15.02.2007

Black face for White House?

'Official anti-racism' has provoked a dialogue over whether the US is ready for a black president. Martin Schreader examines the 'Obama phenomenon', which has caused such confusion among many on the left

The rise of a new major player in American capitalist politics is reminiscent of how a new popular music star is born. From the preliminary media hype, through the wall-to-wall coverage, analysis and debate, to the grand entrance, complete with theme music and thousands of adoring fans.

Since Barack Obama, the junior US senator from Illinois, announced his intention to seek the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States, he has been able to turn his new-found celebrity to his advantage, thus allowing him to become an even larger figure in that corner of the political scene.

In fact, ever since Obama first appeared in the national spotlight, he has been able to work the media in such a way as to increase his prominence and base of support.

He first stepped onto the scene in 2002, when, as a state legislator in Illinois, he publicly denounced the Bush regime's plans for invading Iraq. He was able to use the burgeoning anti-war movement to lift himself up into the US senate in 2004. The Democratic national committee, under the leadership of Howard Dean, tapped Obama's standing with the anti-war movement to help the party gain control of both the lower and upper houses of congress at the end of 2006.

But Obama was able to take advantage of the situation as well, using his visits to cities across the US to gauge support for his own ambitions - both in the base of the Democratic Party and in the capitalist media. Even before last November's election, Obama was teasing the media, allowing rumours about him seeking the presidency to circulate long enough to determine if he had gained the right amount of gravitas to make his run.

Obama is the fourth current or former Democratic senator to enter the race and, even though he only has about two years of national political experience, he is already considered to be a leading contender for the nomination, along with senator Hillary Clinton from New York and former senator John Edwards from North Carolina.

He has been able to distinguish himself from both Clinton and Edwards, positioning himself as an anti-war candidate and opponent of the war and occupation of Iraq. This posture is seemingly backed up by his policy statements, including his proposal to 'end the war' and set a timetable for the withdrawal of combat forces by March 2008.

Obama even went so far as to introduce a bill - the 'Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007' - which would implement his proposal of a 'phased redeployment' of US forces.

But is Obama's policy an end to the war and occupation? No. In fact, like his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, his opposition to the war is not one of principle, but one of tactics. That is, it is not a matter of whether or not this war should have happened, but how poorly it was managed.

His proposal to end the war and occupation hinges on the belief that the Bush regime's policies in Iraq have led the occupation forces into the middle of "somebody else's civil war". This cynical turn of phrase completely ignores the fact that the communal and sectarian violence taking place in Iraq today is a direct result of Washington's policy of 'divide and conquer' - of playing off shia against sunni against Kurd in order to maintain control.

Moreover, it alibis the role of the Anglo-American imperialist cartel in initiating and maintaining the conflict. The fact that the occupation has fuelled the 'resistance' of reactionary 'anti-imperialism', and vice versa, is of course never mentioned.

Obama goes to great lengths to assure his capitalist paymasters that 'phased redeployment' is in their class interests. He soothes their fears by telling them that this 'redeployment' will continue "protecting our interests in the region, and bringing this war to a responsible end". Moreover, he makes it a point to explain to the capitalists that, even though the main forces of the occupation will be 'redeployed' to areas outside Baghdad and other major cities, his proposal "allows for a limited number of US troops to remain as basic force protection, to engage in counter-terrorism and to continue the training of Iraqi security forces".

As other commentators have correctly pointed out, this sounds very similar to Republican president Richard Nixon's programme of 'Vietnamisation' in the early 1970s, where direct US involvement would be reduced and imperialism's dirty work would be handled by the 'locals'. Indeed, Obama is careful to emphasise the fact that he only calls for a drawing down of 'combat' forces, which is less than half of the total occupation force in Iraq today.

But even on this point Obama is not going to stick his neck out too far. In an attempt to play both sides of the pitch, he makes his 'redeployment' contingent on the failure of Bush's 'surge'. That is, if Bush's plan to brutally subdue the sectarian gangs in areas of Baghdad and Iraq's Anbar province are even partially successful, then "this plan also allows for the temporary suspension of the redeployment."

If that is not enough, he then goes on to crudely echo the 13 'benchmarks' set by Bush to denote 'progress' in Iraq. From among this 'dirty (baker's) dozen' of imperialist dictates, Obama stresses the importance of Washington's puppet regime "eliminating restrictions on US forces". In other words, Obama supports Bush's plan to drown the Iraqi people in blood, either through the direct actions of the occupiers or through their proxies, the 'Iraqi security forces' (which are little more than sectarian gangs and 'official' death squads).

And, if by some miracle all of these requirements are met and 'redeployment' takes place, where do these forces go? According to Obama, they would be shipped "to Afghanistan; and to other points in the region".

The second half of this statement is the most important. It exposes the fact that Obama is a supporter of the widening of US imperialism's war of conquest - the "broad struggle going on in the Middle East," as national security adviser Stephen Hadley put it recently. This is reinforced by Obama's calls, published in the Chicago Tribune last September, for the use of 'surgical' missile strikes on Iran if the latter refuses to end its nuclear power programme.

