Sanders is likely to face two strikes—one in the capitol and one from capital—if he wins the Democratic nomination and later the White House.
By
I am a child of the presidency. I came of age politically in the early 1970s when the end game in the Vietnam War still stoked furious debate and the constitutional crisis of Watergate brought down the Nixon presidency. Historians, presidential scholars and politicians fell over themselves to decry the excesses of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr famously termed “the imperial presidency.” And young minds like mine were entranced with sorting it all out. I have since struggled to convey to students the seismic feeling that the tectonic plates of politics in the US were shifting under our feet.
Today conjures similar tremors. An obstructionist Senate leadership awaits delivery of articles of impeachment against a criminally unhinged chief executive who blithely walks us to the brink of war with Iran, the planet faces the existential crisis of a sixth extinction with the relentless march of climate change, and—OMG!—democratic socialist Bernie Sanders has a serious shot at being elected President. WTF!
In the ‘70s political leaders sought to allay such fears with the comforting conclusion that amidst utter chaos, “the system works.” Bad guys got jail time. Nixon resigned. Elections brought change. And Congress passed legislation to reclaim its budgetary and wars powers. Our political thinking was dominated by the imagery of a constitutional “balance of power,” a metaphorical see-saw rebalanced with a now-chastened presidency on one end and a reenergized Congress on the other. Understandably reassuring back then, the imagery was misleading; we should resist its revival in today’s polarized climate. For beneath partisan differences lies a deeper structure of political and economic power to which both parties are beholden.
The modern presidency was rooted in the long tenure of FDR who confronted the crises of the Great Depression and WW II. His success was rooted, in part, in his willingness to embrace reforms—stealing “the thunder of the left”—that moved the US in a more progressive direction, thus appeasing the populist agitation routinely out in the streets. But the foundation of the office was built upon the twin pillars of endless economic growth (defined as ever-expanding GDP) and promotion of national security (defined as the projection of American power against all “enemies”). These twin goals were bipartisan, a shared consensus wedded to corporate definitions of the ends of US economic and military power, captured succinctly in Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell warning about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex.”
The shared ends are taken as a given, while the media highlight (sometimes strong) tactical differences over means. Yet this consensus on economic growth and national security simply is not sustainable today in the face of accelerating climate change and the decline of American empire. Soaring economic growth is assumed to be the antidote to all problems. Hence media analysts, and especially liberals, didn’t bat an eyelash when President Obama proclaimed his market-based climate policy, reassuring us that being caretakers of the future of the planet involves “no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth,” a proposition with which President Trump readily concurs. As scientists continue to tell us, the US (indeed the world) needs to reduce drastically the production of greenhouse gases by 2030. Promoting soaring economic growth—even in pursuit of the vital goal of expanding the economic pie and distributing it most justly—risks making emission targets even harder to reach. Physics and chemistry are spectacularly indifferent to who chairs the key environmental committees in the House and Senate.
Similarly, our common understanding of “national security” must change. Maintaining more than 800 military bases around the world, along with the environmental hazards inherent in them, will not make us more secure. Neither will the continued sophistication of our weapons and surveillance capabilities, a lesson made ever more poignant by President Trump’s recent drone assassination of Iranian Gen. Suleimani. As much as Democrats insist on the need to be briefed before such an attack, this procedural argument overlooks the deeper substantive agreement that historian Andrew Bacevich terms the American national security “credo,” which “summons the United States—and the United States alone—to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world.” Both parties are marinated in American exceptionalism.
In justifying the death of some 500,000 Iraqi children subjected to a punishing UN embargo, for instance, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright commented to CBS in 1996, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it." She elaborated on the hubris underlying this imperial foreign policy mindset two years later, again with reference to Iraq, allowing that while diplomacy can be useful, “if we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation.” Not to be outdone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—who campaigned to the right of Trump on foreign policy in 2016—offered a giddy off-air declaration to CBS following the 2011 killing of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya: “We came, we saw, he died.” This cheery sentiment should reverberate in the ears of all who harbor hopes that the Democrats operate on a fundamentally different moral plane than Republicans. To be clear, unilateral presidential action is troubling within our constitutional framework. Ignoring it would be dangerous; accountability matters. But in short, if we have an imperial presidency it is because the US has been, since the end of WW II, an imperial power.
What can be done? In this election season progressives have a viable choice between Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. Both are impressive in their own right. The question for the progressive left is not the one thrown in our faces every day: which one can beat Trump? Either one can pull that off, although Sanders’s grassroots support and fundraising ability is deeper, the loyalty of his supporters more fervent, his message to the working class more authentic. He can erode Trump’s base. The larger question is, which one is more likely to move the nation in a progressive direction, beyond mere reformism? Like Sanders, Warren did not come from a privileged background. While she was a registered Republican until 1996, her views have evolved, and it is refreshing that her economic populism frightens Wall Street. Her views of foreign policy are less much less bold and overall her political career leans toward accommodation and compromise. At her core she does not appear to question the conventional bipartisan consensus on economic growth and national security. She clearly articulated her brand of reformism in a 2018 interview: “I am a capitalist. Come on. I believe in markets. What I don’t believe in is theft, what I don’t believe in is cheating.” It is sad that in the age of Trump a candidate must come out against theft and cheating, but such is our political life under a narcissist with authoritarian impulses.
Please continue this article here: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/15/it-clear-establishment-and-corporate-media-would-prefer-trump-reelection-president
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