The Feckless President: Paralyzed in the Face of Crisis

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE: DISSEMINATE FREELY.

Feckless: 1. Unable or unwilling to do anything useful. 2. Lacking the thought or organization necessary to succeed.

Call me a conspiracy theorist. I have speculated since the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963 that the true source of power in this country is neither the people nor those we elect to public office. It is neither the governors nor the congress nor the regal senators nor the president of the United States that call the shots on national policy. It is rather the corporate aristocracy that is neither elected nor American by any standard.

It follows that our elections are only for show. Every two to four years activists and politicos devote countless hours and dedicated effort to choosing a government that better reflects our collective will, that better represents our interests, or one that is at least more competent and thoughtful in conducting the business of the nation.

Every two to four years we are disappointed with the results. We moved from Gerald Ford (the man who pardoned Richard Nixon quid pro quo) to Jimmy Carter and watched his presidency rendered impotent by the price of oil and the Iranian hostage crisis. Betrayed by his own military-intelligence command by sending a rookie pilot into a sandstorm in a failed rescue attempt, he was betrayed again by his rival for the presidency who promised arms to Iran in exchange for the release of the hostages. They were released on Inauguration Day.

We moved from Carter to Ronald Reagan who seized glory with the fall of the Soviet empire and fell from grace with the Iran-Contra affair. His explanation that his heart still told him he was right though the facts pronounced him guilty would be laughable if it were not true. In his second term Reagan was already afflicted with Alzheimer disease. It was his affliction that saved him from a contempt-of-congress charge and subsequent impeachment hearings. Neither the nation nor the party of opposition could stomach the spectacle that would have followed.

The question remains: Who was steering the ship of state in the president’s absence?

We moved from Reagan to the elder Bush, a man well connected to both the oil industry and the intelligence community (he was a former Director). Bush was the perfect front man in the sense that he was already an insider. With the vacuum left by the Soviet collapse, the nation’s first attempt to control the vast oil fields of the Middle East was inevitable under his watch. Anyone who is familiar with the facts leading up to the first Gulf War knows it was unnecessary. The Bush administration had only to voice its opposition when asked by the Hussein regime if it objected to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It did not.

Bush betrayed the Iraqi people by failing to keep a promise to support them if they rose up against their government. In fact, in the terms of surrender our military commander Norman Schwarzkopf specifically allowed Hussein’s forces to use armed helicopters to suppress the uprising. Bush would lament at his White House victory celebration that he was not able to finish the job. He would explain that Hussein was a necessary evil to maintain the regional balance of power vis-à-vis Iran.

What had they accomplished? A military stronghold on the sacred Muslim land of Saudi Arabia, thus incurring the wrath of the Islamic world and setting the stage for what would eventually happen on September 11, 2001.

Bush would surely have won a second term had he not neglected the economy but the nation fell into a deep recession and we moved on to the presidency of Bill Clinton.

William Jefferson Clinton was supposed to be a man of the people. He was supposed to be a progressive leader. Instead he attempted to redefine the political landscape by pushing the Democrats to the right and Republicans to the reactionary far right. A recent documentary tracing the parallel political journeys of Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair concluded with Clinton admonishing Blair for abandoning his progressive roots. Blair was speechless. In real life he might have fired back: That’s the pot calling the kettle black.

More than anyone else Clinton should be remembered as the president who created the corporate-friendly bipartisan mandate: Free trade, deregulation, corporate tax breaks, small government and gutted social services.

Clinton gave way to George W. Bush, one of the most inept and ill-prepared individuals ever to grace the Oval Office, and the most powerful Vice President in history. Halliburton’s own CEO took command from day one and the younger Bush dutifully read the teleprompter. The Cheney-Bush administration dismantled the Environmental Protection Agency, exempted the oil and gas industry from the Clean Air and Water Acts, accelerated deregulation of the financial industry, opened public lands to drilling, privatized the military, pushed through the Bush Doctrine and plotted the invasion of Iraq long before September 11, 2001.

There is no way on earth or in the great expanse of time that Bush 43 can escape the cruelest verdict of history. There is no end to the legacy of destruction emanating from the decisions made under his watch: the near total collapse of the global economy, the decimation of a great American city, the strategic blunder of Iraq, utter failure in Afghanistan, climate change denial and environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale.

One would think that after George W. Bush his successor would have an easy time rising to perceived greatness by comparison but that is not the case for Americans have dangerously short memories and our new president came to office with a straightjacket holding him back.

Barack Obama was elected on a promise of hope. In retrospect perhaps that was his first mistake. He should have balanced his message with a harder edge. He should have informed us that the hard times the nation had come under had only begun.

Looking back he did give us warning but all we heard was the promise. Time well tell whether his health insurance reform was as historic as he believes it to be but with insurance companies jacking the rates while cutting coverage it does not feel historic today. With the near implosion of the financial system Wall Street reform should have been a slam-dunk but it wallows in parliamentary procedure where it will be whittled down to irrelevancy. We are therefore left with two unfinished wars ultimately destined for failure while the presidency of Barack Obama is put on indefinite hold until the catastrophe in the Gulf fades from the daily glare of media lights. Yes, we will move on eventually and we will be told that all will be well though it will not be well – not for years or decades or the foreseeable future when the next catastrophe unfolds.

Not even this unimaginable nightmare is sufficient to move our government in any meaningful way toward alternative fuels and environmental protection.

We are left with the unmistakable feeling that our government is hopelessly lost and powerless to move in a positive direction. We are left with the sense that it no longer matters who we elect president for the president is unable to act. He is out of the office, unavailable and strangely detached.

I believe in my gut that President Obama is a brilliant, capable and well-intentioned man but his presidency is paralyzed. I believe that any number of modern presidents might have been well intentioned but all were constrained by powers greater than government.

When Lyndon Johnson was asked why he persisted in the escalation of the Vietnam War even after he knew it was a lost cause, he uttered the customary obscenities while explaining that he would not by God be the first American president to lose a war. We did of course lose that accursed war at a horrifying cost of life and suffering.

I believe Johnson was powerless to end the war. I believe it was a condition of his presidency. I believe his administration was the first case study on the power of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. He was surrounded by advisers and generals who shaped his policies and made it clear that they would have their war whether he approved or not.

Today the military-industrial complex remains as powerful as ever but it is rivaled by international conglomerate corporations whose influence has become dominant in every branch of government both here and abroad. Today we have a Supreme Court that has institutionalized corporate financing of elected officials by awarding constitutional protection under the guise of free speech. I believe that decision was the most damaging to our democracy in history and they have only just begun.

So as we observe the ongoing disaster in the Gulf (and ignore the ongoing poisoning of our drinking water and air), as we witness the decline of the real economy, the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, the rise of Iranian influence and a looming civil war in Iraq, the corruption of public officials, the crumbling of roads and bridges, the mass layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters, the rising costs of higher education, on and on, and wonder why our government fails to act, consider the tragic possibility that they are in fact doing the best they can under the circumstances.

As General McChrystal learned, you can’t spit in the face of your boss and expect to retain your job. In this scenario, the boss is corporate interest and BP notwithstanding there is a line no public official dare cross.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, there is much to support my thesis and little to support the contrary view: that our government is a functioning democracy, that our elected officials represent the public cause, that our government is empowered by the people, that our president can override the corporate mandate.

In the case of Barrack Obama: What a terrible waste of talent.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB, INCLUDING THE ALBION MONITOR, BELLACIAO, BUZZLE, COUNTERPUNCH, DISSIDENT VOICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS AND PACIFIC FREE PRESS.
SEE www.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM