The American Debacle and Kakushin

Candidate Barack Obama's campaign slogan most remembered, "Yes! We can!", was used to reinforce his claim that an Obama presidency would bring about major changes and, thereby, secure the American dream for all. To achieve the goal would be a very demanding and difficult task for a long-suffering nation, crippled by generational military adventures and their carte blanche budgets, racism, nearly thirty years of deregulation and privatization of governmental services, the neo-conservative wrecking crew's funding strategy of minimalism (shrink government), the massive decades-long transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the already rich upper-class, the deliberate accumulation of debt by Boy George and neo-cons, the collapsing infrastructure, the sapless branch of government: congress; the sacking of financial institutions for short-term gains, rogue corporations and the exploitations of runaway globalization, unwinding unionization and consequential wage, benefits and working conditions deterioration--ad infinitum and ad nauseam! "One nation doth a man make?" Barack Obama is an instrument of kakushin, revolutionary change? Modest innovation would be a beginning, the best that I could expect of any president who pledges "change"; but, to continually speak of "bipartisanship" with the very political party(with considerable assistance from Democrats, mind you)that created the debacle in the first place, is disconcerting!

President Barack Obama has inherited a huge quantity of wreckage from the worst presidency in U.S. history! Substantial clean up is required just to get the Nation back to where it was in January 2001. Yet, after eight years of a failed Bush presidency, and with the John McCain candidacy, Obama and congressional Democrats could not win the November election decisively, when a landslide should have been a given. The two-party(one-party?)political system is in shambles.

The Senate is a hopelessly flawed institution. One hundred of the Nation"s most powerful and richest individuals will make certain that there is no kakushin during the Obama presidency! Therefore, the president must transcend the senatorial quagmire by appealing directly to the electorate. He has to become a circuit-riding lecturer, explaining how the nation got where it is and suggesting ways to turn it around. One topic he should have focused upon concerns the territory where he resides and presides, Washington, D.C.

In 1982, D.C. residents voted for statehood! Nearly thirty years later, the "landlord" or is it the "plantation master"?, the U.S. Senate, is going to give the District a vote in the House of Representatives, with a sack filled with dirty rags, conditions and limitations that will maintain the status quo for generations to come. The Senate Bill abolishes District gun control laws and gives an additional House district to Utah for reasons not entirely clear.

George W. Bush exited Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq, Barack Obama will exit Iraq to concentrate on Afghanistan! It is his war of choice and consummates his presidency. Every President worth his metal has to authorize a war somewhere. I guess the shift of attention to Afghanistan represents "change" in the Obama lexicon. In approving unmanned predator drone attacks against sites and innocent people in Pakistan he has blood on his hands and is in the same league with Geo. W. and Bill Clinton, and after less than a month as Commander-in Chief.

Obama's D.C. rollover is additional indication that he is a race-neutral black politician. He just happens to be "Black", as the word is defined in the United States. His ancestry is not directly tied to this nation"s history of slavery, as is that of his wife's, Michelle Robinson-Obama. Also in this context, Obama talks about the need to assist the suffering middle class, but is virtually silent about the nation's hardcore poor, many of them people of color!

Finding a respectable Secretary of Commerce has been difficult and has raised questions about Obama desires for a bipartisan administration. He also assured the Nation that his vetting system would be fail-safe. The allegations against Bill Richardson and his withdrawal from nomination was an example of either a flawed vetting procedure or an arrogant selection policy. But the subsequent nomination of the Republican Senator from New Hampshire, Judd Gregg and his voluntary withdrawal, noting irreconcilable differences with the Obama administration, in general, and the economic stimulus package, in particular! One can only conclude that Obama's bipartisanship governance approach reflects naivete and does not bode well when the opposition pledges to bring about the demise of the Obama administration! Senator Gregg has taken every opportunity to blast Obama's stimulus package! The Gary Locke nomination (the former govenor of Washington), is good for reasons of diversity, but qualifications seem to be difficult to quantify?

The nomination of Leon Panetta for CIA Director is another stumper. One might have thought that he would bring citizen oversight to the Agency; but that was dashed when Panetta announced the continuation of extraordinary rendition and confirming Obama's intentions to approve harsh interrogation techniques as he sees fit. I seem to recall Obama saying something to the affect that the United States does not engage in torture. However, Boy George said the same thing, at least until the truth came out.

Lastly, Obama speaks of universal corporate health care insurance for every American, but is silent on or dismissive of single-payer universal health care! Tom Daschle's withdrawal of the Health Secretary nomination exposed to public view his serious conflict of interest. It was not a voluntary action, a scandal over monies he had received from the health insurance industry forced it! The Daschle nomination was a major credibility disaster for Obama in matters related to reforming a dysfunctional health care industry.

As I write, I recall a very appealing and entertaining move, "Start the Revolution Without Me", narrated at beginning and end by cinema's revolutionary, Orson Welles. To watch it again now is as close as I am going to get to kakushin in the next four or eight years!