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'Change You Can Believe In', You Better Not Believe It Johnny E Williams Crit Sociol 2012 38: 747 originally published online 16 November 2011 DOI: 10.1177/0896920511426804 The online version of this article can be found at: http://crs.sagepub.com/content/38/5/747

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CRS10.1177/0896920511426804WilliamsCritical Sociology

Article

‘Change You Can Believe In’, You Better Not Believe It

Critical Sociology 38(5) 747–768 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0896920511426804 crs.sagepub.com

Johnny E Williams Trinity College, Connecticut, USA

Abstract This study evaluates the extent to which the moneyed establishment influences Obama’s politics and policy positions. Drawing on insights from power structure theory, the article elaborates on how Obama’s acceptance of the moneyed elite’s political, economic, and cultural hegemony as normative and determinate of everyday reality configures his policies. Drawing primarily on secondary sources (i.e. journal articles, public speeches, newspapers, magazine interviews, and Internet sites) that scrutinize government policies and the appointees who formulate them, this study suggests that the American political system’s narrow commercial parameters incline Obama to govern as the presidential facilitator and protector of private financial interest. Keywords culture, neoliberalism, politics, political economy, political sociology, power, social class

Introduction To understand how Barack Obama construes change, it is helpful to examine how the American political system’s configuration as a mechanism for the wealthy shapes his notions of change. As Adam Smith (1937([1776]) observed, the fundamental concern of bourgeois ‘democratic’ government is to ensure the security of property and defense of the rich against the poor. Though framers of the United States Constitution are often described as proponents of egalitarianism, this was not the case. Far from being defenders of public rights (e.g. human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties), authors of the United States Constitution constructed a government to facilitate the private right to accumulate capital (see Beard, 1935[1913]; Hofstader, 1989[1948]; Fresia, 1988; Parenti, 1980). The constitutional framers believed ‘the better people’, rich property owners like themselves who had an inherent commercial stake in the new country, should govern it (Fresia, 1988; Parenti, 1980). This conviction and the idea that government’s primary mission is to protect private commercial rights was codified in the Constitution as a representative system of government grounded in the political philosophy of classical liberalism, a belief in the primacy of individuals’

Corresponding author: Johnny E Williams, Trinity College, Department of Sociology, 300 Summit Street, Hartford, CT 06106, USA Email: [email protected]


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freedom through limiting the powers of the state and promotion of private property privileges. This credo sought to protect the interests of a wealthy minority rather than the general population. As liberalist framer John Adams (1937 [1787]: 591) put it, if the majority were to control government, ‘debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on others; and at last a downright equal division of everything be demanded and voted’. To avert this development ‘the better people’ constructed the Constitution to propagate the idea that the primary mission of ‘democracy’ is to safeguard property and business rights (Parenti, 1980). How this governing proviso shapes Obama’s governance is the concern of this article. Although Obama vaguely implied reformist economic and political aims with his ascension to the executive office, his presidency advocates policies that conserve rather than change existing economic and political practices. Similar to preceding presidents, Obama insinuates that advancing private commercial interest benefits the public. Obama’s pro-corporate position derives in part from his devotion to the free-market system and a pragmatic philosophy that inclines him to believe the best way to proceed in a political arena controlled by powerful private interests is to push for small incremental changes (MacFarquhar, 2007; Silverstein, 2006). Political scientist Charles Lindblom (1977) contends that this political tactic encourages politicians to approach the ‘democratic’ political terrain as the domain of a wealthy polyarchy they must petition to learn what members are willing to concede. This idea explains Obama’s sensitivity to polyarchical pressure, particularly wealthy entities’ threats to withdraw patronage from the Democratic Party. Such pressure obliged him to drop his opposition to health care legislation mandating all citizens purchase insurance after health care industry leaders realized the provision advantaged their business. Given the US Constitution’s primary goal of protecting commercial interests, to what degree do the moneyed establishment’s interests delimit Obama’s effort to ‘change’ the political system? Drawing primarily on secondary sources (i.e. journal articles, public speeches, newspapers, magazine interviews, and Internet sources) that report on government policies and the appointees who formulate and implement them, I explore Obama’s politics and policy positions relative to the moneyed establishment’s interests. Though Obama’s pragmatic political approach is a work in progress, his economic principles are being solidified in part by a variety of campaign donors, close advisors, and appointees whose political and economic pedigrees reveal their close ties to the moneyed elite.

Theorizing Power Structures Research examining the interactive dynamic between politicians and the wealthy generally uses power structure theory and its variants: policy planning network theory and the investment theory of politics. Power structure theory derives from Floyd Hunter’s (1953) and C. Wright Mills’s (1956) research examining how high status groups within bureaucratic organizations enhanced their institutional and societal power. That is, Hunter and Mills assert that large-scale organizations’ information and material resources afford their owners and/or leaders the capacity to boost their power both inside and outside of their institutions by imposing punishment on politicians who attempt to curtail their interests to protect the public good (Domhoff, 2007: 3–4). Given the relational nature of power, power structure theory conceptualizes power as an underlying trait of a collectivity, albeit a small group, whose disproportionate hold on political and economic power impede the advancement of all members of societies (Domhoff, 2007: 3, 5). That is to say, power structure theory assumes an organized power structure of some kind or another organized by the powerful and wealthy – no matter how weak, fragmented, or pluralistic – dominates government in direct ways requiring politics and politicians to do its bidding (Domhoff, 2007: 5). Although


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power structure theory is useful in grasping how the wealthy few dominate politics and politicians, at its inception some critics (see Dahl, 1961; Polsby, 1980; Wolfinger, 1960), convinced that power in the United States is shifting, multi-based and issue specific, asserted that it is implausible for a well-organized and well-financed group of individuals sitting atop major institutional hierarchies to dominate political decision-making (Domhoff, 2005). This criticism is problematic considering that shortly after it was published, critics (see Hawley and Svara, 1972; Kadushin, 1968) attempting to rebut power structure theory using its reputational and positional methodologies found that political decision-making power does indeed reside in the hands of a few institutions and groups. Using the reputational method, rich individuals identify who they believe are the most powerful in the polity via interview surveys, while the positional analysis examines how policy-makers’ social origins and occupational careers shape their political decision-making (Domhoff, 2005). Since power structure theory asserts power is rooted within multiple organizational bases, it in no way argues that the concentration of economic power automatically translates into political power. Rather, adherents of this theory maintain that power structures in society are best understood as emerging from four organizational bases of power, identified as ‘ideological, economic, military, and political relationships. These are overlapping networks of social interaction, not dimensions, levels, or factors of a single social totality’ (Mann, 1986: 2). Hence, to evaluate how power structure networks interact and intersect, power structure researchers use a combination of power indicators to scrutinize power processes. These indicators are: (1) who benefits? – what organization, group, or class in the social structure under study receives the most of what people seek or value?; (2) who sits? – what organization, group, or class is overrepresented in key decision-making positions; (3) who wins? – what organization, group, or class wins in the decisional arena; and (4) who has the reputation for power? – who is thought to be powerful by knowledgeable observers and peers. (Domhoff, 2007: 5)

