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An interesting piece in this week's New York, speculating on who would staff a possible Obama administration:
Although there has been chatter that Obama might also retain Hank Paulson at the Treasury, the inside betting is on a Larry Summers encore. “They’re gonna want somebody who knows the building, knows the economy, has been confirmed before and been advising them on economics,” says the former Clinton aide. “I’d be flabbergasted if they chose somebody else.”
Obama is hardly the"socialist" that Sarah Palin, among others, has suggested: it's worth remembering that as of January, he probably was the most centrist of the three leading Democratic contenders for the nomination. That said, if elected he would certainly be the most liberal Democrat to win the White House since LBJ in 1964.
And the frontrunner for such an administration's Treasury Secretary is someone deposed as Harvard president because the faculty found him unacceptably conservative. If nothing else, Summers' emergence shows just how ideologically out of step with the rest of the country the academy currently is.
A more promising reality check comes from Arizona, where a Rasmussen Poll from today shows that John McCain leads Obama by only five points. This tally follows two polls from this weekend showing the margin only 2 and 4 points.
McCain will probably win Arizona. But, three months ago, who would have believed that a week out from voting, Obama's lead in Ohio and McCain's lead in Arizona would be about the same amount?
My definition of socialism does not include mere regulation; does include state-funded and/or -mandated social insurance; does include state-sponsored corporatism, either for labor unions against union opponent workers, or for cartels or entrenched businesses against other businesses, or both -- this falls short of state ownership of capital, but it goes beyond regulation of capital (eg insider trading) and labor (eg minimum wage), to restriction of participation by capital and labor interests not included in the state-sponsored corporatist arrangement.
I stand for individual rights as the primary medium for "promot[ing] the general welfare," and I generally oppose efforts to corporatize those rights, because instead they come at the expense of individual rights, especially of those individuals not grandfathered into a given corporatist arrangement.
Northwestern Mediterranean countries suffer tremendously from this. Youthful unemployment and partial employment and transient employment are desperately high, because of corporatist arrangement protecting union insiders. Eg, one guy at the foreign ministry archives was really good at his job, but he's doomed to changing jobs every two years, but legislation makes for a two-tiered labor-force: those employed way above market rates, and those who compensate for this by suffering at compensation below their market-rate worth.
Unions can be good. But in this day and age, they almost always focus on their insiders at the expense of outsiders, even if they sincerely claim to want to bring the entire (national only) labor force into their insider camp.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/31/2008
It might be helpful if you'd offer a definition of what you mean by "socialism". It apparently includes both public regulation of privately owned property and the safety nets of a mixed capitalist system.
Jeff Vanke -
10/31/2008
Thanks, Ralph. You can be surprised if you want. But socialism is much more variable than the Marxists and marxians who have dominated European socialist parties. Marxism and its dilutions are not the only socialism.
Corporatizing the workplace against the will of any worker, through coercion implied or explicit (look at the bulletin board in the background of that docuvideo), not to mention against the will of many workers, that is a version of socialism.
(And btw, count me a socialist when it comes to preserving Social Security, non-privatized, for one.)
Union leaders are just as disdisinterested as chambers of commerce. Let's let individual workers decide their own interests.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/30/2008
Jeff, I'm surprised that you buy into this kind of stuff. Unless you're talking about state ownership of the means of production, I don't think you're talking about socialism. Arguments about union membership and how workers may be organized are clearly arguments within the framework of a capitalist/corporate institutional arrangement. I've been a union member and am no great advocate of labor unions, but neither do I want the Chamber of Commerce telling me about their evils. It's not exactly a disinterested voice.
Jeff Vanke -
10/29/2008
As we historians know, socialism is a relative term. I'm voting for Obama, but ....
Watch, too, for a possible sweeping regulation of the media with a revived "fairness doctrine." When we had just three T.V. networks, maybe, but now?
Also, the AFL-CIO, which gave $200 million in this year's elections, wants the Dems to overrule the 22 states ("right to work") who so far refuse to legislate closed-shop unions. Just how many jobs have foreign car firms created in those 22 states in the past generation? If the UAW thinks Honda and BMW are going to pay Detroit wages, they're more hoping than anything else.
