In today's New York Times, Michiko Kakutani takes Thomas Frank to task for the cynical position he takes toward what he sees as an increasingly intimate entanglement of American politics with business in his new book The Wrecking Crew. In the book, Kakutani reports, Frank chronicles the GOP's love affair with big business since the Reagan years---a story that, by now, is hardly a secret to those who have noticed the economy is in a bit of a crisis as a result of the laissez-faire economic policies of the last 25 years. The problem with Frank, Kakutani says, is that he "comes across in these pages as a sort of parody of the liberal right-wingers love to hate---as someone in love with big government for the sake of big government and opposed to all manner of capitalism and entrepreneurial initiative." Kakutani concludes that Frank is stuck in a pre-Obama mindset by maintaining not only that conservatism has engineered an aggressive capitalist politico-economic complex but also that it is "a plutocracy that will stand regardless of who wins the next few elections."Kakutani, like so many Obama supporters, judges this kind of doomsday prophesying to be the hackneyed rambling of cranks unable to let the old glory days of class warfare die and points to Obama's huge success in "grassroots" fundraising as a sign of the return of pure democracy. She writes, "In a day when Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has amassed more than $340 million in campaign contributions, half of which came from donations of $200 or less, and recently became the first major-party candidate to reject public financing, in the belief that his campaign could raise $200 million to $300 million for the general election, such observations seem not only dubious but antiquated as well."After reading this, I felt duly chastised as one who tends toward fatalism when it comes to believing that economic justice can be sought within the political system and gave myself another pep-talk about voting for Obama. But that all came crashing down when I read Matt Taibbi's piece in this month's Rolling Stone on the train ride home. In it, Taibbi follows the trail of donations to both campaigns to see if we can really expect a corruption-free presidency. The verdict on McCain is unremarkable in that his coffers have been filled by all the usual GOP fund-raising suspects, and it is clear that, just as he has had to swallow the bitter-pill of evangelical Christianity, he has also been forced, albeit with his teeth not nearly as tightly clenched, to hop in the pockets of big business. The truly disheartening, and frankly maddening, revelations come as Taibbi turns to Obama.Far from the great cyber-populist man of the people hoisted to office on a wave of twenty dollar bills sent in by grandmothers and college students, Obama is outed for being just another corporately financed political stooge. Taibbi admits, "Indeed, he has a record number of small donors, with some 45 percent of his campaign cash coming from contributions smaller than $200. Which is a great percentage---but it's only eight points better than John Kerry in 2004 and only 14 points better than George Bush that same year. In truth, Obama is still raising tons of money from big corporate donors." This is to say that while half of his donors may be average citizens, the other half of his donations, and well over half of his money, comes from corporate interests either in the form of party fund-raising donations solicited by the candidate, which are not bound by the $2,300 cap on individual gifts, or corporate bundlers who link up vast business networks to funnel money into campaigns they feel will protect their interests.The evidence that an Obama presidency may have a lot of political debts to pay off is pretty damning. For instance, when a bill was brought to the floor of the Senate in July to regulate trading on oil futures in an attempt to control gas prices, Obama was curiously absent. The bill was defeated. Taibbi writes:
"Not only did Obama not show up to vote, he appeared at a public forum three days later flanked by Jon Corzine and Robert Rubin, two former Goldman [Sachs] executives, to discuss how to revive the economy. Here you have the basic formula of campaign contributions in a nutshell: Powerful investment bank gives big money to candidate, needed reform requires candidate to cross said investment bank, candidate [wimps] out and finds way to be gone at the moment of truth, candidate resurfaces later in arms of aforementioned investment bankers."
"Obama's absence on oil speculation was eerily reminiscent of his previous decision to change his mind about giving retroactive immunity to telecom companies for spying on Americans. Obama withdrew his pledge to filibuster the immunity bill right around the time the Democrats announced that AT&T would be sponsoring the Democratic convention. So no filibuster on retroactive immunity from the top Democrat---but convention goers in Denver will get tote bags emblazoned with the AT&T logo. So that's something."
Furthermore, Obama seems poised to bailout money-lending scoundrels du jour Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Taibbi again:
"Obama also supported the Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae rescue, and that, too, is no surprise, given that he hired one former chairman of Fannie Mae to chair his vice presidential vetting panel and hired another former Fannie Mae chairman to serve as his consultant on housing issues. Most of us will never get within a hundred miles of a single Fannie Mae chairman, but Obama has already hired two---and he isn't even president yet."
To serve as his consultant on housing issues?! Yikes!The scariest connection has to do with one of Obama's biggest bundlers, Hassan Nemazee, who is an Iranian-American investment banker "eager to provoke regime change in Iran." With this in mind, the following comments from Obama's June 4 speech at the AIPAC Policy Conference seem more than a little worrisome:
"The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race, and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its President denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat."
"Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel."
I had hoped that even if Obama's donation slate was less than savory, at least he had his foreign policy positions to recommend him over McCain, but as we have learned with Bush, foreign economic interests usually translate into foreign political interests and, in extreme cases, foreign military interests. Could it be that "change" is just going to mean more of the same?