These indicators help to empirically substantiate whether the moneyed elite wield power in one arena but not in another, and how their power waxes and wanes over time through changes in power indicators. Moreover, power indicators allow researchers to identify the particular policies and ideologies members of the network prefer by analyzing the verbal and written utterances (e.g. examination of speeches, policy statements, proposed legislation, etc.) of strategically located people or organizations (Domhoff, 2007: 6). I use this technique to analyze Obama’s and his appointees’ links to the wealthy few and their organizations. The policy planning network variant of power structure theory expounds on how indicators number 2 (who sits?) and 3 (who wins?) materialize in the political arena by examining who holds high level positions in institutions or corporations controlled by the wealthy few and the relational nature of corporate boards of directors (i.e. interlocking or overlapping directorships) (Domhoff, 2007: 15). Building on the contention that corporate interlocks facilitate political and policy cohesion, policy planning proponents scrutinize linkages among individuals, institutions, money flows, and policy issues to grasp how organizations controlled by the economic elite dominate government. Specifically, these theorists argue that through private policy planning organizations (i.e. foundations think tanks and policy discussion groups) the wealthy few frame and formulate state policy in ways that ensure public discourse achieves the acquiescence of government and citizens to their interests. As Burris (1992: 112) puts it: [P]olicy planning groups bring together influential figures from business, government, academia, the legal profession, and the mass media to discuss general problems facing the nation (read: wealthy interests) and to seek consensus on policies to address those problems. Some policy planning groups sponsor research


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on political and economic issues. Others are active in efforts to shape public opinion and in lobbying for the enactment of specific governmental policies. In a more informal way, these policy-planning groups also provide a training ground for new leadership and a channel for recruitment into government service.

These efforts within the policy planning process are supplemented by the candidate-selection process that involves choosing electoral candidates sympathetic to the policy planning network agenda (Domhoff, 2007: 21). The candidate-selection process operates largely through large campaign contributions and hired political consultants, but there are many other ways the power elite ensure that politicians support their interests, including offers of jobs as lobbyists, motivational speakers, and corporate directors once their political careers end (Domhoff, 2007: 21–22). Some scholars (see Berg and Zald, 1978; Silk and Silk, 1980) disagree with policy planning theory’s assertion that policy planning networks are composed largely of the corporate rich or wealthy few with a degree of cohesion facilitated by overlap among their members. These critics view corporate leaders’ presence within and influence over policy planning organizations as mainly symbolic, thereby questioning the cohesiveness of the moneyed establishment with respect to state policy (Burris, 1992: 112). This criticism is unconvincing because these scholars offer insufficient evidence that the moneyed elite’s influence within policy planning organizations is merely symbolic. Their claim is particularly problematic since wealthy individuals who serve as interlocks between different organizations participate in decision-making in several institutions and are communication and coordination conduits between organizations (Burris, 1992: 127). The investment theory of politics variant of power structure theory generally analyzes the dominant role of corporations and their owners in vetting politicians via campaign donations. Proponents of this theoretical variant (see Clawson et al., 1998; Ferguson, 1995; Street, 2008, 2010) generally argue that public involvement in planning or implementing public policy is marginal since politicians and their political parties reflect business interests in ways that restrict their participation in decision-making to voting. Ferguson’s (1995) version of the investment theory of politics contends that just as wealthy individuals invest in stocks and bonds based upon projected growth and dividends, they also invest in those political candidates whose policies they believe to be in their economic interest. Switches in the wealthy’s political investment strategies lead to changes in the policy stances of financially dependent candidates and parties and to new government policies (Domhoff, 1988: 589). In other words, wealthy investors use their campaign donations, research groups, foundations, media access, and prestige to secure success for their favored candidates and to eliminate candidates who do not represent their interests (Domhoff, 1988: 590, 592). After favored candidates are elected they appoint individuals from the moneyed elite’s policy network to help them run the government. Though the focus of the investment theory of politics on the role of economic reasoning in directing campaign donation is important, its economic determinist orientation leads it to downplay non-economic factors guiding moneyed elites’ contributions (Domhoff, 1988). As Clawson and his colleagues (1992) demonstrated in their analysis of campaign finance, the wealthy frequently donate to candidates based on pragmatic or ideological reasons. Despite this shortcoming, the investment theory of politics is an analytically effective means for understanding how the moneyed elite influence candidate selection and candidates’ policy formation. Because the moneyed establishment is organizationally rooted, it exercises a special kind of power that Antonio Gramsci termed hegemony (Clawson et al., 1992). According to Clawson and his colleagues (1992), hegemony operates as a field of power that structures what people and groups do. It is a world view – a way of thinking about the world that influences every action and makes it difficult to even consider alternative ways of living or being. Hegemony as a coercive


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force ensures individuals adhere to its standards and conventions. Since political candidates are situated within a hegemonic set of campaign practices (i.e. private meet and greets, fundraisers, etc.) they organize their run for office to fit safely within the narrow ideological and policy parameters set by those who rule behind the scenes to ensure their continuation as leading beneficiaries of the American system (Street, 2008: ix). Though some politicians recognize that established campaign processes hinder their efforts to assert the public interest, many refuse to contest these practices because of their wealthy benefactors’ hegemonic coercive cultural and economic power. The end result, according to power structure proponents like Shoup (2008: 31) is that ‘U.S. “democracy” at best is a guided one; at worst it is a corrupt farce, amounting to manipulation, with the larger population objects of propaganda in a controlled, and trivialized electoral process. [Therefore] it is an illusion that real change can ever come from electing a different ruling class sponsored candidate.’ To better grasp how politicians like Obama accept and promulgate the moneyed elite’s political-economic program, I use power structure theory and its variants to explore how his and his administration’s policies reproduce and defend their interests. With this in mind, let’s turn our attention to explicating the primary ideological and policy means by which politicians accede to the demands of the moneyed establishment.

Neoliberal Governance In the expansive field of political economics, scholars generally refer to the contemporary variant of classical liberalism (i.e. the melding of business interests with policy) as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism, which emerged as the dominant political-economic doctrine in the 1970s, directs the state to implement policies that privatize all publicly run institutions and deregulate economic transactions to ensure the private accumulation of profit (Brown, 2006).1 Succinctly stated, neoliberalism encourages governments to intervene in the economy in ways that guarantee, by force if necessary, the transfer of income from the public sector and the working class to the wealthy (Harvey, 2007: 2). To secure the public’s consent for the neoliberal project, most politicians spin the false notion that economic growth resulting from these practices will significantly increase citizens’ living standards (see Chang, 2008; Harvey, 2006). The saturation of political culture and the social world with market thinking encourages politicians and the public to accept and experience neoliberal ways of thinking and behaving (e.g. individualism, personal responsibility, private property rights, etc.) as normative (Brown, 2006: 695). In addition to conditioning the public to accept the hegemonic neoliberal order, neoliberal politicians seek to further commercial interests through the privatization of public assets, corporate deregulation, and dismantling social programs. Neoliberal politicians see public assets (e.g. transportation, health care, education, social security, military support operations, etc.) as potential profit-making venues that need to be privatized to ensure their efficient operation. However, rather than increasing organizational effectiveness, privatization and deregulation actually reduce competition and cause inefficiency by consolidating corporate power. As this New York Times editorial points out: Consolidation is sold by corporate gurus as rich in synergy and efficiencies that eventually trickle down to consumers. But the supposed consumer benefits are often unconvincing. Pennzoil’s acquisition of Quaker State led to more expensive motor oil, Procter & Gamble’s purchase of Tambrands led to more expensive tampons, and General Mills’ purchase of the Chex brands led to more expensive cereal, according to one study. Despite limits imposed by antitrust regulators, the merger between Guinness and Grand Metropolitan to create the food and drink giant Diageo led to substantial increases in the price of Scotch. (Editorial, 2010)


