[Peace-discuss] The Iranian election in democratic context

[C. G. Estabrook]

I'm not sure the distinction between the two types of president is as sharp as
Zizek wants it to be -- and he's primarily interested in describing the Teflon
type (which type certainly includes the present US incumbent) -- but it's
certainly true that the most progressive administration since WWII was Nixon's. 
Consider environmental practice alone, but it's not limited to that.

The Nixon administration was staffed by criminals like Kissinger -- Watergate 
was a bagatelle, as Chomsky insists -- but the Nixonians were under a lot of 
popular pressure.  The Sixties didn't end until well into the Seventies.  (The 
terminus ad quem was the beginning of reaction with the Carter presidency, and 
the Trilateral Commission's 1976 book "The Crisis of Democracy: On the 
Governability of Democracies" sounded the charge for the statist reactionaries, 
now d.b.a. "Neoliberalism.")  Alex Cockburn, who wrote better about these events 
at the time than perhaps anyone else, considers Ford the best post-war US 
president...

I'm not sure that Mankoff is right, but he's on to a good question.  It may be 
that the most important effect of the Nixon administration was the destruction 
of the Bretton Woods system, which had guided world capitalism in its "golden 
age" (roughly WWII to Nixon), and the desperate attempt of that administration 
to find an adequate substitute in an age of declining return on capital. It's 
becoming clear that Ron Paul was on to something when he bemoaned the end of the 
gold standard -- a Nixon accomplishment.  --CGE


David Green wrote:
> "The last tragic US president was Richard Nixon: he was a crook, but a crook
> who fell victim to the gap between his ideals and ambitions on the one hand,
> and political realities on the other. With Ronald Reagan (and Carlos Menem in
> Argentina), a different figure entered the stage, a ‘Teflon’ president no
> longer expected to stick to his electoral programme, and therefore impervious
> to factual criticism (remember how Reagan’s popularity went up after every
> public appearance, as journalists enumerated his mistakes). This new
> presidential type mixes ‘spontaneous’ outbursts with ruthless manipulation."
> 
> The quote below, from the conclusion of a 1974 article in /Theory and 
> Society/ by Milton Mankoff, prompts me to consider the radically revisionist
> and ironic notion that with the downfall of Nixon, we lost a chance for a
> form of European social democracy:
> 
> "Ultimately, we need to know what the Nixon Administration represents that is
> felt to be so threatening to other elite groups and, conversely, why Nixon
> and his supporters felt it necessary to go as far as he and they apparently
> did to insure his re-election. My personal feeling is that power lust cannot
> fully explain the phenomenon, particularly since Nixon was willing to permit
> Kennedy to assume office in 1960 despite considerable evidence that his
> victory margin was based on voter fraud in Illinois. Party rivalry is also an
> inadequate explanation. Rivalry has existed, after all, for some time without
> provoking extra-parliamentary sabotage. I feel the answer lies in the
> political economy and its contradictions in the final analysis. If the New
> Deal failed to stabilize capitalism, and a militarized imperial expansion of
> investment and commodity markets has reached its outer limit, the major
> strategic options for system stabilization may have been growing obsolete. If
> the most class conscious elements within the economic and political elite
> have recognized this they might be willing at long last to inaugurate an era
> of major social reform modelled on European social democracy and move away
> from militarism. Other members of the elite, however, may not be inclined to
> accept the foreclosing of the militarized imperial option, and, more
> importantly, may still be tenaciously opposed to the creation of a genuine
> "welfare state" capitalism .7 This could account for the current political 
> crisis, that as of this moment (October 1973) remains unresolved. A 
> prediction of its resolution cannot be forthcoming until a great deal more is
> known about the major contending forces and their resources. Sociologists,
> along with other social scientists, should address themselves to these
> questions, because, if I am correct, the outcome of Watergate will have a
> profound impact upon the direction of public policy in the next generation."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu> *To:* Peace-discuss
> <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> *Sent:* Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:48:37 PM 
> *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] The Iranian election in democratic context
> 
> ["The Ballot Box is simply a capitalist concession. Dropping pieces of paper
> into a hole in a box never did achieve emancipation of the working class, and
> in my opinion it never will," wrote Father Thomas J. Hagerty, an American
> Roman Catholic priest from New Mexico and one of the founding members of the
> Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). As we try to figure out what happened
> in the recent Iranian election, we should perhaps put it in the context of
> contemporary democratic forms. "Our governments righteously reject populist
> racism as ‘unreasonable’ by our democratic standards, and instead endorse
> ‘reasonably’ racist protective measures."  --CGE]
> 
> London Review of Books Berlusconi in Tehran Slavoj Žižek
> ...