OBAMA'S MANDATE - November 13, 2008

Barack Obama did not win the US presidency by a

landslide, as Republican apologists have been quick

to point out. His winning margin of some six percent

falls in the midrange of solid wins, while Democrats

fell slightly short of the filibuster-proof 60 vote

control of the Senate that briefly appeared within

reach. (Democrats may yet come very close; with

one Senate race headed for a recount and another for

a runoff.) That said, it is hard to overstate the sweep

and implications of Obama's and the Democrats'

victory last week.

Obama takes power at an appropriately and remarkably fluid and transitional moment in US politics. The conservative ascendency associated with Ronald Reagan has run its course politically, economically, and intellectually. Republicans have suffered a rare back to back drubbing at the polls; if the Democratic wave did not sweep as far down the ballot this time it is only because so many Republicans were already scoured away in 2006. In the wake of defeat the party seems resolved to become even more rigorously conservative, while a party with a tradition of primogeniture now has no prospective frontrunner for 2012.

Even sweeping setbacks can be reversed at the next election. Republicans note that the current balance of power in Washington is much as it was when Bill Clinton came into office in 1992 – and after Clinton flailed in his early going the GOP bounced back to epic gains in 1994. History, Republicans say, might repeat itself. But Obama and his transition team show early signs of avoiding similar mistakes, and he is beneficiary of the school of governance that Clinton presided over for eight years. (Clinton himself lacked this advantage, since Jimmy Carter's single term produced no similar cadre of relatively young Democrats with executive branch experience.)

Moreover the superficial similarities to 1992 belie deep differences. The Democratic congressional majority that Clinton inherited in 1992 was stale – Democrats had controlled the House of Representatives for 40 years – and deeply divided. The balance of power lay in the hands of conservative Southern Democrats, who contributed largely to Clinton's early troubles, only (with exquisite irony) to be the chief victims of the Democratic decimation of 1994. Today's Democratic congressional caucus is far fresher and more cohesive than the pre-1994 caucus, and far more conscious of its shared cause with the new Democratic President whose coattails helped them to a second big pickup.

Obama not only provided Democrats a strong top to their ticket, he kept one of his more improbable campaign promises, to transcend the 1960s era issues and symbols that have dominated US politics ever since. Liberals (in the US sense of the center-left) lost the economic battles but won the cultural ones, ultimately making Obama's win possible. Gay-marriage bans passed in several states, including California, but in larger perspective these defensive victories for social conservatives only demonstrate how far the ground has already shifted. Yet for precisely this reason, cultural symbols have proven highly effective for Republicans over the decades, contributing in no small part to GOP dominance of the White House. Bill Clinton won the presidency by fighting back against culture-symbol attacks, Barack Obama by gliding disdainfully past them.

Most dire for Republicans, however – and the greatest window of opportunity for Obama – is the financial meltdown, with its material and intellectual consequences. The financial sector collapse that loomed in September demonstrated that this is no ordinary recession, not even an ordinary bubble collapse like the dot-com crash. So much money poured into the hands of the investing class in recent decades that in the end too much money was chasing too few investment opportunities. Asset inflation, once the province of boutique asset markets such as artwork, overtook the biggest asset market of them all, real estate.

The resulting wealth illusion reached far into the homeowning middle class, and bouyed up consumer spending even as household incomes remained stagnant. The front end of this crisis has already passed, and we are learning how much poorer we are than we supposed. The looming threat now is that global consumer and business retrenchment will spiral into a runaway downturn, as after 1929. So grave is the concern that Keynesian demand stimulus through federal public works programs, banished as heresy in the age of Reagan, is making an abrupt return to respectability.

The cruelest blow to Reaganism is intellectual. Modern US conservatism has often displayed an anti-intellectual streak – conspicuously in the just-ended election campaign – but its economic agenda has deep intellectual roots going back through the economic neoliberalism of the Chicago school to the free-market purism of Ludwig von Mises and other economists of the "Austrian school." At least for now these ideas have been, if not positively discredited, at least forced to sell at a severe discount. Markets have demonstrated their limited capacity for self-regulation, while capitalists have demonstrated that in an emergency they will call for the federal helicopters as readily as lesser mortals. Partial nationalization of the banks is the least expected parting legacy of the Bush administration.

Obama and the Democrats, and their economic advisers, have neither a specific policy agenda nor a fixed ideological framework for dealing with the transformed economy. Governmental economic activism has been out of favor too long to even have much organized advocacy. What they do have is a coalescing neo-Keynesian perspective – and an economic climate in which experimentation is likely to be both accepted and necessary.

What Barack Obama brings to the table, as vividly demonstrated by his presidential run, is an unusual combination of discipline and boldness. He ran a nearly mistake-free campaign, usually the sign of mark of a deliberative and cautious candidate. Yet everything about his campaign, starting with the premise that a black man really could be elected, was surely the boldest in US history.

This cautious Democrat must cheerfully acknowledge it was too bold for me – I supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries largely because she was both experienced and tough, qualities that seemed essential for going against the historically formidable GOP machine. She did not disappoint me, but Obama outcampaigned and outmaneuvered her. Things that were maddening to me as a Hillary supporter in the primaries – such as the delegate lead that Obama built up in sparsely attended Western state caucuses – were in retrospect the marks of a shrewd campaign that took well calculated risks. The calculation and the risks paid off. When the financial meltdown tipped a previously close race, Obama's campaign was prepared to fully capitalize on it, not only winning but altering the presidential map for future contests.

Obama's first post-election decision, the choice of Raum Emmanuel as White House chief of staff, reflects the calculating side of his political character. His policy initiatives, we can suspect with some confidence, will reflect his bold side.

Rick Robinson

--------------------

Author of the article holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and M.A. degree in English from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California . Mr. Robinson worked as a county-level campaigner in Dukakis (1988) and Clinton (1992) presidential campaigns. He presently works as a journalist and political commentator.

--------------------