He is also among a group of prominent Democratic politicians that have called for a shift in Washington's attention from Iraq to countries like Iran, Russia, China and North Korea. In fact, Obama supports reviving the old cold war policy of 'brinksmanship' in relation to these countries, in order to get them to fall back into line.

"Our most complex military challenge," he writes in his book, The audacity of hope, "may not be staying ahead of China. More likely, that challenge will involve putting boots on the ground [ie, deploying US troops - MS] in the ungoverned [sic] or hostile regions where terrorists thrive". Places where Obama believes the US should put 'boots on the ground' include the Horn of Africa region, including both Somalia and Sudan, and in central Asia, near to the Chinese border. He has framed this exercise in geo-political strategising in the context of 'humanitarian' efforts and competing with China for influence in Africa.

In spite of his reactionary principles and proposals, however, Obama is still seen by many as a 'liberal' alternative in the upcoming presidential sweepstakes. Indeed, even observers far to the left of the Democrats get caught up in his nuanced rhetoric and will mistakenly describe his view on Iraq as 'virtually calling for immediate withdrawal'. For the most part, however, this image has been finely crafted by Obama and his advisers, and is meant to garner precisely these kinds of responses.

More than once Obama has been compared favourably to former president John F Kennedy - in his style and youth, his abilities and intelligence. Newsweek magazine's Jonathan Alter penned a long column on 'Obama and the Camelot comparison', quoting former Kennedy aide Theodore Sorensen, who said that Obama "reminds me in many ways of Kennedy in 1960. The pundits said he was catholic and too young and inexperienced and wasn't a member of the party's inner circle. They forgot that the nomination wasn't decided in Washington, but in the field."

It is no accident that Obama is being compared to Kennedy. This is because, as was said at the beginning of this article, the man knows how to work the media in order to increase his prominence. It has been a calculated manoeuvre designed to get people talking about him ... and then keep them talking about him. And it is also no accident that many in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party have allowed such comparisons to continue unchallenged. As long as they are made, it allows them to build on their base of support for the presidential elections at the end of next year.

However, the Kennedy comparison is an awkward and partial fit. More appropriate, perhaps, would be to compare Obama to Bill Clinton - a slick, professionally packaged salesman who can be all things to all people, and can make all those good little liberals in the base of the party happily accept the most reactionary schemes and plans of the ruling capitalist class. This is what accounts for the skyrocketing support Obama has seemed to gather around him - both from the capitalists themselves and from the yuppie professionals and managers.

The capitalists see in Obama someone who can 'sell' a pre-emptive war of conquest to the American people as a 'humanitarian' adventure (or, at the very least, 'sell' such a war better than the current occupant of the White House can). The professionals and managers see in Obama someone who will ensure that the 'middle class' is preserved and enhanced (or will feel like they are preserved and enhanced) on the backs of poor and working people.

This dual ability plays especially well among both the corporatist and 'liberal' wings of the Democratic Party, and puts him ahead of his chief rivals for the nomination: the left-populist Edwards and the unashamedly corporatist Clinton.

Obama has also been able to use his mixed-race identity to his advantage in the early stages of the campaign - something that no previous African-American politician has been able to do historically. Obama is the first African-American man to serve as a US senator since the end of reconstruction, and he has played that for all it is worth - even opportunistically pouncing on fellow senator Joe Biden when the latter stuck his foot in his mouth whilst trying to praise his colleague from Illinois.

The 'official anti-racism' of the 'liberal' Democrats - which is an admixture of cynical tokenism and the more subtle racism of patronisation - has forced a national dialogue on whether or not the United States is 'ready' for a black president. (It has also forced a parallel dialogue on the question of a woman president, with Clinton taking centre stage for that discussion.)

As one might expect, the result has been contradictory. On the one hand, among potential Democratic voters, the sentiment has been strongly in support of making an 'historic' run out of their candidate; on the other hand, among so-called 'independent' voters, Obama's race and family background are seen as having both positive and negative elements.

The US is still a deeply racist society, but it is also a society where 'official anti-racism' can paper over those divisions and hide the blemishes. Such a shallow and opportunistic arrangement seems to be acceptable to both Obama and the Democrats, as long as it allows them to take control of the White House on January 20 2009.

In the meantime, both want to show how far they are willing to go to ensure the ruling class that they will do its bidding and there will be no 'divided loyalties' (which is coded language for helping to fulfil the interests of African Americans as a group).

Whether these combined skills and traits will eventually propel Obama into the chief executive's seat remains to be seen. Certainly, such a 'total package' is what sections of the ruling class have been looking for since the failure of fellow senator John Kerry's presidential run in 2004. And after eight years of the Bush regime, the ascension to power of someone of the political calibre of Obama may just be what is needed to allow the capitalists to push forward their programme of corporatist superexploitation, erosion of democratic rights and imperialist redivision of the world.