Disabusive techniques.

When Obama was elected last fall, I found myself wallowing in a kind of hopeful feeling – one that was floated on a number of kind of shaky (though no less comforting) assumptions. One was that Obama might somehow prove to be an exception to the usual political rule, inasmuch as he was an insurgent pitted against a strong establishment candidate, and was not expected to win the nomination. He is also a compelling speaker, a likeable media personality, and so on. So for that two months between Election Day and Inauguration Day, it was possible to suspend disbelief and enjoy a brief vacation from that somewhat oppressive national political reality we’ve lived with all of our lives. That, of course, is over, and I suppose it’s all to the good. Hey, it was the holiday season, right? What better time to feel all festive and delusionary. Now the work begins.

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to disabuse myself of the notion that there is, in fact, a kind of permanent government that transcends party affiliation or even membership in the general political class. It’s proven to be a pretty persistent principle, supported through Democratic and Republican presidencies alike. George W. Bush’s administration provided a particularly dramatic example of this. As someone at least nominally on the far left, I always saw their policies as being way out in right field, aside from being positively dangerous. But what was truly amazing about the Bush team is that they evoked a very similar reaction from the nation’s core establishment – those individuals and institutions that, in essence, own and run the country. The invasion of Iraq is what did it for Bush. The aftermath of that decision shook these enduring institutional interests to their very foundations – so much so that, after a particularly disastrous year of war (and an electoral rout), Dubya was given a minder in the form of Robert Gates, and Rumsfeld was given his walking papers. Gates is considered a reliable instrument of the American Empire (more so, certainly, than the recklessly self-aggrandizing Rumsfeld), and it seemed as though he was placed there to mind the store through the final two years of Bush’s reign.

And the current administration? Well… look who’s running Defense. They’re still cleaning house, as this week’s changing of the guard in Afghanistan illustrates. Over at Treasury we’ve got Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. I would term these two as “minders,” as well. After Dubya crashed the economy (with help from friends in both parties), reform is politically inevitable, and these two are well-placed to keep said reform from taking on too populist a character. Just this week, Obama’s proposal for the regulation of derivatives has the mark of Summers/Geithner on it, in the form of a loophole you could sail a supertanker full of public money through. While it establishes a central clearing house for derivatives and seeks to standardize them, it does not restrict the creation of more customized (non-standardized) financial instruments, nor does it appear to regulate them. So it offers a kind of voluntary regulation…. easy to evade. On the other side of the street, Obama appears to have his mind changed for him on releasing detainee abuse photos. Again – doing so does not advance the interests of the empire, any more than would democratizing the financial system.