Obama's Open Letter To Next President...
Oct 6, 2016 14:50:00 #
Don G. Dinsdale
Loc: El Cajon, CA (San Diego County)
Democracy In America
American Politics
Preparing To Pass The Baton
Barack Obama’s Open Letter To His Successor
By Lexington, Washington DC ~ Oct 6th, 2016
In a Trenchant, Unapologetically Centrist Essay For The Economist
Barack Obama has urged the next president to shun the “crude populism” being peddled by both the right and the left, and to ensure that the American economy remains open to the world. In what is, in effect, an open letter to his successor on how to navigate a time of v**er rage, Mr Obama argues that politicians calling for “anti-immigrant, anti-innovation protectionism” are forgetting an all-American principle—that when businesses remember the common good as well as profits, and free markets avoid unhealthy concentrations of power: “capitalism has been the greatest driver of prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.”
No living politicians are named, but the open letter contains unmistakable rebukes for Hillary Clinton’s recent, campaign-trail flirtations with anti-trade rhetoric, as well as swipes at those—starting with Bernie Sanders on the left, and Donald Trump on the right—who call the American economy r****d, and demand it be rebuilt. The economy is “an enormously complicated mechanism,” he cautions. Such radical moves as breaking up big banks or “erecting prohibitively steep tariffs on imports” would have serious real-world consequences.
Mr Obama, a professorial, hyper-rational sort, does not conceal his dismay at an e******n season that has seen so many v**ers—notably working-class Americans without college degrees—rally to candidates insisting that their country is a dystopian hell of corruption and government incompetence, or promising to restore past glories. Perhaps no other country has benefited so much from immigration, trade and innovation, he notes. Yet populists are now promising “a return to a past that is not possible to restore.” Indeed, in a veiled comment on the way that Mr Trump has wooed white men and downplayed past battles against racial and g****r discrimination, Mr Obama adds that for lots of Americans, those past glories “never existed at all.”
With just months left in office the president is naturally keen to defend his own legacy. He duly argues that government actions in the wake of the financial crisis saved the world from a second Great Depression. But the essay is most striking for the candid advice it offers to the next holder of his office, and for the middle-path it treads between scolding elites and exhorting them to remember their responsibilities to society. He even offers expressions of regret that so many highly educated youngsters—“potential physicists and engineers”—instead spend their careers “shifting money around in the financial sector”. He suggests that wages gaps were once constrained by social interactions between bosses and employees “at church, at their children’s schools, in civic organisations”—interactions that he calls now sadly rare.
The open letter weighs in on the debate raging during this e******n, between those who blame populist insurgencies on economic anxiety, or darker forces bound up with identity and fear of the Other. Mr Obama’s answer is: both. With nods to the Brexit v**e in Britain and to those campaigning against trade agreements and immigration across the democratic world, he talks of “understandable” frustrations as wages have stagnated and social mobility stalled. But globalisation and technology have also made the world more prosperous, he insists, and “While some communities have suffered from foreign competition, trade has helped our economy much more than it has hurt.” Some fears are not essentially economic, he writes, condemning those today peddling “anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim, and anti-refugee sentiment” and comparing them to such nativist movements as the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings of the mid-1800s.
For a man often called a socialist by critics, or at least a big government successor to Franklin Roosevelt, a past president that Mr Obama more clearly echoes is Theodore Roosevelt, the progressive Republican who took on robber barons and monopolists in the name of restoring public faith in capitalism. Today, gaps between rich and poor are felt more keenly in a mobile, connected world, he writes. “Technology allows anyone with a smartphone to see how the most privileged live.” He offers his successor a detailed list of policies, all intended to make government a partner to business. Many are dear to Mrs Clinton, such as paid family leave or polices to curb emissions that cause c*****e c****e, but some of them, such as an extension of Earned Income Tax Credits to workers without dependent children, are backed by such Republicans as Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
His open letter will be highly relevant should Mrs Clinton win, for she will find herself under intense pressure from the left of her own party to intervene radically in the economy. Some sectors do still need reform, from the shadow banking system to housing finance, he says. But that, he warns the left, “should be an argument for building on what we have already done, not undoing it.”
