Peter Orszag sat down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria recently, in his first interview since stepping-down as White House Budget Director. Of course, who needs a budget director when you don't have a budget (http://thehill.com/homenews/house/104635-dems-wont-pass-budget)? (Ba-dum-bum! Thank you, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.)
In that interview, Orszag attempted to dispel the notion that President Obama is a socialist- that, despite a July poll that found that 55% of likely voters found the term to fit the President either "well," or "very well." (I'd like to know what percentage of those who consider Obama to be a socialist are OK with that.) This poll wasn't conducted by the Wall Street Journal or Fox News, but by Democracy Corp, the polling firm of leading Democratric advisers James Carville and Stan Greenberg.
And Orszag makes a compelling case, too. Just watch- http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/09/12/orszag_obama_is_not_a_socialist.html.
OK, Pete, he didn't nationalize the banks and he didn't scrap "the basic structure of our capitalist system." That's a bit like saying that just because the Health Care Reform legislation didn't include a government-run, public option, that the President doesn't support one, isn't it?
So you'll pardon me if I'm not entirely convinced, based on a lot of stammering followed by two examples from Mr. Orszag of how he might have been more socialist, that our President is not- call it whatever you want- I'll call it FAR-LEFT. 'Well, he didn't nationalize the banks,' is hardly an endorsement of the President as a free-market capitalist. In the amount of time you must have spent with Obama, can you not give one affirmative example that would suggest he believes in "the basic structure of the capitalist system"?
It's astonishing. Watch the clip as Zakaria gives Orszag every opportunity to be specific in dispelling the "myth"- "what is his core economic philosophy?...who is he?...but, tell us more, fill in the details." Orszag protests, "he's not a socialist," but he doesn't answer Zakaria's question- "who is he?"
Orszag concludes, "I don't know that his previous experience really speaks to...what his policy outlook is."
Well in that case, Pete, I don't know whether to be alarmed that you, of all people, 'don't know that his previous experience speaks to his policy outlook' or relieved that you seem to leave open the possibility that it might not. After all, by now most Americans know that his biological father was a socialist; his mother was described as a "fellow traveler"- a euphamism for a communist sympathizer (his parents met in a Russian language class in Hawaii); his mentor and father-figure during his formative years was Frank Marshall Davis, an admitted member of CPUSA (Communist Party USA). In Dreams From My Father, Obama admitted to choosing, among his friends, "the Marxist professors" in order "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout." Jerimiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Cass Sunstein, Wade Rathke, Andy Stern, Van Jones, Carol Browner, George Soros, etc...let's all pray that his previous experience doesn't speak to his policy outlook.
What about his rhetoric? You've probably heard Obama's 2001 radio interview, lamenting that the Constitution was a "charter of negative liberties" and that the "tragedy" that the Warren Court "never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and...issues of political and economic justice..."
The "Joe the Plumber" incident was the first time many saw then-candidate Obama as a wealth-redistributor. I still recall what I considered to be his first "Joe the Plumber" moment; ironically, it took place well before (in political terms) America was introduced to Joe the Plumber, during the ABC debate when Obama was still battling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's nomination. Here, Charles Gibson asks the future-President a question regarding the possibility of raising the capital gains tax rate.
So, even if raising the capital-gains tax rate would mean a decrease in revenue to the federal government (and conversely, that a decrease would increase it), he still reserved the right to raise that rate "for purposes of fairness." His is an ideology rooted in what he deems as fair in order to "finance health care," etc., not what will stimulate the economy and increase tax receipts to the government. Rather, he dismisses the empirical, historical evidence that reducing the cap gains rate increases revenue. You tell me- is he drinking the socialist Kool Aid?
Of course, despite his remarks, the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill failed to address the loophole Obama referenced that allows hedge-fund managers' investment income to be taxed at the lower capital gains rate rather than being taxed as income (http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/08/financial-reform-bill-hedge-funds-opinions-columnists-larry-e-ribstein.html). Maybe that had something to do with the fact that hedge fund managers out-contibuted to Obama over McCain in the run-up to the Presidential election by more than two-to-one? Perhaps admitted socialist, convicted insider-trader, MoveOn.org founder, currency manipulator , and billionaire investor George Soros reminded Obama who was financing his campaign.