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Because only a few companies, and in some cases a single business, control the production and distribution of services, the public experiences higher prices, less choice, and more ineffectiveness and inefficiency. For example, Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root, the sole source for most of the supplies needed by the US Army in Iraq, billed the US government $45 for soda by the case and charged it again when served by the glass with troops’ meals (Carlson, 2006). Although the veracity of neoliberal politicians’ contention that the private sector is more effective and efficient at delivering public services than the state is questionable, these politicians work vigorously to persuade the public that state services facilitated through private firms are more economical and American. If the public is averse to privatizing state services and institutions, neoliberal politicians push for public–private partnerships. Through the public–private neoliberal rubric, politicians ensure privatization processes proscribe public institutions and services to some extent (Harvey, 2006). For instance, Obama’s education policy rhetoric spins the public–private partnership in education as a means to ensure children receive a well-rounded education, but as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2009) explained, the only curricula that count are those ensuring the ‘social and economic vitality’ of the United States and its cities. The ‘social vitality’ to which Duncan refers is not the kind that advances democratic impulses and critical thinking but rather the sort that persuades people to accept and use market logic to organize their lives and interactions. For example, Obama’s charter school privatization scheme (i.e. Race to the Top) promotes the creation of an education ‘market’ whereby parents and students are conditioned to think of themselves as educational service consumers/customers (Giroux and Saltman, 2009: 776). To further encourage public support for the free market model of education, Obama and Duncan advance the false notion that privately run charter schools produce better educational outcomes with less money. Charter schools are actually more expensive to operate and student performance does not differ significantly from those attending public school (see Gonzalez, 2010; Grannan, 2010). Charter school operational costs are higher because banks and private equity firms receive a 39 percent tax credit from the federal government when lending money to nonprofits to build charter schools. Since the loan money is a tax credit, investors collect interests on the loans while receiving the 39 percent tax credit (Gonzalez, 2010). In essence, the charter school scheme is a means for the government to transfer public funds to private financial firms. Since neoliberal politicians, like their classical liberal predecessors, view attempts by government to regulate the market in the public’s interest as an impediment to private accumulation of profit, they promote policies limiting state intervention in the economy. However, as the 2008 financial system crisis demonstrates, there is an inherent instability in private investment activity that generates mass unemployment and recession if left unregulated. Despite these risks, politicians push to increase commercial institutions’ influence over the economy and promote policies guaranteeing their integrity and solvency at the public’s expense (Harvey, 2006: 26). President George W. Bush took this approach during the financial crisis when, with the help of then President-Elect Barack Obama, he pressured Congress to approve what he publicly claimed was a $700 billion public bailout for investment and commercial banks, which in actuality turned out to be a $13 trillion aid package (including all federal loans, capital injections, and government loan guarantees) (Prins, 2009: 5, 13–14). This aid essentially rewarded banks for making risky financial decisions that severely depressed the domestic and global economy.

Unelected Dictatorship of Money It is well established in social science literature (see Domhoff, 2009; Ferguson, 1995; Greider, 1993; Herman, 1981; Lewis, 1999; Street, 2008) that ‘an unelected dictatorship of money’ (e.g.


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neoliberal political party leaders, wealthy campaign donors, and corporate lobbyists) usually vets candidates for political office for their viability as advocates. Or politicians petition these leaders for their support (Herman and Peterson, 2009; Shoup, 2008). Obama pursued the latter when seeking the support of Chicago’s African-American petit-bourgeois financiers like Princeton graduate John Rogers (chief executive officer of investment firm Ariel Capital Management), James Reynolds Jr (co-founder of Loop Capital Markets), and Martin Nesbitt (a successful businessman and friend) in the early 1990s in anticipation of a future run for elected office (Lizza, 2008; Street, 2008). After solidifying the African-American petit-bourgeois support, Obama used his directorship at Project Vote, a voter-registration drive organization, to establish supportive links with Chicago’s African-American political leadership and liberal European American fundraisers like Bettylu Saltzman, a prominent political action committee (PAC) board member of J Street and daughter of Philip M. Kultznick, former United States Commerce Secretary (Lizza, 2008; Street, 2008). At Project Vote, Obama befriended and sought the guidance of David Axelrod, a former Chicago Tribune reporter turned political consultant whose political credentials included engineering the 1987 re-election of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and serving as former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s political advisor. Through Obama’s relationship with Axelrod and other Daley associates, he gained access to the mayor’s political donors’ list, an indispensable source of funding for his political campaigns, especially during his run for the United States Senate (Eisenberg, 2008). Through these and other social networks, such as his summer associate job at the prestigious corporate law firm Sidley and Austin and employment at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a prominent civil rights law firm led by former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington’s counsel, Judson Miner, Obama gained access to the moneyed elite’s organizational resources and funding network (Lizza, 2008). When Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate, his funding network, which included PACs, financial services firms, real estate developers, health care providers, oil companies, and many other business interests, provided him with $296,000 of the $461,000 he raised for his campaign from 1996–2004 (Helman, 2007). After his election to the State Senate, Obama showed his gratitude to donors by advocating for their interests in Springfield. For example, after his appointment to the State Senate Select Committee on Public Pension Investments, Obama helped convince his colleagues to recommend ways to direct more state pension funds to African-American owned financial firms, including two companies that contributed a combined $16,000 to Obama campaign coffers during his three-month tenure on the panel (Jackson and McCormick, 2007). This all suggests that early on in his political career, Obama understood, as power structure theory contends, that his policies must reflect the structure of power if he wanted to remain in politics. As discussed earlier, the moneyed establishment is unlikely to extend its support to political candidates without making certain they align with its interests. The ‘unelected dictatorship of money’s’ vetting process started for Obama during his run for state Senate and intensified after he came to the attention of long-time national Democratic Party powerbroker Vernon Jordan during Obama’s campaign for the Democratic Party’s United States Senate nomination for Illinois in 2003 (Silverstein, 2006). Jordan set up a meet-and-greet for Obama at his home to introduce Obama to members of the national ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ like Gregory Craig, then an attorney with Williams & Connolly and a long-time Democratic figure, Mike Williams, Vice President of Legislative Affairs at the Market Association, and other top lobbyists and Democratic Party leaders who, like Jordan, became enamored with his senatorial candidacy (Silverstein, 2006). After their conversations with Obama, Craig and Williams provided journalist Ken Silverstein with their assessments of him in an article published in Harper’s Magazine. Craig stressed how impressed he was with the way Obama took controversial positions without making people angry (Silverstein,


