I came across this comment I wrote last August. Seems even more germane today:
Perhaps the best analogy for
what I hope for Obama is that he could be a transformatiive figure, not
like Reagan in reverse, but more like Gorbachev. MG had to become a
trusted member of the Soviet system in order to advance to the position
of power he eventually achieved, but he was a man for the moment. He
rose to power when the time was ripe, and by the power of his
personality and his formidable persuasiveness he was able to ease his
nation into a non-violent dissolution of a very sick system.
The military industrial complex in this country is the analogue to
the soviet system pre-1989. The question is whether it is now as
rickety a structure as the soviet system was.
I don't know, but probably not, and if it isn't ready to collapse
because of internal lack of faith in it, then it won't. But Obama has
some of this "man for the moment" quality. So it's a question, really,
whether the moment is ripe or not. For Obama or anybody can't do
anything unless he has allies within the system who see how rotten it
is and who would support an American perestroika. Gorbachev would have
got nowhere if there was not internal support for his perestroika.
Obama may or may not be that guy, even if the moment is right. But
in my more optimistic moments I think that Obama's election might be
part of a perfect storm of events that might combine to effect such a
significant reorientation of this nation's government. It's more
pipedream than anything else, for sure, but these hubristic systems
always collapse sooner or later, and if we're lucky when it happens
here, there will be a Lincoln or a Gorbachev, i.e., effective
communicators who understand what the stakes are, to ease the
transition.
From where I sit, it's hard to believe that things could get much
worse, but it's more likely that the rot has to progress much further
than it has in the American system for the timing for such an historic
transformation to be realistic.
Gorbachev was not a revolutionary; he didn't come in to destroy the soviet system. He wanted to revitalize it and liberate it from its torpor. In that way he is very much like Obama. Things did not work out the way MG thought they would, but he was a catalyst for changes that had to be allowed to happen. I think we're are in a parallel situation here.
But if the problem in Gorbachev's Soviet Union was that it suffered from an excess of top down control which had to be eased, the problem in the U.S. is different and in many ways harder to deal with. All Gorbachev had to do was ease his control, and let a kind of natural process make the necessary adjustments, painful though they were.
In Reagan's American the problem is an excess of un-control, and the promotion of a system in which the foxes get appointed to run the hen house. I'm not sure there's a way to fix such a problem without the assertion of a lot of political will, and I'm not sure Obama and the Dems are ready for that. But circumstances might develop in such a way as to force his/their hand.
I think it's unlikely that Obama will be able to control
events. The best he can do is manage the coming chaos. We're headed
for white water, and the best we can hope for is that he will keep us
from capsizing.
Leave a Reply