Obama is not all that different than Clinton or Bush

Last Thursday, from a neoclassical stage that felt soothingly pagan for US voters who still believe in the separation of church and state, Barack Obama accepted his historic nomination as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. In his 45-minute speech, he warned supporters of a renewed onslaught of personal attacks against him. "If you don't have a record to run on," he told the party faithful, "then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."
Thus, the absurd rumours about Mr Obama being simultaneously a crypto-gay dope dealer on the one hand and a stealth Muslim on the other. Mr Obama, we are told, is unpatriotic because he would not wear an American flag pin on his lapel until he was pressured to do so. Elevated to the White House, he would unilaterally disarm America and impose nationwide income distribution. Strong stuff, even by the gutter culture of US presidential politics. But if Mr Obama is not an Islamic militant, then what is he? He has been compared to Abraham Lincoln, who like Mr Obama was raised from humble roots, came of age in Illinois and was a political unknown when he ran for president. Mr Obama also recalls John F Kennedy for his glamour, charm, eloquence and the history-making thrust of his candidacy - Mr Obama as the first African-American to make a viable bid for the oval office, Kennedy as the first Catholic.
Such comparisons are potent symbolically but are of little use as a benchmark for how Mr Obama may govern. For that, one should consider the very much extant Bill Clinton. Despite tensions between the two men, Mr Obama will be the steward of Clinton neoliberalism, rather than its wrecking ball - minus Mr Clinton's self-destructive gluttony, and if the Democratic platform is anything to go by, his fiscal discipline.
Mr Obama's economic plan is a mix of public initiative and private enterprise - the same blended fabric that makes traditional liberals break out in hives. He would raise taxes on household incomes of US$250,000 (Dh918,000) and greater while offering lower and middle income tax breaks that would amount to a $1,000 rebate per household. (Mr Clinton, it must be remembered, imposed a similar tax regime and presided over one of the longest periods of sustained economic growth in US history.)
Mr Obama's health care plan would oblige private insurers to cover anyone who asks for it, regardless of their medical history, but does not - unlike Hillary Clinton's more ambitious version - insist on universal coverage. He has co-sponsored a bill that would invest tens of billions of dollars in America's failing infrastructure - roads, railway, ports and power grids - through the creation of a publicly backed but privately financed infrastructure bank.
He has dialled back his opposition to free-trade deals, in particular the Clinton-midwifed North American Free Trade Agreement, possibly because of the revival of America's export base due to the weak US dollar and possibly because he never bought into the protectionists' s gimmick in the first place. Mr Obama has surrounded himself with adherents of the Milton Friedman school of free-market economics, including his chief economics adviser, Jason Furman, an acolyte of Robert Rubin, the investment banker and Clinton treasury secretary.
For all his talk about exiting Iraq, Mr Obama's world view is informed by the same myth of American exceptionalism that inspired Mr Clinton to extend Nato to Russia's very doorstep, planting the seed for the Georgia-South Ossetia crisis that now threatens to ignite a new Cold War. His foreign policy advisers are Clinton retreads who would increase the US defence budget and leverage its might to "integrate civilian and military capabilities to promote global democracy and development". He would also give expeditionary power to non-defense agencies, including the secretary of state, Homeland Security, Justice and Treasury.
If Mr Obama does keep militant company, it is the corps of foreign policy boffins who would intensify the militarisation of US foreign policy in the name of "liberal interventionism". Only when it comes to underwriting such an expansive, neoliberal agenda does Mr Obama deviate from Mr Clinton. He says he will pay for his new initiatives by closing tax loopholes for big business and cutting legislative red tape. This would be an admirable start, but it would also be a drop in the bucket of America's $500 billion budget deficit, which is due to increase exponentially within the next few years as a retiring baby-boom population begins to draw down the country's Social Security reserve.
In that sense, a future President Obama would resemble less Mr Clinton, who managed a budget surplus through aggressive legislative haggling, than he does the White House's current occupant. It may be unfair to judge a presidential candidate's intentions from his rhetoric, but America's allowance for expedient cant is fast evaporating.
sglain@thenational.ae