After rambling on about the perils associated with the canonization of Obama, you focus at the end of the post on a few of the liabilities of the “next President’s” (scary scare quotes eh?) uber-liberal voting record from the point of view of a neoliberalism (see the Washington Consensus) and a neoconservatism (we all know about this America Uber Alles school of thought such that no citations are needed) that are carried aloft in a toxic cloud of rhetorical bloviation.
To wit: First, you claim that we would be heavily taxed and thus poorer. Obama is proposing to tax the “under taxed” wealthy and provide tax breaks to the middle and lower classes. Only the toffish pundit class and friends will be more heavily taxed. We could carry on in the manner of George II and borrow and spend, if you prefer. Your target of traditional liberalism has been supplanted, in part, by a “post-liberalism” as represented in the more centrist (read: more market friendly) policies of the DLC and Gidden’s Third Way in Britain. However, Hillary’s top down, command and control approach to governance—you WILL have health insurance or else, Sieg Heil! —is an atavism that Obama is trying to avoid with his advocacy of a post-partisan approach to the ills of Washington.
Further, it is a blatant falsehood to claim that taxes make (all) of us poorer–many don’t. Given the concept of vertical equity (treat unequals unequally), those who have the ability to pay remit more only entails that those with more—not everyone–will, indeed, pay more. Presumably and if well administered (a Solarian—incommensurably alien–concept in the present Administration that seems determined to prove the neoliberal bromide that government can’t do anything well–be it New Orleans or Iraq or the FCC or the FTC or the FDA…ad infinitum) There are numerous examples that show that the multiplier effects of some taxes generate more wealth for all. (For example, in the current debate over a new GI Bill proponents cite a $7 to$1 return on the tax “investment” in the original post-World War II bill) Perhaps, it is the republican (small “r”) implications (the commonweal) that repulses the egoistic individualism inherent in such critiques that claim, “Screw you, it’s my money and the hell with the common good”.
Second, you claim that we will be less well protected from the scourges of non-resident evil by your new president’s administration. Well even the Baker Boys in their report to the resident Manichees urged them to jettison their neoliberal failure of a fundamentalist black and white world and to adopt a more realist foreign policy that employs dialogue, coordination with allies, the use of international organizations to pursue world peace and not the timocratic puffery of a wild bunch of Straussians who wouldn’t understand the nuances of Plato’s Seventh Letter if it were sky hooked to them from the heavens. I would characterize Obama’s foreign policy pronouncements as neither idealist (neoconservative) nor realist (e.g., a Kissinger-like Real Politik), but rather as a form of neo-pragmatist policy (though not Rorty’s version) in which one pursues ideals as far as one can practically do so. Such a pragmatic approach should make us more not less secure.
