Alan Nasser: Driving Another Nail Into the Coffin of the New Deal

Alan Nasser: Driving Another Nail Into the Coffin of the New Deal

"What is most significant about last Wednesday’s speech is its reassertion of Obama’s adamant rejection of New Deal liberalism. There was a flat-out dismissal of direct government creation of jobs: “I’ve never believed that government’s role is to create jobs or prosperity…I believe it’s the private sector that must be the main engine of our recovery.” There will be no public works programs. Not because they haven’t worked in the past; the WPA was a transcontinental project and employed vast numbers, and no one denies its success. Nor because of lack of need; we are in precisely the sort of situation which Keynes correctly identified as requiring government to take on the responsibility for creating useful employment. Such is the position of the most estimable of liberal economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, James Galbraith and Robert Kuttner. Obama sneeringly dismisses them as “the professional left”. "

Hawks Ascendant

Stephen Zunes takes Obama to task for failing to challenge the reckless and irresponsible foreign policies of McCain and the neocons. Zunes lays out point by point, where Obama could have and should have called McCain's bluster. A language of dissent exists, there are alternative visions of America's role in the world and in history out there. Why won't Obama listen, and lend his voice to chorus? Why must he insist on clinging to a sinking ship?

Fri could have been an important moment in making the discursive shift to a new America. But alas, it was yet another missed opportunity- it was yet another moment in which the cultural, intellectual, and political hegemony of the neoconservative vision/nightmare of American power was discursively reproduced.

Rebert Dreyfuss makes many of the same points.