and I like Chicago School, and I don't like trade restrictions. Should I assume that Obama is telling the truth when he says he was just pandering while making unequivocal statements?