The American presidency is a “relay race”, Mr Obama writes. He seems to fear extremes on both ends of the political spectrum, as he prepares to pass the baton.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/10/preparing-pass-baton
American Politics
Preparing To Pass The Baton
Barack Obama’s Open Letter To His Successor
By Lexington, Washington DC ~ Oct 6th, 2016
In a Trenchant, Unapologetically Centrist Essay For The Economist
Barack Obama has urged the next president to shun the “crude populism” being peddled by both the right and the left, and to ensure that the American economy remains open to the world. In what is, in effect, an open letter to his successor on how to navigate a time of v**er rage, Mr Obama argues that politicians calling for “anti-immigrant, anti-innovation protectionism” are forgetting an all-American principle—that when businesses remember the common good as well as profits, and free markets avoid unhealthy concentrations of power: “capitalism has been the greatest driver of prosperity and opportunity the world has ever known.”
No living politicians are named, but the open letter contains unmistakable rebukes for Hillary Clinton’s recent, campaign-trail flirtations with anti-trade rhetoric, as well as swipes at those—starting with Bernie Sanders on the left, and Donald Trump on the right—who call the American economy r****d, and demand it be rebuilt. The economy is “an enormously complicated mechanism,” he cautions. Such radical moves as breaking up big banks or “erecting prohibitively steep tariffs on imports” would have serious real-world consequences.
Mr Obama, a professorial, hyper-rational sort, does not conceal his dismay at an e******n season that has seen so many v**ers—notably working-class Americans without college degrees—rally to candidates insisting that their country is a dystopian hell of corruption and government incompetence, or promising to restore past glories. Perhaps no other country has benefited so much from immigration, trade and innovation, he notes. Yet populists are now promising “a return to a past that is not possible to restore.” Indeed, in a veiled comment on the way that Mr Trump has wooed white men and downplayed past battles against racial and g****r discrimination, Mr Obama adds that for lots of Americans, those past glories “never existed at all.”
With just months left in office the president is naturally keen to defend his own legacy. He duly argues that government actions in the wake of the financial crisis saved the world from a second Great Depression. But the essay is most striking for the candid advice it offers to the next holder of his office, and for the middle-path it treads between scolding elites and exhorting them to remember their responsibilities to society. He even offers expressions of regret that so many highly educated youngsters—“potential physicists and engineers”—instead spend their careers “shifting money around in the financial sector”. He suggests that wages gaps were once constrained by social interactions between bosses and employees “at church, at their children’s schools, in civic organisations”—interactions that he calls now sadly rare.
The open letter weighs in on the debate raging during this e******n, between those who blame populist insurgencies on economic anxiety, or darker forces bound up with identity and fear of the Other. Mr Obama’s answer is: both. With nods to the Brexit v**e in Britain and to those campaigning against trade agreements and immigration across the democratic world, he talks of “understandable” frustrations as wages have stagnated and social mobility stalled. But globalisation and technology have also made the world more prosperous, he insists, and “While some communities have suffered from foreign competition, trade has helped our economy much more than it has hurt.” Some fears are not essentially economic, he writes, condemning those today peddling “anti-immigrant, anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim, and anti-refugee sentiment” and comparing them to such nativist movements as the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings of the mid-1800s.
For a man often called a socialist by critics, or at least a big government successor to Franklin Roosevelt, a past president that Mr Obama more clearly echoes is Theodore Roosevelt, the progressive Republican who took on robber barons and monopolists in the name of restoring public faith in capitalism. Today, gaps between rich and poor are felt more keenly in a mobile, connected world, he writes. “Technology allows anyone with a smartphone to see how the most privileged live.” He offers his successor a detailed list of policies, all intended to make government a partner to business. Many are dear to Mrs Clinton, such as paid family leave or polices to curb emissions that cause c*****e c****e, but some of them, such as an extension of Earned Income Tax Credits to workers without dependent children, are backed by such Republicans as Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
His open letter will be highly relevant should Mrs Clinton win, for she will find herself under intense pressure from the left of her own party to intervene radically in the economy. Some sectors do still need reform, from the shadow banking system to housing finance, he says. But that, he warns the left, “should be an argument for building on what we have already done, not undoing it.”
The American presidency is a “relay race”, Mr Obama writes. He seems to fear extremes on both ends of the political spectrum, as he prepares to pass the baton.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/10/preparing-pass-baton
Oct 6, 2016 15:09:41 #
Don G. Dinsdale wrote:
Democracy In America br br American Politics br ... (show quote)
He is an extreme!
Oct 6, 2016 17:54:41 #
Don G. Dinsdale wrote:
Democracy In America br br American Politics br ... (show quote)
Does anyone care what that POS thinks? I sure don't.
Oct 7, 2016 07:44:10 #
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