Obama is the ideal personification of mature capitalism. He is not a front man, cipher, or puppet; instead, he identifies fully with the social order, its hierarchical structure, and its social purposes. He needed no urgings from others to betray practically every campaign promise he made in 2008. Today, he is hardly the alternative to Romney, his record reducing him to the same plane as his opponent. For ruling groups, his advantage lies in his facility for dressing retrograde policies in liberal rhetoric, and more, keeping intact an electoral base in the depths of false consciousness who cannot, in denial, see how their interests, including that of the black community itself, have been violated. Broadly, he and Romney are committed to the Washington Consensus, its faith in market efficiency, rationality, and justness, which provides the ideological cornerstone for deregulation of the economy and, relatedly, the subordination of government to, while servicing the needs of, business. (Norman Pollack)
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The absence of effective financial regulation, true to this day, as seen in the feckless operations of the SEC, is only one dimension of basic agreement between the candidates. Others include such diverse areas (yet forming a unitary perspective of conservatism if not reaction) as gun control, climate change, oil drilling, the inclusion of coal mining in the energy mix, and despite nuances, immigration policy, and, although Romney is mum on the subject, their common disregard for civil liberties, justified as necessary by the threat of terrorism. On the last-named, it would be difficult for Romney to exceed or match Obama’s record in erecting the state secrets doctrine as a first principle of governance, leading to the creation of the National Security State, use of the Espionage Act to discourage whistleblowers, widespread surveillance, the practice of rendition, assault on habeas corpus rights, and, not to be forgotten, approval of indefinite detention–a new outburst equal to the Palmer Raids and McCarthyism in undermining the Constitution.
Withal, Obama appears untouchable; his genius for manipulating the American public, or rather, his base, including the many in distress, is critical to his leadership role in advancing American financial and business interests. The base, resting in adulatory mode, refuses to recognize potential long-term trends that have now been set in motion, e.g., further deregulation or that which proves inefficacious (as witness FDA and Interior Department policies), privatization, and weakening of the social safety net. In symbolic terms, the drone may well define the Obama presidency. One does not know whether Romney would closet himself with his advisors and personally authorize targeted assassination. Hopefully not, given that this barbaric act is the antithesis of due process and rule of law—a leap into moral vacuity that he would find difficult to match or surpass.
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