The limits to Barack Obama's radicalism, por David Osler:
YESTERDAY the Financial Times - a free market business newspaper not normally considered the voice of the British left - endorsed Barack Obama as ‘the better choice’ for president of the United States. And, compared to John McCain, the only other contender that could possibly win next week, he certainly is that. (...)
As the FT editorial makes plain, president Obama will inevitably disappoint his progressive base of support, both domestically and in other countries. His political DNA makes him organically incapable of the kind of radicalism necessary to tackle racism and poverty, or to disembroil the US from Afghanistan and Iraq, to name but some of the more pressing tasks. (...)It is a measure of the desperation of the McCain camp that they have unearthed a 2001 radio interview in which Obama makes some mildly redistributionist remarks, and are trying to push the line that this makes him some kind of 'socialist'.
The idea that Obama is some kind of closet dangerous red is patently laughable; if he has ever uttered anything that would put him much to the left of the mildest European centrist, I have yet to hear it.
The thing is, isn’t it a bit ironic to knock Obama for redistributionism on the very day that the Bush administration began to dish out money to the private sector as part of its plan to get the credit markets back on their feet?
As of now, the US government now holds equity in nine banks and is the major shareholder of a formerly private insurance giant AIG. McCain supported the plan; to hear him turn around and attack redistribution will strike many left of centre observers as just that little bit rich.
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