Mais sobre Obama (e sobre a opinião que Paul Krugman tem sobre o estilo de actuação, e estratégia, que Obama se propõe ter, e seguir). É uma nota, no Lambert's Blog, entitulada: Obama stump speech strategy of conciliation considered harmful, que explica o sentido da posição de Krugman, e fâ-lo à luz da apreciação do que tem sido a política americana nos últimos 30 anos - onde esta tem sido condicionada e formatada (de modo muito efectivo) pela actuação dos grandes interesses económicos da direita americana (ver abaixo excerto), ajudada por outros factores (o livro mais recente de Al Gore - não o li ainda - refere-o, penso eu). A tese de Krugman, é que, face a essa deriva (deliberada), o momento exigiria, em termos políticos, um comportamento, por parte de um Presidente Democrata (e do seu partido), de cariz ofensivo, na base de um plataforma, claramente, de esquerda (à americana). Obama, não asseguraria isso. É bom sublinhar que a explicação do facto dos EUA se posicionarem como se posicionam na questão da resposta às consequências das alterações climáticas, também entronca nessa deriva. A propósito de Barack Obama, ver ainda neste blogue, esta nota. Excerto:
"It’s conventional wisdom (says Krugman) among many economic
schools, not just the left, that economics drives politics, and not the other
way round. Economics is seen as more fundamental than politics, certainly more
fundamental than electoral politics. Economic trends are deep tides, and
political changes are mere waves, froth on the surface.
Yet if you look at
the history of the last thirty or so years, it seems (says Krugman) that
conventional wisdom has been stood on its head, and that politics drove
economics.
And that is our history as we know it.Starting in the 1970s, at about the time of the Lewis Powell
memo, an interlocking network of right
wing billionaires and theocrats began to fund
the institutions whose dominance we take for granted today: The American
Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, The Family Research Council, the
Federalist Society, the Brookings Institute (over time), and on and on. During
this period, College Republican operatives like Rove, Abramoff, and Gary Bauer
became important figures in this network, as did the ex-Trotskyite
neocons who broke away from the Scoop Jackson wing of the Democratic Party.The period was also marked by the steady retreat of the press from reporting,
under twin pressures from the right “working the
refs”, as Eric Alterman put it, and winger billionaire owners
slashing news coverage in favor of “entertainment,” and by the steady advance of
Rush Limbaugh on talk radio and, later, by Matt Drudge
on the web. And if you got hooked into that network, you got the cradle-to-grave
protection typical of socialism: You always had a job, whether as a “fellow” or
“scholar” at the AEI, a shouting head on Crossfire, as a columnist,
as a contractor, as a political appointee or staffer, or as a lobbyist, and so
on and on and on. You always got funding. You were
made. Just for the sake of having an easy label for this dense network of
institutions, operatives, ideologues, and Republican Party figures, let’s call
it the Conservative Movement (instead of HRC’s*
Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, since it’s not really a conspiracy, except possibly
an emergent
one. The billionaires don’t — except for Scaife during the Arkansas project, or
Rupert Murdoch playing editor — generally pick up the phone and give orders;
rather, they manage the Conservative Movement like an investment portfolio of
entertainment properties; some start-ups (Politico), some stars
(FOX), some cash cows (Limbaugh), some dogs (American Spectator)). Slowly but
surely, well funded and well organized Conservatives pushed their ideas from
unthinkable, to radical, to acceptable, to sensible, to popular, and finally
into policy, in a process described as The Overton
Window. As surely and ruthlessly, progressive ideas were marginalized, and
then silenced altogether. And spending what it took, the winger billionaires
used the Conservative Movement to restructure politics, and having restructured
politics, economics. To their economic benefit.For these billionaires, the
ROI of the Conservative Movement is absolutely spectacular. At the micro level,
for example, if you want to create an aristocracy, then you want to eliminate
any taxes on inherited wealth, despite what Warren
Buffet or Bill Gates might say about the values entailed by that project.
So, the Conservative Movement goes to work, develops and successfully propagates
the “death tax” talking point (meme, frame) — which they may even believe in, as
if sincerity were the point — and voila! Whoever thought that “family values”
would translate to “feudal values” and dynastic wealth? At the macro level,
their ROI has been spectacular as well. Real wages have been flat for a
generation; unions have been disempowered; the powers of corporations greatly
increased; government has become an agent for the corporations, rather than a
protector of the people; the safety net has been shredded; and so on and on and
on.The
picture tells the story [não consegui copiar - é muito instrutiva; ver no original]. The Conservative Movement succeeded beyond the wildest
dreams of the billionaires who invested in it. Despite the remarkable gains that
we have made in productivity, they creamed most of it off."