In the run-up to the financial reform bill, however, Obama had this to say:
What's particularly telling about the President's comments here is not just that he has the tamarity to suggest that those whom capitalists regard as most valuable to our economy and our American capitalist system- the innovators, the business owners, the job-creators- have "at some point...made enough money." What's most outrageous is that he 'doesn't begrudge success that's fairly earned' for one simple, selfish, dare-I-say "socialist" reason:
"We don't want people to stop fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow the economy."
That's a far-cry from Adam Smith. Smith was an inspiration to the Founding Fathers who believed in the "invisible hand" of the free market, in which two people enter into what Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman would later call "mutually beneficial arrangements," whereby each benefits by acting in their own self-interests. Smith wrote:
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages."
Say what you want about Smith's economic philosophy, but contrast it with the President's remarks and ask yourself whether the notion that one engages in economic activity based on a larger responsibility to grow the economy is more Smith or Marx?
Among Marx's ten "measures" necessary to the communist revolution (The Communist Manifesto, pp. 93-94) are:
- "A heavy progressive or graduated income tax." Long a staple of the far-Left of the Democratic Party, the heavily progressive income tax and the class warfare rhetoric it engenders, have only ramped-up under the Obama Administration. Currently, 47% of Americans pay no federal income tax, and should the Bush tax cuts be allowed to expire only for the "rich," the chasm between those with "skin in the game" and the zero-liability voter will only widen.
- "Abolition of all right of inheritance." The return of the estate tax in 2011 marks another milestone in advancing a leftist agenda for the Obama White House. How would you characterize a tax that confiscates up to 55% of one's "estate" (read: saved income that has already been taxed at least once) as "fair" unless your definition of fair was the redistribution of income? Quasi-socialist?http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-07-21-estatetax21_CV_N.htm
-"Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly." There are perhaps more examples of the trend of increased control or influence by the federal government over the financial markets than any other example of this administration's dedication to a far-Left agenda. These go well beyond simple "regulation"- the takeover of the student loan industry (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405154157021052.html); the increased level of involvement by the GSE's in the housing market; the lack of transparency in the Fed; financial reform legislation that exempts SEC regulators from Freedom of Information Act Requests (http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2010/07/28/sec-says-new-finreg-law-exempts-public-disclosure/); the takeover of GM (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/federal-bailout-of-gm-still-horribly-wrong/) and the bailout of numerous labor unions and financial institutions, etc.
- "Free education for all children in public schools." Obama has shown a devotion to public education and the teacher's unions that borders on the fanatical. Despite the fact that his children attend an elite D.C. private school, early in his administration the President killed a very popular (and efficient) voucher program in Washington, D.C. that allowed disadvantaged and minority children in particular to attend private schools and escape the failing D.C. public schools.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10189
In an interview last Friday, the former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, called Barack Obama "the most radical President in U.S. history, bar-none."
In 2008 The National Journal (http://www.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/sen/lib.htm#results) ranked then-Senator Obama "The Most Liberal Senator of 2007" (Biden was third). Bernie Sanders, "the first person elected to the U.S. Senate to identify as a socialist," was FOURTH.
Orszag won't be the last Obama apologist, put forth to try to quash the growing public perception that the President is a socialist. And that's the only good news here, because he did a piss-poor job of it- but Obama's own past, his rhetoric, and his policy decisions in his first year-and-a-half as President aren't pointing in any other direction, are they?
If you were a socialist and you weren't going to vote for the socialist candidate, who would you vote for? Who's to the Left of him- Nancy Pelosi? Dennis Kucinich?
If President Obama wants to distance himself from the "socialist" moniker, he'll have to find a better advocate than Orszag- one who can get beyond the "he's not a socialist" mantra 55% of Americans disagree with and cut to the heart of Zakaria's (and America's) question- the one he's had more than a year-and-a-half to answer:
If he's not a socialist, "who is he?"
