Republicans disappointed in the 2012 presidential election tend to couch their animus toward President Obama in hyperbolic language that weakens their case by overstating it. In their world view, President Obama is a radical, a socialist, an extreme leftist, who has raised taxed, choked off industry with burdensome regulations, and launched an aggressive government takeover of healthcare that will threaten our freedom. These Republican talking points are commonly believed but demonstrably false.
For better or for worse, President Obama is a right-of-center moderate in a country that has lurched so far to the right, he seems "leftist" only by comparison. Even if he were considered left wing, I can't imagine how he could be considered "extreme."
I follow French politics pretty closely, living a few miles from the French border. France has a socialist president. The communist party is viable but small. Some intellectuals openly describe themselves as Trotskyists or Stalinists (don't ask me the difference or why they would associated with men who had such bloody track records). France, in other words, could be described as a left-leaning country with its government controlled at present by la gauche.
Using France as a yardstick, let's point out some salient (and meaningful) differences between François Holland, the French president, and President Obama.
A socialist (not a communist) tends to believe that the state has a positive duty to create jobs and provide for those who do not have jobs. The state may be viewed as the engine of economic growth. In fact, the state has many duties that in our society are left to the individual. Socialists openly question the need for and appropriateness of high incomes.
President Obama, on the other hand, has never seriously proposed regulating or capping high incomes. He does believe they should pay their fair share in taxes. Yet even here, the difference between his proposed top marginal tax rate and that proposed by the Republicans is a whopping 3% (the top rate on every dollar over $388,351 is 35% - President Obama would like to increase it to 38%; under Reagan's first term, it was 50%). This is hardly redistribution and nowhere close the 75% top tax rate of France and 50% mean tax rate (versus only 20% for the top quintile of American taxpayers).
What is shocking is that surveys of Republicans consistently reveal their inability to state whether President Obama raised, lowered, or left tax rates unchanged (he actually lowered them both by extending the Bush tax cuts (which were supposed to expire) and waiving some payroll taxes). Socialists believe that the state has a duty to provide healthcare directly; President Obama believes that the state has a role in regulating it and supporting those who can't afford it, but generally leaves the system in private hand - even Medicare is a free market voucher system (any recipient can take their benefit to any private practice provider, so we compete for clients based on service and any other factors that drive businesses).
Socialists do not mind if state activity crowds out or completely dominates some private industries; President Obama has taken great pains - for better or worse - to preserve the for profit health insurance industry in his healthcare reform, which meaningfully tweaked the system rather than overhauled it.
The incorrect labeling of this program as a "government takeover of healthcare" perhaps adds to the perception the President Obama has been some kind of socialist trying to turn us all into Canadians (as though that was a bad thing). He's not. The closest international analogy to what the Affordable Care Act is attempting to accomplish is Switzerland, which also has a compulsory system of private insurance with some assistance for those who cannot afford the premiums. Hardly a socialist conspiracy.
Socialists believe that the state must insure some sort of equality, stepping in as a matter of social good when the imbalance becomes too great to unapologetically redistribute; words such as redistribution or equality are anathema in America (and are not generally supported (I certainly do not support them) except in the very weak and indirect form of a progressive income tax).
A socialist will tend to embrace not only Keynesian but Marxist terminology openly; most Americans, including President Obama, believe that private industry is the engine of economic growth and the government's role is to assist at the margin and charge a small, fair tax to maintain its refereeing power. This is a cart and horse difference and drives what interventions a government would recommend in a crisis. A socialist (or Keynesian even) will tend to expand government activities to directly stimulate an economy. President Obama, after continuing President Bush's TARP stimulus and bank bailout, advocated for only one additional round of stimulus spending which was much smaller than what a socialist leader would have advocated (and arguably smaller than what was actually needed). A socialist would have nationalized the auto industry and the banking system; President Obama simply rescued them, leaving them in private hands.
Certain policies are becoming centrist or so universal to civilized, developed countries that they are noncontroversial everywhere except in the United States, but because of their universal acceptance are hard to characterize as left wing, just as representative democracy, women's suffrage, and the abolition of child labor were also all once considered left wing or even radical ideas but have become so universally accepted it is not meaningful to describe them using these terms. These include the abolition of the death penalty, allowing gays to serve openly in the military and to marry, and a general repulsion toward aggressive "preemptive" war or overt militarism (which Europe has a very painful recent experience with). Strict, effective gun legislation is also universal (there is no equivalent of the NRA here, although the Swiss do like their guns relative to their neighbors). Virtually all European countries have low cost, socialized (you pay more as you earn more) daycare and far better, family friendly policies that allow young mothers to spend more time with their children. All have health insurance of course, cradle to grave.
Interestingly, President Obama is not advocating any of these policies more or less universally agreed-to among developed countries outside of the United States. He has yet to propose meaningful gun legislation, has never advocated for federally funded daycare, and only begrudgingly at the end of his first term, perhaps prompted by an inopportune comment by his vice president, did he come to openly embrace the idea of gay marriage and drop the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy that allowed prosecution or separation of openly gay service members.
Socialists tend to focus on policies that promote tolerance (more open immigration, active efforts against racism and xenophobia); there are right wing, nationalist parties in France that oppose immigration and are in some cases overtly racist, but few as extreme as the Republicans, and none as large. All have a penchant for revisionist history, blending national mythology often with religious overtones and a sense that the best times of France are a few decades in the past.
Americans, since we don't really have a viable left, tend to be scared and frightened of these terms and concepts which they find as alien as German women with axillary hair (much less common now than in the 80s but I digress). This is why the terms are so misused, but the terms do have meaning. The lurch to the right has been fairly extreme in our country, so that we forget that both parties are large corporate entities that generally accept massive corporate funds and more or less do large corporation's bidding.