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2006: 36). Williams, who knew beforehand that Obama was the lead sponsor of a predatory lending bill the State Senate approved, informed Obama that his company represented predatory lending firms to determine, as Williams stated, whether Obama: had a different position than ours. There’s a perception out there that the Democrats are anti-business, and I talked to him about that directly. I said, there’s a perception that you’re coming at this from the angle of consumers. He was forthright which I appreciated. He said, ‘I tried to broker the best deal I could’. (Silverstein, 2006: 36)

Obama’s conversation with Williams indicates he possessed an advanced and cultivated taste for incremental change, compromise, and accommodation to power (Street, 2008: 56). Given Obama’s approach, Williams was convinced that Obama was a centrist whom he ‘could work with’ because as Williams explained: [Obama is] not a political novice and he’s smart enough not to say [differences are] cast in stone, [so] you can have a conversation with him. He’s a straight shooter. As a lobbyist, that’s something you value. You don’t need a yes every time but you want to be able to count the votes. (Silverstein, 2006: 36)

Certainly, before ‘auditioning’ at Jordan’s house, Obama realized he had to impress upon members of the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ that he would honor their interests once elected. Since the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ makes it politically impossible for officeholders to either significantly alter or maintain the direction of society without its consent, Obama began stepping back from ideas and positions challenging the moneyed elite’s interest (see Becker and Drew, 2008; Herman, 2007; Street, 2008). Rashidi Khalidi, a Middle East Scholar at the University of Chicago, insisted even before Obama began his political ascent that it was difficult to ascertain his precise position on an issue. After listening to and conversing with Obama about living conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories, Khalidi said ‘you may come away thinking, wow, he agrees with me, but later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure’ (Becker and Drew, 2008). Another activist, Carl Davidson, an anti-war protest leader who helped organize the 2002 Chicago rally where Obama delivered an ambiguous ‘anti-Iraq war’ speech, also noticed that after the gathering and after the 2003 Iraq invasion, Obama dropped his nebulous stance on the war for a more precise hawkish one. ‘After Obama visited Iraq when the war was on’, Davidson claimed he turned. Now he set aside whether it was right or wrong to invade, now we had to find the ‘smart’ path to victory, not Bush’s ‘dumb’ path …. In dealing with Iran, we had to leave on the table bombing their nuclear sites. For this, a lot of local antiwar activists started calling him “Barack O’bomb ‘em” …. He wasn’t listening much to us anymore, but to the folks much higher up in the [Democratic Leadership Council] (DLC) orbit. He had bigger plans. (Turl, 2007: 5)

Obama’s overt support for the war is corroborated in a statement he gave to the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2004 regarding how best to stabilize Iraq. He reportedly said, ‘There is not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.’ The article explained that though Obama ‘opposed the Iraq invasion before the war … he now believes U.S. forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation – a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration’ (Kass, 2004: 2). This suggests Obama’s position on the Iraq War did indeed shift from calling for an immediate


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withdrawal of troops to supporting a prolonged phased withdrawal that extended rather than ended the war. Verbal nuances of this sort, together with Obama’s pragmatic incremental approach, assured the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ that despite his stirring popular rhetoric, Obama would honor their interests as he did during his sponsorship of the 2003 Health Care Justice Act in the State Senate. While Obama publicly advocated for the universal health care bill, he privately met with insurers and their lobbyists who ‘found a sympathetic ear in Obama, who … watered down the legislation to their liking partly because of concerns they raised with him and his aides’ (Helman, 2007). In this way, Obama perfected his skill at fashioning his advocacy of popular interests in policy terms that were acceptable to the economic elite, thereby reinforcing their mutual political relationship. After demonstrating his allegiance to the moneyed elite and winning the election, Obama acknowledged to a Harper’s Magazine journalist that working within neoliberal strictures is necessary to be a viable politician. He said: Since the founding, American political tradition has been reformist, not revolutionary. What that means is that for a political leader to get things done, he or she ideally should be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead. I want to push the envelope but make sure I have enough folks with me that I’m not rendered politically impotent. (Silverstein, 2006: 33)

Except for their votes, the folks Obama needs are not ordinary people, but wealthy campaign contributors who require his political agenda promote their interests. Obama willingly complies with this demand since wealthy neoliberalists (e.g. individuals, law firms, corporations, lobbyists, etc.) are core campaign supporters (Chomsky, 2010; Street, 2008: 57). Though Obama unequivocally asserted during his presidential run that his campaign was free of PACs and lobbyist money, he was being disingenuous. Obama’s close ties with registered federal lobbyists and lobbying firms helped his campaign collect $58.9 million through the first six months of 2007 (Helman, 2007; Street, 2008: 14, 18–19). Moreover, during this period, Obama’s campaign used the contact networks of law and consultancy firms headed by lobbyists to expand his fundraising base (Street, 2008: 19). Obama’s use of devious phraseology like registered federal lobbyist obscured the fact that most of his campaign funding came from members of lobbying networks who were not legally regarded as lobbyists within the defense, health care, legal, and banking industries. An analysis of contributions to the Obama campaign by the Center for Responsive Politics (2008), a nonprofit, non-partisan group that tracks money in politics, reveals he received during the 2008 cycle $20 million alone from the health care industry. This figure is nearly three times the amount his presidential rival John McCain received from that industry (Jacobson, 2010). Moreover, the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) revealed in a late November 2008 study that Obama’s contributions from wealthy interests dwarfed small donations in the supposedly grassroots donor-driven campaign. While the Obama campaign reported that more than 50% of total contributions came from small donors, CFI discovered that only 26% of donations to the campaign were less than $200 (Malbin, 2008). As Los Angeles Times editorial board member Andrew Malcolm noted, the discrepancy in the numbers are a product of how the Obama campaign chose to define ‘small donors’: Someone who donated to the Obama campaign by scraping together $199, period. Or someone who donated $199 to the Obama campaign several times, perhaps totaling close to the legal limit at the time of $4,600 for the primary and general election …. The [CFI] reported numbers show that Obama actually received 80% more money from large donors (those giving $1000 or more total) than from small


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donors …. [T]he institute estimates Obama received $119 million from genuine small donors, an impressive sum, to be sure. But not as impressive as the $210 million he’d raised by then from bundlers and large donors. (Malcolm, 2008)

