Old Wine, Old Bottles

Abstract

We have just finished a marathon election season, almost two years in the making, and by all accounts billions of dollars spent (almost $3b by the candidates, altogether about $6b by all the various campaigns and PACs formed to promote one candidate or another), to arrive at the same place. We might be excused if we glance at a British system that holds its elections in 3 weeks and bans television advertising – after all, we are hard pressed to see how that results in very different outcomes in governing styles and political philosophies. Little has changed in the US political landscape: stubborn right-wing Republicans, wary of Tea Party primary challenges, retain control over the US House of Representatives, while Democrats and their uneasy neoliberalism remain entrenched in the US Senate. President Obama was re-elected and, depending on whose tea leaves one consults (certainly not the Tea Party’s), it was a resounding victory for a continuation of his policies, or a narrow victory by a President with a less than stellar record in office over an elitist and even more unappealing opponent. After all, fewer than half the eligible voters chimed in by voting, so a case can be made that the electorate was not enthusiastic about its choices. There are noises about cabinet position changes, but this happens routinely as either government service burns out office holders, or those politically aspiring to higher office feel it is time to pull back from public service and begin to build their own infrastructure to run for local, State or Federal office. Some even speculate that now, with no more elections to run, President Obama can become the progressive champion everyone expected with his victory in 2008 (Newby, 2010 and Gimenez, 2010 debate the nature and reasonableness of those expectations). True, there are fewer if any political costs in taking a harder position and not accommodating in order to appear reasonable. But to see a change, we would have to assume that in this administration new ideas and better principled positions are going to emerge. Sadly, there are reasons to be cautious – cautiously pessimistic because we should not expect anything new as the past can reveal core principles, and perhaps cautiously optimistic because this time, unlike 2009, campaign rhetoric might really take shape as a political reality. Let us consider the political and economic landscape. The US Chamber of Commerce, which worked hard to elect business friendly Republicans, continues its efforts to promote a business friendly environment and the Wall Street Journal has already issued warnings that President Obama should not consider this re-election a mandate to reject Republican values – values that failed to carry the day. What is strange about this is that at every turn in his first term Obama seemed to accommodate business and Wall Street – after campaigning on change and making the argument that you cannot expect those who created the problem to correct the system, his main financial appointments came out of that same system being hired from Goldman Sachs and promoted from within a Federal Reserve in New York City that was at best asleep while Wall Street piled up historic profits and almost wrecked the economy (to sack: pillage and destroy, as in Goldman Sachs). 471264 CRS39110.1177/0896920512471264Critical SociologyEditorial 2012