The Ultimate Pragmatist
Barack Obama campaigning for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, a race he easily won.
Others will read it differently, but my take is that this weekend's long NYT piece on Barack Obama's political evolution (The Long Run: Pragmatic Politics, Forged on the South Side) supports a lot of what I was trying to say in my little article about Obama and the LSCs (Obama's lackluster record on education).
How so? The most vivid example is this quote, among several describing Obama's cautious, pragmatic, and centrist-moving political evolution:
“He has a pattern of forming relationships
with various communities and as he takes his next step up, kind of
distancing himself from them and then positioning himself as the
bridge,” said Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American author and
co-founder of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who became
acquainted with Mr. Obama in Chicago.
I'm not against Obama, or against political pragmatism. I'm just against people thinking that Obama (or any politician) is something that he's not. He's not the reform-oriented community organizer that he once was. And he's not particularly bold or pure in his legislative efforts. If he were, he probably wouldn't be on the verge of being the Democratic nominee for President.
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Mon May 12, 2008 at 12:10 PM
The Ultimate Pragmatist
Great Honest Article, too bad the people are in such
a state of Stepfordism, they cannot see the forest for
the trees.
a state of Stepfordism, they cannot see the forest for
the trees.
Mon May 12, 2008 at 2:03 PM
The Ultimate Pragmatist
"I'm not against Obama...." sure seems like it! "cause if you weren't why always focus on him? Why use him always to make your supposed point about "any politician"?
You thik Clintn is the better choice? or perhaps McCain? do share!
You thik Clintn is the better choice? or perhaps McCain? do share!
Mon May 12, 2008 at 2:13 PM
The Ultimate Pragmatist
The difference between your article and the original is that, this one gives more than one example to prove its point and it is fairly balanced and enlightening in doing so.
The apparent half flip-flop on Palestinian-Jewish relations is somewhat unsettling, when it is shown in the context of campaign fundraising.
It seems like with LSCs Obama played his cards right. He didn't get injured in the fray and yet the side he would have (possibly) supported still came out on top in the end. Its also quite likely that Obama may have been privy to information that made him comfortable with his non-stance because he knew there was no real threat to LSCs at the time.
If LSCs had been truly threatened at the time, or if they came out on the losing side and Obama had not acted on their behalf there might be more of a story here.
I'm not 100% sure that either of these articles says much about Obama as a President, other than the fact that besides doing a great job of inspiring what can become an entirely new base of democrats, he is also a rather savvy politician. Everyone knows that if you want to change the system from inside you have to play by the system's rules. The real test will be to see if he has been truly corrupted by the political machine, or if he's just been using it to become leader of the free world. We may never know.
The apparent half flip-flop on Palestinian-Jewish relations is somewhat unsettling, when it is shown in the context of campaign fundraising.
It seems like with LSCs Obama played his cards right. He didn't get injured in the fray and yet the side he would have (possibly) supported still came out on top in the end. Its also quite likely that Obama may have been privy to information that made him comfortable with his non-stance because he knew there was no real threat to LSCs at the time.
If LSCs had been truly threatened at the time, or if they came out on the losing side and Obama had not acted on their behalf there might be more of a story here.
I'm not 100% sure that either of these articles says much about Obama as a President, other than the fact that besides doing a great job of inspiring what can become an entirely new base of democrats, he is also a rather savvy politician. Everyone knows that if you want to change the system from inside you have to play by the system's rules. The real test will be to see if he has been truly corrupted by the political machine, or if he's just been using it to become leader of the free world. We may never know.
Tue May 13, 2008 at 2:05 AM
The Ultimate Pragmatist
One of the sad things about the new Obama narrative is how it leaves out the role of the unions, especially the Chicago Teachers Union -- and especially Debbie Lynch, Howard Heath, and Marty McGreal.
Everybody who was on the executive board of the Illinois Federation of Teachers back in 2001 and 2002 can tell a piece of this story that seems to be left out deliberately by The New York Times and the official narrators now. Why? I'll leave that to others. But it's very important as the USA poises to elect its second Neoliberal President from the Democratic Party.
The New York Times piece at least balances some of the record, noting that Barack Obama is in fact a South Side Chicago politician, the greatest since Harold Washington or Richard J. Daley. At least we don't have to listen to all that hagiographic silliness from this point on.
