Obama and the Liberal designation
Now people are calling Obama a liberal, placing him with Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry, and before them, with Adlai Stevenson and George McGovern.
There is some question whether Obama will be able to successfully avoid the label now in the primary campaign, but most of all in the presidential campaign in the Fall, when the label alone may destroy his winning chances.
It is a fact that Democrats, during the 60 years since FDR, who gave the modern meaning to the term liberal and was himself immune to its subsequent electoral poison, have only won the presidency when they have backed a centrist candidate, starting with Truman, then Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and most recently Clinton.
In every election when they have put up a liberal or left of center candidate, first Stevenson, then Hunphrey, McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and finally Kerry, they have lost, most often to Republican landslides.
It’s not clear to me that Obama fully understands this. That more important even than the Rev. Wright or "bitter" controversies is his being able to avoid the designation liberal.
In our country the term liberal, a most favored attribute in earlier times, has come to mean someone out of touch with ordinary people and out of touch with reality, someone for whom books and ideas are more important than "bread and circuses," than eating and drinking, Nascar and professional wrestling.
It also means someone who looks primarily to federal government programs in order to alleviate poverty or economic hardship, that which is still the main source of human suffering.
In today’s news we see pictures of hungry people, Haitians rummaging for food in the city dumps, Indians with hands outstretched grabbing at sacks of flour and sugar. The liberal would say we have the food, let’s distribute it more equitably.
The centrist wouldn’t be quick to take any action, but would look for non-governmental ways to prevent these situations from arising in the future, while not fighting government handouts in the present.
Most of all it’s not clear to me that Obama is as much concerned with wealth creation as he is with wealth distribution. This distinction alone does most to explain the liberal having fallen out of favor, for most people understand, at least in this country, perhaps no longer in Europe, that wealth creation has to come first.
We know from long experience that wealth creation doesn’t come from government action (the former USSR being the proof of this), but from the free, inventive, and imaginative actions of individuals who by their own efforts come up with things that are useful and pleasing to others and thereby represent new wealth.
What in Obama’s stump speeches on the campaign trail shows that he understands this? Not his protection of the jobs in the rust belt that had to go, not his rejection of NAFTA or the trade treaty between the U.S. and Columbia. Only his support of more enlightened (more "liberal") immigration policy suggests that he may understand that immigrants are and always have been probably the principal source of this country’s greatest economic strength, and resulting wealth.
