Putting Obama in perspective

 

Obama’s first months must be measured against precedent.

 

To deal with the legacy he inherited from his predecessors, Barack Obama has rejected several of their ideas. Even so, Obama is no doubt the most progressive president the U.S. system can produce in the current climate — so much so that decisions taken by the powers that be in Washington are sometimes more acceptable than those coming from Paris, Brussels, Moscow, Beijing ... or Tehran.

It can be argued that Barack Obama is, after all, a Democrat. But that is to ignore 40 years of history. A Republican president, Richard Nixon, took office in 1969, and both the Democratic presidents who succeeded him waged most of their battles against the progressive ideas of their own party. So both effectively paved the way for the conservative Republicans who succeeded them. Carter set the deregulation ball rolling, pursued an ultra-monetarist policy and revived the Cold War on the pretext of defending human rights. Things were even worse under Clinton: Tougher penal sanctions were introduced, the death penalty extended country-wide, federal aid for the poor abolished and military operations undertaken. Obama’s first months must also be measured against these precedents.

True, there were no real surprises in the content of his Cairo speech last month; but Obama’s tone was new. Speaking of U.S. relations with the peoples of the Middle East, he said “the cycle of suspicion and discord must end” and he was careful to avoid the word “terrorist,” which his predecessor had used so freely.

He also admitted that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.” This wise principle was immediately applied to Iran — where Obama’s inclination to negotiate with Tehran continues to expose him to accusations of naivete from the neo-conservative right. But Obama’s expressed regret over Iran’s 1953 coup (engineered by the U.S. secret services) was one way to get around Iran’s Great Satan routine — by honestly saying the United States was not in an ideal position to raise the issue of election rigging.

Any U.S. president — whether he likes it or not — has an empire to run and is therefore subject to the tight constraints of U.S. strategic interests. Still, Obama’s first months suggest that he has not yet altogether forgotten his progressive past in the streets of Chicago.