David Silbey -
10/28/2008
What I do want is to read his long-promised book on Royce.
Me too.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/28/2008
I would want to make clear that I'm not interested in "getting" Cornell. What I do want is to read his long-promised book on Royce.
David Silbey -
10/28/2008
's very difficult for me to accept the argument that some academic stars are just so mega that, no matter how inert they've become, they are beyond the reach of even the president of Harvard
I suspect that it's an inevitable result of tenure that some people in the system will be able to game it to their advantage. You could probably change the system to do away with that, but not without changing its benefits as well. The question becomes whether *getting* West is worth the other effects.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/28/2008
You may be right about that, David. It's very difficult for me to accept the argument that some academic stars are just so mega that, no matter how inert they've become, they are beyond the reach of even the president of Harvard. I don't know any of us who doesn't occasionally need his ass kicked. Harvard's university professors' asses are beyond the reach of mere department chairs, deans, or provosts. What's left but the president's office? Undoubtedly, Summers paid a price for taking West on. I'd even grant that his doing so hasn't obviously changed West's behavior. Still, I don't think West or anyone else ought to be way beyond being told what even his best friends wouldn't tell him.
David Silbey -
10/28/2008
the fuss about Cornell West was highly political
I remember it became politicized; my impression had been that that happened after Summers intervened.
but I agreed with Summers that West had been largely wasting an enormous talent
And that's a reasonable position to take, but it goes back to my point about the quirks and foibles of universities: they take chances on enormous talents on the understanding that a certain number of them will go into a coma.
Going after West is the wrong target, because it's way too late to do anything about it. An intervention would have to come much earlier in the process to be useful. Going after West (like his comments about women in science) is just dumb because it blows whatever political capital he had at Harvard without getting anything in return.
Ralph E. Luker -
10/28/2008
Actually, David, the fuss about Cornell West was highly political. If you go back and read the controversy about him leading up to the incident, West and his apparent lack of productivity was a minor engagement in the culture wars of the era. It was conservatives who pointed out that West's product was remarkably light for a Harvard university professor. Academics on the left tended to defend West -- either because he had been attacked from the right or because Harvard's university professors are normally granted enormous latitude about what they do. Essentially, they are immune to criticism within the university. I tended to defend West from his right-wing critics, but I agreed with Summers that West had been largely wasting an enormous talent. Even after the Summers incident, West hasn't produced a serious academic book beyond his first.
David Silbey -
10/28/2008
None of those three is definitively *conservative* as such: 1 is just stupid (especially to be saying it with a faculty full of women under his supervision), 2 isn't political at all (unless you really want to read into it) and 3) support for Israel isn't exclusive to one side of the spectrum, as far as I know.
Summers' besetting sin was that he had no idea how to run a university, with all the foibles and strangeness attendant to the job. The faculty were just the ones with the leverage to push him out.
Oscar Chamberlain -
10/27/2008
It's amazing what a Texas accent can hide!
Robert KC Johnson -
10/27/2008
It's worth remembering that the draft of the no-confidence resolution against Summers listed three and only three items as justifications for a no-confidence vote: (1) his remarks about women in science; (2) his insistence that Cornel West, as a University professor, actually produce scholarship; and (3) his public statement that the divest-from-Israel movement was "anti-semitic in effect if not intent." His temperament was not listed as a justification for the faculty action.
Doubtless, of course, some, more moderate, faculty voted against Summers because of his personality--though if arrogance were a disqualifier to become president of Harvard, I suspect the university could never have had a president.
HAVH Mayer -
10/27/2008
Obama "was the most centrist of the three leading Democratic contenders for the nomination....if elected he would certainly be the most liberal Democrat to win the White House since LBJ in 1964." OK.
And LBJ, of course, was seen as the least liberal of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination in 1960.
Sherman Jay Dorn -
10/27/2008
I thought that while some criticized Summers for his off-the-cuff comments about gender and science, the bulk of the faculty's perceptions were centered around Summers's arrogance, not his political views?
