No time for timidity

My, how European we’re getting. All this nattering about whether we are a center-right or center-left country and advice (from both parties, fer gosh sakes!) that Obama govern from the center. It reminds me of the clever, mostly empty political analysis popular in Le Monde, Figaro and l’Express back some 50 years ago in Paris, where I was scraping by on the GI Bill.

Reminds me of a story, too. Sometimes I earned extra francs doing doublage; it was the practice then to dub American voices into French movies rather than employ subtitles.

We were doing Ophuls’ “Lola Montes,” a scene where star Martine Carol asks the hero about his revolution. His hand over his heart, the original actor said it was “de la gauche” –- from the left or leftist. The producers, thinking of the U.S market, cleverly rewrote it as “a revolution from the heart.”

Americans still fear the word “leftist.” For right-wingers it’s an epithet. Liberals shrink from it. I cannot for the life of me understand why -– from the dawn of history and our nation, the Right defended the status quo while the Left championed hope and freedom, helping the downtrodden and recognizing human community.

Words like leftist, rightist and centrist are useful to describe relative positions on a horizontal axis, of course, but that line says little about the essence of politics -– power. For that you need to look at the world vertically. We live in hierarchy.

If I were an artist, I would draw a pyramid here with a wide base, narrowing to a point at the top. Then, seeing no king or tsar up there, I would lop off the point to create a mini-mesa and people it with a small, privileged class wielding big power. Lower down, in the middle, I’d pencil in lots more folks with less power and near the base, a huge population with darn little.

Did you catch the word “class”? The vertical view highlights classes, whereas the horizontal obscures them. The privileged prefer that we don’t look up and ponder class; that’s why they push moral, emotional issues. Divided and squabbling about sin, sexual orientation and race, we cannot focus on who’s getting what. (Here at the New Mexico Independent, Dan Foley specializes in creating distractions.)

This Establishment isn’t stupid. There’s no more letting the cat out of the bag, as famously happened when they called FDR “a traitor to his class” in the 1930s. No, these days they ignore, like the vertically challenged David Brooks, class and power. Thus the New York Times conservative can dream of a new administration (Change I Can Believe In, Nov. 7, 2008) in which Obama governs as a technocrat!

In Brooks’ dream world, the Establishment hasn’t spent 20 years accruing power from the rest of us. And Obama’s election isn’t an endorsement of his mildly left-of-center program involving tax reform (restoring progressivity), health care reform (universal insurance), regulatory reform (taming corporate power) and foreign policy reform (withdrawal from Iraq; talking first, shooting last).

Brooks averts his eyes from what’s at stake. When he urges Obama to postpone tax and health care reform, Brooks doesn’t understand that’s how he proposes to reclaim some power from those at the top of the pyramid to benefit the middle.

But enough dumping on David, who’s as sharp on sociology as he’s politically clueless. I do so only to make this point:

Approaching two weeks after Obama’s victory, it’s unclear if he will push a bold program or putter around. Opposition to a bold program, however, including Brooks’ weird advice, is already in high gear. From Republicans and Democrats high on the pyramid, we hear counsels of caution. Wrong! There’s no reason for timidity; this scary economic crisis and the size of Obama’s win translate into a chance to make fundamental progress.

After righting the economy, Obama should move vigorously to change the power relationships within the pyramid. The goal is to regain a degree of social justice lost this past 30 years.