Seven Oaks Magazine.

Triumph of liberalism in the U.S. just isn't going to cut it for 2008
June 21, 2007
Ian Rocksborough-Smith

Major U.S. newspaper polls are now confirming it; Barack and Hillary are indeed going to remain the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nominations in 2008. So why am I so lukewarm to this prospect? After all, it is the first time in history that a black man (not descended from trans-Atlantic slaves mind you) and a woman were leading contenders for the highest office on the continent. Isn't this supposed to represent the triumph of American liberalism? That Americans can finally put down their gender and racial prejudices long enough to truly transcend the time-honored tradition of electing pasty white men to represent Euro-Christian national ideals seems like a heartening development. Perhaps it is a triumph of sorts, but it belies a lingering anxiety that remains about whether either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama would actually stem (or even try to blink at) the neoconservative tide that has continued the overt dismantlement of the New Deal welfare state in the last twenty years, all while invoking the language of purportedly color-blind civil rights liberalism.

Should either of these candidates succeed, it's difficult to imagine an outright about-face of the course that the Bush administration has dragged the world since September 11th. While each candidate has couched their campaign rhetoric in appeals to "middle" America - that decidedly American language for an appeal to working class voters - their campaigns are still going to hinge on how much money they raise from corporations and wealthy individuals and how they pander to this agenda. While each candidate, particularly Obama, may have in the past supported campaign finance reform, maintaining such principles through the presidential primaries is, of course, highly improbable. Moreover, it has taken until quite recently for both candidates to even openly acknowledge the staggering healthcare crisis in the U.S. that keeps over 47 million Americans without health insurance. Even this acknowledgement is a rather diluted response to a contemporary reality that has seen the whole Social Security system under its most direct attack in decades.

Both Clinton and Obama are quick to defend and adopt the urgent tone of Homeland Security appeals given legs under the Bush administration and both generally avoid difficult discussions about the horrendous constitutional violations, not to mention human rights violations, that these measures have brought upon thousands of people both citizen and foreigner alike. Obama ambiguously suggests that "greater attention" is needed to this issue, while Clinton firmly believes in maintaining and bolstering America's military and strategic preeminence in the world. Hilary harkens back to a Cold War Era when there were, in her view, at least, positive photo-ops with the then Red "enemy" - whereas today the discourse problematically contemplates an ephemeral radical Islam lacking the temporal manifestation of a Comintern or Politburo. Both Obama and Clinton agree that there is a universal enemy to be confronted (whether Islam, terrorism etc...) and that somehow the radical Islam that more right wing pundits rail against needs simply to be "understood" in order to be effectively opposed. We're not looking at a huge sea change in ideology should either of them get elected with a Democratic victory assured.

The Iraq war of course will remain the flash point for all candidates in the upcoming election. Both President Bush (who sits at 29% approval; his lowest ever - it seems we say that every few weeks or so) and Congress (which is enjoying some of the lowest approval ratings in a decade) continue to justifiably face stiff questions about the Middle East debacle. Despite these overwhelming indications of public disapproval, the leading Democratic candidates can do little more than suggest vague exit plans that promise little more than America's pledge to abstain from an "open" engagement in the region - leaving us "open" to interpret what such liberal jargon actually means all while body bags continue to be stacked and whole societies decimated. Spanish Socialists got elected in 2004 following that country's major subway terrorist attacks and promptly removed its armies from the Middle East in response to overwhelming public pressure. The analogy obviously isn't exact, but why, with the kind of approval ratings that the U.S. government now has based on the Iraq war and the prolonged carnage this has produced, can't prominent democratic candidates promise a similar move to voters?

The answer is sad, yet revealing about where the bar continues to remain on political discourse in North America at the outset of this still new 21st Century. To have these leading candidates, who inevitably stand as symbols of America's greatest 20th Century liberal triumphs, confront the major polarizing issues of our time in such a non-confrontational manner indicates just how bankrupt American liberalism has become and how the lack of a viable alternative "third way" (as so many radical Americans of the past century have bemoaned) limits the boundaries of what is politically possible. Any hint of radical incredulity on the part of a Democrat and its Howard Dean on a platter all over again. The fear of this is enough to keep any candidate in check from here on in. I'm afraid that we can't hope for much in 2008 my friends, even if, in the end, a good Al decides to run.