In essence, most of Obama’s campaign contributions came from the financial sector (Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, UBS AG, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase), law firms (Sidley Austin LLP, Wilmerhale LLP, Skadden, Arps et al., Latham &Watkins) and big corporations (General Electric, Google, Microsoft Corp., Time Warner, National Amusement Inc., IBM) who extended their support to acquire some leverage in shaping his policies towards their industries (Kuttner, 2010: 15; Street, 2008: 21). ‘Corporate donors’, as one Washington lobbyist put it ‘would not have backed Obama campaigns for the Senate or presidency if they didn’t see him as a team player’ [emphasis added] (Silverstein, 2006: 40). The fact that Obama alters his rhetoric and policies to support wealthy interests was recently evident following his statement of support for popular anger regarding greedy bankers. He told CBS 60 Minutes in a December 2009 interview, ‘I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street’ (Chomsky, 2010). Shortly after this rhetorical rant, Obama promoted policy changes that the financial industry did not like (e.g. the Volcker Rule – prohibiting banks from trading with their own capital and running hedge funds) and backed the formation of an independent regulatory agency to protect consumers. Because Obama’s corporate campaign funds were meant for him to enact policies in the financial industry’s interests, not the public’s, the industry responded by instructing him to fall back in line or risk withdrawal of their financial support from his future presidential campaign and the Democratic Party (Chomsky, 2010). Specifically, Kelly S. King, a board member of the lobbying group Financial Services Roundtable, told the New York Times in early February: ‘If the president doesn’t become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose’ the support of Wall Street (Kirkpatrick, 2010). Shortly after receiving this public rebuke, Obama toned down his anti-Wall Street rhetoric in an interview with Bloomberg News in which he remarked that bankers are fine ‘guys’, singling out the chairmen of the two biggest banks, JP Morgan Chase and Gold Sachs: ‘I like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people’s success or wealth. That’s part of the free-market system’ (Goldman and Katz, 2010). After adjusting his tone, Obama returned to advocating ‘reform’ in watered-down terms that were acceptable to Wall Street. For example, although Obama convinced former Connecticut Senator Dodd, whose top ten campaign contributors since 2005 include Citigroup, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and now defunct Bear Stearns, to incorporate the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) within his financial reform legislation, the agency was constructed not as the strong and independent institution Obama claimed he wanted (Moyers and Winship, 2010; Prins, 2009: 29). Rather, the CFPA is housed in the creditor responsive Federal Reserve and its regulatory rules are subject to veto by other creditor friendly bank regulators. Consequently, what matters is not the fact of reform itself, but the content of the reform Obama implements (Weissman, 2010). Given these types of political shenanigans, Wolin (2008: 201) contends Obama’s and the Democratic Party’s politics ‘might be[st be] described as an inauthentic opposition in the era of Superpower’ given that the rules of politics ‘dictate that a party exists to win elections rather than promote a vision of the good society’. With this and the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’s’ influence in mind, let’s further consider how the moneyed elite’s power influenced the formation of Obama’s administration.


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Neoliberal–Appointee Nexus The undue influence of the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ via campaign funding and their policy planning organizations (i.e. Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, think tanks, etc.), in conjunction with Obama’s pragmatic capitulation to neoliberalism, inclines him to seek and accept the governing advice, support, and services of the moneyed elites’ defenders within policy planning networks (Lizza, 2008). Given this, Obama at the start of his tenure as United States Senator appointed Karen Kornbluh2 to the staff post of policy director. Kornbluh was a moneyed elite defender from the New America Foundation, staunch advocate for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other free trade policies, and former Deputy Chief of Staff for Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin under President Clinton (Silverstein, 2006: 33). Moreover, Obama publicly proclaimed in an April 2006 speech at a neoliberal think tank that he is a free trade believer who will maintain strong ties with the organization and seek out its members’ economic advice. The speech marked the opening of Rubin’s and former Treasury Deputy and Roger C. Alterman’s Goldman Sachs-funded Hamilton Project. You have [The Hamilton Project] already drawn some of the brightest minds from academia and policy circles, many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, people ranging from Robert Gordon to Austan Goolsbee; Jon Gruber; my dear friend, Jim Wallis here …. So I know that there are going to be wonderful ideas generated as a consequence of this project. Not every idea will I embrace, I hope that one of the roles that I can play, as a participant in the process, is to not only encourage the work but occasionally challenge it. I will give one example. I think that if you polled many of the people in this room, most of us are strong free traders and most of us believe in the market [emphasis added]. Bob [Rubin] and I have had a running debate now for about a year about how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalizing (i.e. neoliberal) economy. There has been a tendency in the past for us to say, well, look, we have got to grow the pie, and we will retrain those who need retraining. But, in fact, we have never taken that side of the equation as seriously as we need to take it. (Obama, 2006)

What is particularly revealing about Obama’s neoliberal declaration is that he asserted it shortly after Roger Altman, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Robert Rubin, then Chairman of Citigroup, vice-chairperson of the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission insider, made it clear during the Hamilton Project’s inaugural press conference that their think tank will work to thwart ordinary people’s demands for the government to regulate the economy in their interest (Sirota, 2006). This Hamilton Project objective is not surprising, given that policy planning network members within the DLC created the institute and the fact that: it was Rubin during the debate over the Central American Free Trade Agreement who demanded that congressional Democrats back off their efforts to include labor, human rights and environmental protections in the pact. He and his pals are the same people who rammed trade deals like NAFTA, WTO and China PNTR down the throats of Americans, and then left government for the high life of the corporate boardroom. There, they reaped the rich financial rewards of the very sell-out policies they used public office to push, while millions of Americans saw their jobs outsourced, their wages frozen and their benefits slashed. (Sirota, 2006)

Obama’s neoliberal beliefs are also evident in this relationship with one Hamilton Project member and Chicago School of Economics intellectual, Austan Goolsbee,3 a former DLC’s Progressive Policy Institute fellow. During the 2004 run for the US Senate, Obama asked Goolsbee for a cost assessment of Republican Alan Keyes’s call for a tax holiday for descendants of former slaves for


