[Peace-discuss] Obama's Right-wing advance

[Brussel Morton K.]

Informative. Clears the air.  Thanks!  --mkb


On Dec 8, 2008, at 7:00 PM, Joseph Parnarauskis wrote:

>   It is hard to ignore Obama's rapidly evolving recant of his pre- 
> nomination promises to the American people.  As a Socialist  
> Equality Party member and former local candidate for State Senate,  
> I feel obliged to send you this article from the World Socialist  
> Website, our Party's daily web-paper, giving a clear and concise  
> analysis of his incoming administration.  From a international and  
> Marxist perspective, it will clarify his lies of "Hope and  
> Change".  I enjoy reading your banter daily regarding your views of  
> his turn-around.   I look forward to your comments.
>  Best regards,
> Joe Parnarauskis
>
> Obama’s Team of Reactionaries
>
> 8 December 2008
>
> In recent weeks, numerous media accounts have referred to President- 
> elect Barack Obama's cabinet selections as a "team of rivals." The  
> reference is to a book of the same name by the historian Doris  
> Kearns Goodwin on Abraham Lincoln's choices for key cabinet posts  
> after his victory in the 1860 election, when he confronted the  
> secession crisis and then the Civil War.
>
> The media comparisons between Lincoln's and Obama's cabinets are  
> specious, betraying a combination of historical ignorance and  
> political shallowness. The false analogy serves two political  
> functions. First, it implicitly imparts to Obama a progressive and  
> democratic aura which is, in fact, belied by his cabinet  
> selections, all of whom are advocates of militarism abroad and  
> austerity at home. Second, the analogy distorts and demeans the  
> historically progressive character of Lincoln and his government,  
> which embodied a profoundly democratic and ultimately revolutionary  
> agenda, centered on the struggle against slavery and the  
> preservation of the union.
>
> The use of the term "team of rivals" in relation to the Obama  
> cabinet rests on the president-elect's selection for secretary of  
> state of his chief opponent for the Democratic presidential  
> nomination, Hillary Clinton, and his retention from the Bush  
> administration of Robert Gates for defense secretary. Obama won the  
> nomination over Clinton, who was the early favorite, by appealing  
> to broad opposition to the war in Iraq among Democratic voters and  
> the population at large, incessantly reminding voters that "she got  
> it wrong" in her support for the invasion and presenting himself as  
> the candidate who would bring a rapid end to the war. He then won  
> the general election based on a powerful voter repudiation of the  
> Bush administration's militaristic foreign policy and its pro- 
> corporate and anti-democratic domestic agenda.
>
> Gates oversaw the conduct of the "surge" in Iraq that drowned the  
> Sunni resistance in blood and ethnically cleansed vast areas of the  
> country. He has publicly opposed any timetable for the withdrawal  
> of US forces.
>
> Obama's top cabinet appointments thus represent a brazen  
> repudiation of his campaign rhetoric, a slap in the face to the  
> millions of workers and youth who voted for him because they  
> believed or hoped that the victory of the candidate of "change"  
> would really signal a change for the better, and a clear signal to  
> the ruling elite that his administration will, in all essentials,  
> continue the imperialist and militarist policies of the Bush  
> administration.
>
> This is not only not analogous to Lincoln's approach, it is the  
> opposite. Lincoln's key cabinet picks, while they had been rivals  
> for the Republican Party nomination of 1860, in no way represented  
> a retreat from the central principals of his campaign and the  
> aspirations of his voters: preserving the union and preventing the  
> expansion of slavery.
> These appointments included William Seward as secretary of state,  
> Salmon Chase as treasury secretary, and Edward Bates as attorney  
> general.
>
> Lincoln rose to prominence in the young Republican Party by giving  
> political voice to mass popular sentiment against the expansion of  
> slavery to the new states and territories of the West. Largely  
> because of his genius for clearly presenting the critical political  
> issues related to slavery, he bested more prominent politicians  
> such as Seward (senator from New York) and Chase (governor of Ohio)  
> in the contest for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. But  
> despite numerous political and personal differences, Seward, Chase  
> and all of Lincoln's other cabinet selections shared the central  
> aim of the Republican Party—preserving the union and defeating the  
> rebellion of the Southern slave owners.
>
> Lincoln did not invite rivals into his cabinet who disagreed with  
> him on basic questions of principle, such as Illinois Senator  
> Stephen Douglas, who represented the northern wing of the  
> Democratic Party in the 1860 election and who advocated further  
> concessions to the southern elite on the slavery issue, or John C.  
> Breckinridge, the candidate of the Democratic Party's southern  
> wing, who favored the expansion of slavery. To have matched Obama's  
> cynicism, Lincoln would have needed to appoint Douglas as secretary  
> of state and Breckinridge as secretary of war.
>
> The "rivals" he did appoint to his cabinet all shared his hatred of  
> slavery and his determination to defeat the pro-slavery forces, by  
> force of arms if necessary. As a senator in the 1850s, Seward  
> earned a reputation as one of the most articulate opponents of  
> slavery. He denounced the Compromise of 1850, which allowed for the  
> expansion of slavery and sanctioned the passage of the reactionary  
> Fugitive Slave law. In so doing, Seward memorably appealed to a  
> "higher law" than the Constitution. In the wake of the Kansas- 
> Nebraska Act, which permitted slavery in the new states under the  
> guise of popular sovereignty, he called the question of slavery the  
> "irrepressible conflict" that could not be avoided by the sorts of  
> compromises favored by Douglas and other northern Democrats.
>
> Edward Bates, from Missouri, was a former Whig who, after a long  
> period of semi-retirement, regained political prominence based on  
> his opposition to the expansion of slavery to neighboring Kansas.  
> His selection as attorney general was designed to win support among  
> the border states for the Lincoln administration and its struggle  
> against the Southern slaveocracy.
>
> Kearns Goodwin makes much of Chase's jealousy toward Lincoln. But  
> Chase's opposition to slavery was never in doubt. He made his  
> political name as a young Ohio attorney defending fugitive slaves  
> against their masters, and was a founder of the Free-Soil Party, a  
> precursor to the Republican Party. After Lincoln accepted his  
> resignation as treasury secretary in 1864, he quickly appointed  
> Chase as chief justice of the Supreme Court, where his decisions  
> upheld Reconstruction in the South.
>
> In securing the 1860 Republican nomination, Lincoln beat out his  
> main rivals, Seward, Chase and Bates. Then, after winning the  
> general election, he invited them to assume key cabinet posts. He  
> did so not simply because he was a shrewd politician, but because  
> he wished to unite the various sections of the Republican Party  
> behind the aspirations of genuinely democratic forces in the  
> country and create the best possible conditions for crushing the  
> Southern planters' rebellion.
>
> In contrast to Lincoln's Team of Rivals, Obama has chosen a Team of  
> Reactionaries, which embodies the president-elect's cynical and  
> contemptuous repudiation of his campaign rhetoric and the  
> aspirations of the vast majority of those who voted for him.
>
> Tom Eley
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