But Barack Obama would not even have gotten the U.S. Senate seat had it not been for a dramatic confrontation within the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Illinois Federation of Labor during the pre-nomination era. Obama was not the first choice of Chicago -- or of the unions. Another guy was. How Obama wooed the unions (beginning with the IFT) and won the early support of the Lynch administration is a story that should have been in the New York Times. At the time, Obama owed a lot more to Debbie Lynch and the leadership of the CTU than he did to Marilyn Katz or Carl Davidson. Eliminating the unions from the history makes it harder for people to understand the complexity of what's now unfolding, which may actually be why the story is now in the official form we all got to read in the Times Sunday.
Everybody who was on the executive board of the Illinois Federation of Teachers back in 2001 and 2002 can tell a piece of this story that seems to be left out deliberately by The New York Times and the official narrators now. Why? I'll leave that to others. But it's very important as the USA poises to elect its second Neoliberal President from the Democratic Party.
The New York Times piece at least balances some of the record, noting that Barack Obama is in fact a South Side Chicago politician, the greatest since Harold Washington or Richard J. Daley. At least we don't have to listen to all that hagiographic silliness from this point on.
But Barack Obama would not even have gotten the U.S. Senate seat had it not been for a dramatic confrontation within the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Illinois Federation of Labor during the pre-nomination era. Obama was not the first choice of Chicago -- or of the unions. Another guy was. How Obama wooed the unions (beginning with the IFT) and won the early support of the Lynch administration is a story that should have been in the New York Times. At the time, Obama owed a lot more to Debbie Lynch and the leadership of the CTU than he did to Marilyn Katz or Carl Davidson. Eliminating the unions from the history makes it harder for people to understand the complexity of what's now unfolding, which may actually be why the story is now in the official form we all got to read in the Times Sunday.
Sun Jun 1, 2008 at 10:31 AM
The Ultimate Pragmatist
I agree that certainly my role in Obama's career is vastly overplayed. When interviewed by the NYT, I suggested she get in touch with the unions in Chicago, especially the teachers. But it's the New York Times, after all.
I'd also note that anyone who think 'pragmatism' is light and fluffy doesn't understand it. Our fellow Chicagoans of yore, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, were very deep thinkers on a wide range of subject.
I differ on your tagging Obama as a 'neoliberal,' unless you're just using that as an epithet for any pro-capitalist politician.
Obama is a 'high road' industrial policy capitalist and multipolar globalist--just read his Cooper Union speech a while back. Clinton is a garden-variety corporate liberal capitalist, which got her on the board of Walmart for years. And McCain is the real deal, an unreconstructed neoliberal capitalist--'state all evil, market all good'--that kind that says 'We're in business to make money, not steel, so we'll gut these plants and speculate in oil futures, and the workers and towns be damned.' In other words, the ones who 'cut taxes' by putting everything on the China Visa card and got us into this mess.
Actually, truth be told, Obama's brand of capitalism is best for productive businesses, as opposed to speculators, and does least harm to the working class. I've pressed him to get on board with growing new green industries in turn with the Apollo Alliance of steelworkers and environmentalists. It would help him considerably down here on the ground.
We'll see. I'll with 'Progressives for Obama' at http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com, but I'm also of the school that whoever is in the White House in 2009, we have to keep their feet to the fire, on the ending the war and everything else.
I'd also note that anyone who think 'pragmatism' is light and fluffy doesn't understand it. Our fellow Chicagoans of yore, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, were very deep thinkers on a wide range of subject.
I differ on your tagging Obama as a 'neoliberal,' unless you're just using that as an epithet for any pro-capitalist politician.
Obama is a 'high road' industrial policy capitalist and multipolar globalist--just read his Cooper Union speech a while back. Clinton is a garden-variety corporate liberal capitalist, which got her on the board of Walmart for years. And McCain is the real deal, an unreconstructed neoliberal capitalist--'state all evil, market all good'--that kind that says 'We're in business to make money, not steel, so we'll gut these plants and speculate in oil futures, and the workers and towns be damned.' In other words, the ones who 'cut taxes' by putting everything on the China Visa card and got us into this mess.
Actually, truth be told, Obama's brand of capitalism is best for productive businesses, as opposed to speculators, and does least harm to the working class. I've pressed him to get on board with growing new green industries in turn with the Apollo Alliance of steelworkers and environmentalists. It would help him considerably down here on the ground.
We'll see. I'll with 'Progressives for Obama' at http://progressivesforobama.blogspot.com, but I'm also of the school that whoever is in the White House in 2009, we have to keep their feet to the fire, on the ending the war and everything else.
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