If President Obama had to run for office in France, he would have to run as a right of center moderate. Those terms do have meaning and I think it's important to use them properly.
For better or for worse, President Obama is a right-of-center moderate in a country that has lurched so far to the right, he seems "leftist" only by comparison. Even if he were considered left wing, I can't imagine how he could be considered "extreme."
I follow French politics pretty closely, living a few miles from the French border. France has a socialist president. The communist party is viable but small. Some intellectuals openly describe themselves as Trotskyists or Stalinists (don't ask me the difference or why they would associated with men who had such bloody track records). France, in other words, could be described as a left-leaning country with its government controlled at present by la gauche.
Using France as a yardstick, let's point out some salient (and meaningful) differences between François Holland, the French president, and President Obama.
A socialist (not a communist) tends to believe that the state has a positive duty to create jobs and provide for those who do not have jobs. The state may be viewed as the engine of economic growth. In fact, the state has many duties that in our society are left to the individual. Socialists openly question the need for and appropriateness of high incomes.
President Obama, on the other hand, has never seriously proposed regulating or capping high incomes. He does believe they should pay their fair share in taxes. Yet even here, the difference between his proposed top marginal tax rate and that proposed by the Republicans is a whopping 3% (the top rate on every dollar over $388,351 is 35% - President Obama would like to increase it to 38%; under Reagan's first term, it was 50%). This is hardly redistribution and nowhere close the 75% top tax rate of France and 50% mean tax rate (versus only 20% for the top quintile of American taxpayers).
What is shocking is that surveys of Republicans consistently reveal their inability to state whether President Obama raised, lowered, or left tax rates unchanged (he actually lowered them both by extending the Bush tax cuts (which were supposed to expire) and waiving some payroll taxes). Socialists believe that the state has a duty to provide healthcare directly; President Obama believes that the state has a role in regulating it and supporting those who can't afford it, but generally leaves the system in private hand - even Medicare is a free market voucher system (any recipient can take their benefit to any private practice provider, so we compete for clients based on service and any other factors that drive businesses).
Socialists do not mind if state activity crowds out or completely dominates some private industries; President Obama has taken great pains - for better or worse - to preserve the for profit health insurance industry in his healthcare reform, which meaningfully tweaked the system rather than overhauled it.
The incorrect labeling of this program as a "government takeover of healthcare" perhaps adds to the perception the President Obama has been some kind of socialist trying to turn us all into Canadians (as though that was a bad thing). He's not. The closest international analogy to what the Affordable Care Act is attempting to accomplish is Switzerland, which also has a compulsory system of private insurance with some assistance for those who cannot afford the premiums. Hardly a socialist conspiracy.
Socialists believe that the state must insure some sort of equality, stepping in as a matter of social good when the imbalance becomes too great to unapologetically redistribute; words such as redistribution or equality are anathema in America (and are not generally supported (I certainly do not support them) except in the very weak and indirect form of a progressive income tax).
A socialist will tend to embrace not only Keynesian but Marxist terminology openly; most Americans, including President Obama, believe that private industry is the engine of economic growth and the government's role is to assist at the margin and charge a small, fair tax to maintain its refereeing power. This is a cart and horse difference and drives what interventions a government would recommend in a crisis. A socialist (or Keynesian even) will tend to expand government activities to directly stimulate an economy. President Obama, after continuing President Bush's TARP stimulus and bank bailout, advocated for only one additional round of stimulus spending which was much smaller than what a socialist leader would have advocated (and arguably smaller than what was actually needed). A socialist would have nationalized the auto industry and the banking system; President Obama simply rescued them, leaving them in private hands.
Certain policies are becoming centrist or so universal to civilized, developed countries that they are noncontroversial everywhere except in the United States, but because of their universal acceptance are hard to characterize as left wing, just as representative democracy, women's suffrage, and the abolition of child labor were also all once considered left wing or even radical ideas but have become so universally accepted it is not meaningful to describe them using these terms. These include the abolition of the death penalty, allowing gays to serve openly in the military and to marry, and a general repulsion toward aggressive "preemptive" war or overt militarism (which Europe has a very painful recent experience with). Strict, effective gun legislation is also universal (there is no equivalent of the NRA here, although the Swiss do like their guns relative to their neighbors). Virtually all European countries have low cost, socialized (you pay more as you earn more) daycare and far better, family friendly policies that allow young mothers to spend more time with their children. All have health insurance of course, cradle to grave.
Interestingly, President Obama is not advocating any of these policies more or less universally agreed-to among developed countries outside of the United States. He has yet to propose meaningful gun legislation, has never advocated for federally funded daycare, and only begrudgingly at the end of his first term, perhaps prompted by an inopportune comment by his vice president, did he come to openly embrace the idea of gay marriage and drop the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy that allowed prosecution or separation of openly gay service members.
Socialists tend to focus on policies that promote tolerance (more open immigration, active efforts against racism and xenophobia); there are right wing, nationalist parties in France that oppose immigration and are in some cases overtly racist, but few as extreme as the Republicans, and none as large. All have a penchant for revisionist history, blending national mythology often with religious overtones and a sense that the best times of France are a few decades in the past.
Americans, since we don't really have a viable left, tend to be scared and frightened of these terms and concepts which they find as alien as German women with axillary hair (much less common now than in the 80s but I digress). This is why the terms are so misused, but the terms do have meaning. The lurch to the right has been fairly extreme in our country, so that we forget that both parties are large corporate entities that generally accept massive corporate funds and more or less do large corporation's bidding.
If President Obama had to run for office in France, he would have to run as a right of center moderate. Those terms do have meaning and I think it's important to use them properly.
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