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two generations. Goolsbee’s analysis estimated Keyes’s tax holiday would cost between $7 trillion and $9 trillion (McTague, 2008). Before Goolsbee’s study became public, Keyes dropped his proposal. After this matter, Goolsbee and Obama quickly became friends because as Goolsbee put it, ‘he and I saw eye-to-eye on economic stuff’ (Uchitelle, 2007). Goolsbee and Obama are both neoliberals who conceal their zeal and ideology for free markets lacking government oversight behind data-based empirical economics. James Heckman, a University of Chicago Nobel laureate in economics, who developed the Obama campaign’s education plan at the request of his colleague Austan Goolsbee, has said Obama and Goolsbee are ‘extremely interested in facts. There seemed to be, with the people I dealt with, less of an ideological bias and more of empirical one’ (Lahart, 2008: A5). Obama’s association with Chicago School behavioral economists like Goolsbee, Heckman, and Richard Thaler, who argue that since people often do not make rational market decisions, it is best to make sense of their economic activity via information, sits well with his effort to legitimize his neoliberal policies with the authority of objective facts. In addition, Obama’s and Goolsbee’s empirical economic bent enables them to portray their minimalist policy solutions as significant change. Hints of their approach were evident during the presidential campaign when Obama and his then Chief Economic Advisor, Goolsbee, unveiled a tepid proposal for addressing the subprime mortgage crisis. That proposal rejected government involvement using supposed empirical facts and neoliberal rhetoric about fiscal and personal responsibility. For instance, rather than call for government intervention in the mortgage crisis, Goolsbee (2007), in a March 2007 New York Times column, disputed whether ‘subprime lending was the leading cause of foreclosure problems’, by touting its empirical benefits for credit-poor African and Latino American borrowers and warned that ‘regulators should be mindful of the potential downside in tightening [the mortgage market] too much’.4 Goolsbee’s suggestion for addressing the mortgage crisis – tax credits and deregulation – reflected his and Obama’s free market view of the world. When reporters asked if the Obama campaign would hold financial institutions accountable for losses incurred by homeowners and investors, the campaign refused to comment (Fraser, 2008). The campaign’s non-response signaled to Obama’s corporate patrons that their interests factored heavily in how he will construct policy. Wall Street welcomed Obama’s inaction with an infusion of $10 million in campaign contributions from its finance, insurance, and real estate sectors during the third quarter of 2007. Goldman Sachs, which made $6 billion from devalued mortgage securities in the first nine months of 2007, was Obama’s top contributor (Fraser, 2008). Goldman made billions selling mortgage-backed securities and other complex financial instruments they knew were faulty. Goldman purchased insurance with the American International Group (AIG) betting its economically unstable mortgage offerings would fail. When the economy collapsed due to the instability spawned by faulty mortgage-backed securities and AIG’s impending failure, Goldman’s alumnus and Council on Foreign Relations member United States Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson ‘parlayed a bailout [not only] for Goldman itself but also arranged for taxpayers to save AIG from bankruptcy’, thereby ensuring Goldman an insurance payout for its negative bet against mortgage back securities (Chomsky, 2010). Though Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission associates and Goldman Sachs’s alumni Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers were the chief architects of bank deregulation that helped precipitate the financial crisis, Obama, probably in an effort to reassure the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ of his unequivocal allegiance to them, asked Rubin and Summers not to merely serve on, but lead his presidential transition economic advisory board (Kuttner, 2010: 4, 8–9).5 During his tenure as Treasury Secretary, Rubin successfully repealed the Glass-Steagall law, which prohibited commercial banks from using their capital to make high-risk bets on whether


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volatile unregulated financial mechanisms, such as sub-prime mortgages, will make or lose money. After Rubin left his position as Secretary of Treasury, his handpicked replacement, Summers, presided over legislation barring federal regulations of complex financial instruments, better known as derivatives, which hastened the financial tailspin. As economist Dean Baker observed, Obama’s appointment of Rubin and Summers to his transition economic advisory board to formulate a plan for alleviating the financial crisis they themselves created is ‘a bit like turning to Osama Bin Laden for aid in the war on terrorism’ (Chomsky, 2009). Despite the fact that the financial crisis shattered their reputation as economic geniuses, Rubin and Summers – who became Director of Obama’s National Economic Council – are still highly influential in shaping the Obama administration’s economic policies. According to Politico, an online political news site, Rubin occupies no official position within the administration, but wields enormous influence behind the scenes. He talks regularly with a legion of former Goldman Sachs and Council on Foreign Relations protégés who dominate the ranks of the Obama administration’s policy teams (Javers, 2010). Rubin speaks frequently to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who once worked for him at the Treasury and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Geithner spoke or met with Rubin at least four times in the first six months of his tenure as Secretary of the Treasury (Javers, 2010). Three of those chats, including an hour-long session in Rubin’s New York office, occurred before President Obama released his financial regulatory ‘reform’ proposal in 2009 (Javers, 2010). The legislation that became law reflects Rubin’s influence in that it requires nearly all users of unregulated derivative contracts – factors in precipitating the housing and financial collapse – to trade on centralized regulated public exchanges that are far more stable and less dangerous to the economy, while letting the financial industry keep ‘nonstandard’ trades hidden from public scrutiny (Javers, 2010). Moreover, the law does not reduce the size of mega banks (e.g. Goldman, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells-Fargo, and Citigroup) that exert incredible economic power through their concentrated ownership. In essence, the financial regulatory reform law is designed to regulate the banking industry without actually changing the way the financial industry conducts business.6 The law reflects Obama’s and his appointees’ deference to wealthy interests and is why Geithner told New York Magazine’s John Heilemann: ‘[He] makes no secret of his ideological disposition when it comes to reform. I care about us passing something good and strong …. And my feeling is that you have to do this from the center’ (Heilemann, 2010). What this meant in practice is that Geithner’s team spent much of its time helping Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by more progressive Democrats who sought to alter the economic direction of the nation in the public’s favor. As geographer David Harvey asserts, this suggests ‘what [the Obama team is] trying to do is to reinvent the same system’, to ‘reconstitute the same sort of capitalism we have had over and over again over the last thirty years in a slightly more regulated, benevolent form’ that does not ‘challenge the fundamentals’ (Democracy Now, 2009). Rubin’s surreptitious influence within the Obama administration goes far beyond Geithner and Summers to include other Council on Foreign Relations and Goldman Sachs protégés like Geithner’s former counselor Gene Sperling, former Budget Director Peter Orszag,7 International Economic Affairs advisor Michael Forman,8 National Economic Council official Jason Furman,9 National Security advisor Thomas Donilon, and Gary Gensler,10 head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Javers, 2010; Kuttner, 2010: 4; also see Prins, 2009: 37–38). Their mentor (via economic elite think-tanks and organizations) and friend Robert Rubin has heavily shaped these officials’ policy thinking and that of others within the administration. Another notable defender of the wealthy few and member of their policy networks and organizations serving or offering advice to the Obama administration is Paul Volcker. Volcker is the former Federal Reserve Bank head, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and chairperson


