What are we cheering for?
Don't let the conventions distract you from the real lesson of 2012: America is becoming increasingly undemocratic
Ultimately, we’re seeing that both parties are rotten. This rot is rooted in economics. Despite the bitter rhetoric, Obama and Romney are basically in agreement about how the country should be governed. Both Romney and Obama want to see the same core economic trends continue. These are, most significantly, a transition to an energy system based on hydro-fracking of natural gas and oil deposits (and some renewable energy), a large national security state, the sale of public assets to private interests, globalized financial flows, a preservation of the capital structure of the large banks, free rein of white-collar behavior and austerity in public budgets. This policy agenda is a reflection of the quiet coup that IMF chief economist Simon Johnson wrote about in 2010.
You can see significant policy agreements in both policy and personnel choices. For instance, Ben Bernanke, the leader of the Federal Reserve, which is the only ins ution with any la ude for policymaking, was a Bush appointee, but was reappointed by Obama. Top Romney advisor Glenn Hubbard argues Bernanke should be reappointed for a third term. And on a policy level, whether you call it Romneycare in Massachusetts, or Obamacare nationally, it’s the same healthcare program. On trade, Romney pledged, in his economic platform, to sign three free corporate agreements on day one of his administration, those with Colombia, South Korea and Panama. The Obama administration signed them last year, and brags about them in the Democratic Platform. Both candidates ardently support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the secretive NAFTA on steroids treaty being negotiated right now by Obama’s trade representatives.
And while much ink has been spilled on the lies contained in vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s speech, the Obama campaign is equally dishonest. The premise of the Obama campaign is that the country faces a choice, between a middle class-driven economy and an economy driven by inequality and the rich.
But under Obama, inequality has increased even faster than it did under Bush.
The larger consequences of having two candidates who share similar policy ideas, who both believe in police state tactics to suppress whistle-blowers, who both are driven by their allegiance to a wealthy political class, are not acknowledged. It isn’t that American democracy is at risk. American democracy was at risk, perhaps four or eight or 12 years ago. Today, speaking of democracy in America is quaint — the country increasingly resembles an undemocratic state, with a free wealthy elite and a much larger poorer populace, constrained by monopolistic corporations that collude with the government.
In fact, the lesson of the 2012 election, if we are honest with ourselves, is simple, and disturbing. America is shifting from a democracy into an authoritarian state. This authoritarianism is soft, with some remnants of an open civil society, and there is as yet no violence used against domestic political actors. Nazi Germany we are not. But after 14 years of political crises, starting with the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the extreme financial deregulation of the late 1990s, it’s time to face the music about what kind of country we have become. The 2012 election is more than a contest of cynicism and disillusionment, it’s an unveiling of a new quasi-authoritarian political system in place of the traditional norms of democratic deliberation.
The idea that America is shifting into an authoritarian system is a difficult truth to handle, as it flies in the face of an endlessly marketed notion of progress and deep-seated political rhetoric about American exceptionalism. Political elites are also very good at dishonest excuses. In her convention speech, for instance, Mic e Obama remarked that change is hard, and slower than we might like. Many Democrats point out that Republicans block change at every turn. But this is misleading — in fact,
Obama has turned out to be a transformative president, and has in fact solidified a bipartisan consensus in favor of a sweeping political change, for endless bailouts and endless war. Liberals do not want to recognize that this is his agenda, and that this agenda is designed to turn America into a society where democracy exists only in small rooms of elites. Better to say there hasn’t been enough change, than to recognize the radical change that has occurred.
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