Tom Hayden: Obama's Bailout Strategy

[babylonsister]

Obama's Bailout Strategy
By Tom Hayden

October 2, 2008


I thought our philosophy was not simply to understand the world, but to change it. I keep receiving e-mails offering progressive alternatives to the Wall Street bailout, but none are connected to strategy or tactics. Congress, Wall Street and the media have little interest in our fine ideas unless we have a plan to do something.

That "something" is to frame the crisis clearly as the voters' verdict on failed free-market fantasies, elect Barack Obama and a few more members of Congress, then demand emergency action to address the Wall Street crisis and its $700 billion twin, the war in Iraq.

I have no problem with Barack Obama supporting the bailout package as long as it keeps him on track to the presidency. He needs to be critical, to offer amendments, and to promise to return to the crisis the day after November 4.

He should take another look at The Second Bill of Rights: FDR'S Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever, by his Chicago friend Cass Sunstein. After the 1929 crash, Roosevelt was elected president as a fiscal conservative pushing a message of hope after Hoover's dismal term. Then came the great social movements that, combined with Roosevelt's pragmatism and political skill, achieved the New Deal. On the right he was accused of being worse than a friend of the Weathermen. On the left, he was accused of saving capitalism from its opponents. What's missing today are the social movements, and I suspect they might be coming if this crisis continues to command full attention.

We need a November electoral mandate rejecting reckless unregulated free-market capitalism as a model for our century. Every minute we carry that message in these days before the election, we are building that mandate. We need a peace mandate, too.

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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/hayden2