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of the Trilateral Commission. He worked within Obama’s Economic Recovery advisory committee and is author of the previously mentioned Volcker rule for big banks’ transactions. Vice-President Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his 2011 replacement Leon Panetta, Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, and United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice are all members of the Council on Foreign Relations who exert undue influence in shaping Obama’s foreign and domestic policies to secure the interests of the moneyed elite. In addition, Trilateral Commission member General James L. Jones served as Obama’s National Security Advisor until he resigned in 2010. His replacement, Thomas Donilon, a central member of the Council on Foreign Relations, now works to create security policies to protect wealthy interest (Council on Foreign Relations, 2011). This list of administration officials suggests, as power structure theory argues, that economic elite policy planning organizations dominate government through linkages among their members serving in the Obama administration. Shortly before constituting his transition economic advisory board, President-Elect Obama selected free trade advocate Representative Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff. This appointment was widely praised by conservative Republicans like US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who reportedly said, Rahm Emanuel is ‘a wise choice’ for chief of staff (Scahill, 2008). While serving as President Clinton’s senior advisor, Emanuel played a central role in getting NAFTA approved in 1993. For his effort Clinton appointed Emanuel to the board of mortgage giant Freddie Mac in 2000. As a new director, Emanuel qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 stipend (Secter and Zajac, 2009). The Chicago Tribune reported that during Emanuel’s tenure, executives briefed the board about their plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outside profits it was reaping from risky investments (Secter and Zajac, 2009). These risky investments eventually fueled the financial crisis, taking Freddie Mac to the brink of insolvency until the Bush administration seized control and injected $100 billion in new capital to keep it afloat (Secter and Zajac, 2009). After Emanuel’s departure from the Board of Directors in 2001, he successfully ran for a congressional seat in Illinois with financial services companies as his top campaign contributors. While serving in the Congress, he was a staunch supporter of the financial service industry and spearheaded passage of the Trouble Assets Relief Program for his wealthy benefactors. Emanuel, like Obama, is a political pragmatist who believes that the American people prefer governing from the center and that Democrats are obligated ‘to work in bipartisan fashion’ to achieve political goals (Haygood, 2006). Days before Obama selected him as chief of staff, Emanuel, who was presumably speaking on behalf of the President-Elect, stated in an interview that Obama’s election suggests the country is incredibly pragmatic and in accord with New Democrat ideas:11 I don’t think the country [read: wealthy] is yearning for an ideological answer. If anything it’s the opposite. They want real solutions to real problems. And if we [Democrats] do an ideology test, we will fail. Our challenge is to work to solve problems that the country is facing…. (Riley, 2008)12

Emanuel’s point is that the Obama administration will resist pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party to implement policies in the interests of their constituents. In Emanuel’s words, ‘Barack Obama [will] stand up to them’, because ideological extremism (i.e. pushing for ordinary people’s interests) is counterproductive to ‘getting things done’ (Riley, 2008). The only way to implement a ‘progressive’ policy agenda, according to Emanuel, is to appease wealthy interests. Obama’s appeasement strategy was evident among key appointments within his administration, as we have seen, and continued with the selection of former United States Senator Ken Salazar as


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Secretary of the Department of Interior (DOI). Salazar’s campaign funding record reveals his direct ties to the energy corporations, particularly the oil and coal sector. Since initiating his political career in 1989, Salazar’s campaigns relied upon two benefactors – the law firms Sherman & Howard and Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber and Schreck (BHFS), both representatives of energy companies like the Westmoreland Coal Company, which operates mines in North Dakota, Montana, and Texas, and coal-fired power plants in North Carolina. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (2010), Sherman & Howard and BHFS over the course of Salazar’s political career contributed $140,000 to his political campaigns, a figure that is more than double that of the next largest donor, Moveon. org, which gave $58,000 during his political tenure (Wharton, 2010). Given Salazar’s friendly relationship with the energy sector, he established a record of fighting against federal action on climate change and better fuel efficiency, and for increased oil and drilling (Wharton, 2010). Therefore it was not a surprise that Salazar used his confirmation testimony for Secretary of DOI to advocate for ‘clean coal’, which he called a new innovative energy source, to secure coal companies’ interests (Wharton, 2010). Oil companies also used their friendly relationship with Salazar and their lobbying money to encourage him and Obama to support a new policy calling for opening up of deep ocean terrain for exploration. As I will discuss later, Obama claimed deep water oil drilling is environmentally safe. This kind of rhetorical sleight of hand is used continuously by the Obama administration and intimates Obama was disingenuous when he asserted in his 2008 Democratic National Convention nomination acceptance speech: The greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result. You [the people] have shown what history teaches – that in a defining moment like this one, the change we need doesn’t come from Washington. Change comes to Washington. Change happens because people demand it – because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time. (Obama, 2008)

The tens of millions who voted for Obama imagined he would bring about policy changes in their interest by appointing to administrative posts Washington, DC outsiders with new ideas. However, their hope for change faded when Obama filled important cabinet and staff posts with insiders and technocrats from policy planning networks who believe the political and economic system is not in need of overhauling or downsizing, but merely fine-tuning to work more efficiently and effectively for ‘the unelected dictatorship of money’ (Heilemann, 2010).

The Union between Neoliberalism and Policy Obama’s legislative record in the US Senate, as alluded to earlier, suggests he is not a social justice populist but rather a neoliberal promoter and accommodator to the rich and powerful (Olson, 2009). Columnist Chris Hedges’s examination of Obama’s brief Senate legislative record disclosed: He was happy to promote nuclear power as ‘green’ energy. He voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He [did] not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He opposed a bill … reform[ing] the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676, sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And he backed a class-action ‘reform’ bill that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act … effectively [shifted] most class-action lawsuits, [including civil rights, worker protection, product liability, and consumer fraud


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cases, from state courts to federal courts thereby denying] redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporate challenges. (Hedges, 2009)13

Obama’s mollifying approach towards the powerful is apparent in an energy policy that represents oil, coal, and nuclear energy as ‘safe, clean’ green energy sources. For instance, during his 2010 State of the Union address, Obama cited reliable technological safeguards in the extraction of oil from the deep ocean floor as the foundation for a ‘new’ comprehensive clean energy and climate policy despite the fact that a government consultant warned in 2003 that these technologies were unreliable (McKinley and Kaufman, 2010). Their unreliability was apparent almost two months after Obama lifted the ban on expanding offshore oil drilling. The Gulf of Mexico oil rig Deepwater Horizon, leased by British Petroleum (BP), caught fire and exploded, despite being equipped with a supposedly foolproof blowout preventer that failed to shut off the oil flowing up through the well riser pipe that connected the Deepwater Horizon rig to the wellhead.14 The accident definitively discredited the notion that harvesting coal, nuclear energy, and oil represents a step forward in the fight against pollution and climate change. Nonetheless, Obama’s administration persists in construing coal, oil, and nuclear fuel as ‘green’ energies. In fact, shortly after the oil rig explosion, Interior Secretary Salazar declared that his office and the Mineral Management Service would not put a permanent stop to all new oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico (Urbina, 2010). It is difficult to understand the Obama administration’s inability to cease deep ocean oil drilling without noting his dependence on advice from industry defenders like Salazar and campaign donation from energy industry employees and political action committees (Hari, 2009; Street, 2008: 18–19).15 For instance, during his time in the Senate and while running for president, Obama received a total of $77,051 from BP and is the top recipient of BP PAC and individual money over the past 20 years (Lovley, 2010). This suggests that Obama’s financial dependence on the energy industry inclined him to rescind the ban on expanding offshore oil drilling and award billions in federal loan guarantees (i.e. the government – the guarantor – assumes the debt obligation of a borrower if the borrower defaults) for a fictitious ‘effort’ to create ‘safe, clean nuclear power plants’ and coal (Cappiello, 2010).16 In short, Obama publicly embraces a ‘green’ energy policy designed to increase reliance on dirty fossil and nuclear fuels produced by his energy benefactors. The fact that Obama has not put forth policies conclusively breaking with commercial interests denotes that a corporatized political system and culture, not ‘partisan politics’, obstructs passage of legislation on behalf of ordinary people. This bitter reality led the New York Times, in an editorial entitled ‘As the Foreclosures Surge …’ to express its frustration, in this instance, with Obama’s failure to act when ‘12 Senate Democrats joined 39 Republicans to block a vote on an amendment that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify troubled mortgages’. As the editorial explained: Senator Obama campaigned on the provision. And President Obama made its passage part of his antiforeclosure plan. It would have been a very useful prod to get lenders to rework bad loans rather than leaving the modification to a judge. But when time came to stand up to the banking lobbies and cajole yes votes from reluctant senators – the White House didn’t. When the measure failed, there wasn’t even a statement of regret. (New York Times, 2009)

