John Powers,
Have you never heard of something being new within limits? It does seem an obvious concept to me.
Indeed, most of what we know as new, in politics or science or anything, is new within limits. We speak of a new planet around a distant star when in fact there must be billions of them our technology still does not permit us to perceive or measure.
If you don't understand that American politics is about money, you must be extremely naive. Even John McCain had some insight into that when he tried for years to get some meaningful reform (and essentially failed).
A U.S. Senator quite literally spends two-thirds of his or her time on the job soliciting campaign contributions.
A full-blown presidential campaign with all the primaries and festive trimmings can go through a billion dollars.
American politics are about money because that is what America is about.
Nevertheless, within the squalid limits of soliciting money and paying obeisance to major lobbies, sometimes something new happens. Obama is just such a phenomenon.
He won't be able to turn around the United States from its barnacle-encrusted ways, only a very naive person can believe that.
Indeed, George Bush’s legacy is that he has in many ways tied the hands of future reformers.
Just one small example: Bush stupidly abolished the inheritance tax which did not affect small asset holders. Every economic historian knows that the passing on of great economic wealth is no force for good. Often the recipients are far less competent than a fortune’s founder, but even more importantly, it promotes overall the kind of rigid social structure of late 18th century France. Jefferson understood this. We do see America settling into a kind of de facto aristocracy today. Even political offices are now frequently handed down in families.
Trying to undo the harm of this is a very great feat. New taxes are unpopular even if they are good for society.
And then there’s Bush’s whole quasi-police state with the Bill of Rights practically suspended over superstitious nonsense and the bumbling FBI being empowered even to get lists of what you read at the public library.
Many vicious, freedom-hating (for aristocrats like Bush do hate true freedom) measures have been embedded in laws with names like The Patriot Act. Try undoing something with a name like that in country like America where the Congress spends more time historically on flag-burning amendments than on many sensible needs – eg., getting rid of the obsolete, anti-democratic Electoral College.
But here and there, he will offer small changes and new perspectives. And, all over the world, people will stop feeling like puking when the voice of the President is broadcast, the case for the last eight years.
I do think hoping for much more than that is overreaching. The United States is a very conservative society with an outdated 18th century constitution that has many anti-democratic provisions and is close to impossible to change.
If he tried a great deal more, he would be knee-capped by the establishment, the Borgias of Washington. The office of the presidency is, by the way, in domestic affairs quite a weak one, far weaker than a British Prime Minister.
If he or anyone else persisted, well, there is the example of the Kennedy brothers, a reality recognized already by Hillary and others on television with sick jokes.
The Borgias on a global scale, that's America.