Obama’s domestic policies, particularly the examples explored in this article, reveal his penchant for currying favor with the moneyed elite and willingness to place their interests before the public good. This fits perfectly with Obama’s corporate-friendly and pragmatic outlook, which has guided his policy positions throughout his entire political career (also see MacFarquhar, 2007). In this way, as power structure theory and its variants predict, Obama accepts neoliberalism as his


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own and works to employ the characteristics and practices needed to create and sustain free-market policies. In other words, Obama’s policy proclivities are a reflection of the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’s’ sociopolitical and economic hegemony that he accepts as normative and determinate of everyday reality. Therefore, Obama’s vague rhetoric regarding political and economic ‘reform’ is a pure fantasy. There is no change, but rather more of the same: a political system dominated by wealthy interests.

Conclusion Though Obama presents himself as a ‘different kind of politician’, my analysis of his politics using power structure theory and its variants suggest otherwise. Since the US political process makes it virtually impossible to mount a credible and competitive campaign without petitioning the corporate and super rich for financial support, Obama has configured his politics to maximize appeal to the moneyed establishment. In other words, the political process as currently structured requires Obama to plead first for the support of the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’, whose backing is predicated on him serving their interests, before asking ordinary Americans for their votes. As my analysis reveals, the ‘unelected dictatorship of money’s’ support for Obama came only after its members carefully scrutinized his record, appointments, and politicking in the State and United States Senate. The ‘unelected dictatorship of money’ concluded Obama’s politics posed no threat to their hegemony because his pragmatic belief system equips him with the political approach necessary to style his ‘support’ for public interests in policy terms advantaging them. Obama’s pragmatic way of governing within a political arena dominated by the wealthy few is simply to refashion their neoliberal concerns as public interest. This is readily apparent in Obama’s frequent attempts to shore up public support for neoliberal policies benefiting the corporate rich by presenting them as a means to improve the quality of their lives. Obama’s effort to gain ordinary Americans’ consent for policies against their interests merely represents an adjustment in how neoliberal policies acquire public legitimacy. Given the political system’s narrow private commercial parameters and Obama’s view of himself as the presidential facilitator and protector of private financial interests, ordinary Americans must critically grapple with the fact that change in executive personnel, as power structure theory suggests, merely means the political process (i.e. campaign financing and policy planning networks) ensures White House occupants espouse and promote the same old politics. Taken as a whole, evidence presented in this article suggests there are real, objective limits to what politicians can do within a moneyed elite-managed ‘democratic’ political system, but Obama has yet to test or come up against those limits (Zaretsky, 2010). As the late historian Howard Zinn (2010) noted, ‘though Democratic Presidents are traditionally more reformist … and that is true of Obama. However, Democratic reforms have been limited, cautious. Obama is no exception. [With virtually all his policies Obama] starts out with a compromise, [and ] when you start out with a compromise, you end with a compromise’ that likely advantages wealthy interests. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Obama is not dedicated to reforming the political system. However, one cannot measure his dedication, only his achievements (Younge, 2009). Thus far, the ‘change’ he brings has nothing to do with changing who is really in power, running the country, and benefiting from government policies. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Rachael Barlow, Deborah Levenson, and the Critical Sociology reviewers for their helpful comments.


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Notes 1. For a more detailed discussion regarding the origins of the neoliberal movement, see Noam Chomsky’s (1999) Profit Over People. 2. Kornbluh is currently serving as Obama’s ambassador to the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development. 3. Goolsbee served as Obama’s Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors after Lawrence Summers left the position. 4. Bear in mind it was the credit-poor who banks and Wall Street took advantage of in the first place with their convoluted and vulturistic financial instruments. 5. During the 2008 financial crisis New York Magazine’s John Heilemann (2010) reported that candidate Obama talks frequently with Robert Rubin about managing the meltdown. 6. The law does not include something as simple as a cap on credit card interests. Moreover, it did not discard provisions changing the structure of banking by reinstituting a modified version of the Glass-Steagall Act forcing banks to separate commercial banking from investment banking. For more on financial regulation legislation before it became law see ‘Factsheet: Senate Financial-Regulation Bill’(consulted 6 January, 2011) http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/03/15/factsheet-senate-financial-regulation-bill. 7. Orszag is also a former Director of the Hamilton Project. 8. Forman served as Secretary of Treasury Rubin’s Chief of Staff. 9. Furman is also a former Director of the Hamilton Project. 10. Gensler is a 30-year veteran of Goldman Sachs. 11. Democratic Party politicians use the pseudonym ‘New Democrat’ to identify themselves as neoliberal advocates and moderates on social/cultural issues. 12. Words in the brackets are mine. 13. Words in the brackets are mine. 14. Despite placing a loose cap over the wellhead eight weeks later, the oil from the broken pipe continued to leak into the Gulf Mexico at the rate of some 35,000–60,000 barrels a day. 15. In a February 3, 2008 New York Times article, entitled ‘Nuclear leaks and response tested Obama in Senate’, McIntire (2008) reported that Senator Obama introduced a bill known as the Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2006 after learning Illinois-based Exelon Corporation did not disclose leaks at one of its nuclear plants. While Obama initially fought to advance the bill, pressure from Exelon, a major contributor to his campaigns for US Senate and president, led him to remove language from the legislation mandating nuclear plants ‘shall immediately’ notify federal, state, and local officials of any accidental release of radioactive material exceeding ‘allowable limits for normal operation’. Though these changes helped the bill move through a crucial committee, it never passed. If it had passed it would not have been effective since it made leak disclosure voluntary not mandatory. However, the history of the Nuclear Release bill in the New York Times is significant because it reveals Obama’s ‘pragmatic’ propensity to support corporate interests over the public good, especially when his career is threatened. 16. Obama’s federal loan guarantees of power plants represents a position shift from his senatorial days when he voted against the 2005 energy bill that effectively killed vast loan guarantees for power-plant operators to develop new energy projects. The loan guarantees in this legislation were called ‘one of the worst provisions in this massive legislation’ by Taxpayers for Common Sense and Citizens Against Government Waste, because the public would have not only paid millions of dollars in loan costs but risk losing billions of dollars if the companies defaulted (Silverstein, 2006: 40).

References Adams J (1937 [1787]) A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. Boston, MA: Edmund Freeman. Beard CA (1935 [1913]) An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. Toronto: Collier-Macmillan. Becker J and Drew C (2008) Pragmatic politics, forged on the south side. New York Times, May 11. Available (consulted February 13, 2010) at: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11us/politics/11chicago.html


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