Are Obama and Romney really that different from each other?

Lately, I’ve been pretty critical of the present-day Republicans, who are, in my estimation, not really representative of the true Grand Old Party, of which I was once a member.  But my criticism of them, shouldn’t be interpreted as a blanket approval of Mr. Obama and the Democrats.

First, an erroneous claim; Mr. Obama is a socialist.  If you consider his continuation of Bush’s policies, he’s barely left of center.  He’s as much a corporatist as any president since Eisenhower, who warned us not to trust the military industrial complex.  For those not familiar with the word corporatist, it’s a system of government using the power of organizations such as businesses and labor unions that act, or claim to act, for large numbers of people.  And what do these organizations possess?  Money;  the real grease that lubricates the machinery of American politics.

If Mr. Obama  were really a socialist, healthcare would be a government run, single-payer system for everyone.  In fact, the ACA is a gift to the healthcare insurance industry.  They will enjoy approximately 30 million new customers by fiat.  And also,  they are for-profit corporations.

Then there’s the banking industry that is still using the same strategies and tactics that brought us to the brink in 2008.  If Mr. Obama had really delivered on his “hope and change” promise, he would have taken some effective action to curtail their skullduggery.  Many older American’s lost life savings with no way of ever recovering it.  The banking executives who caused their misery are still earning enormous salaries and bonuses as though nothing happened.  And to this date, not one criminal indictment has been issued.

Ever wonder why?  In the July 11^th, 2012 issue of the New York Times, Economist, Paul Krugman writes about Mr. Romney with regard to his unwillingness to disclose much about his finances, “To the extent that Mr. Romney has a coherent policy agenda, it involves cutting tax rates on the very rich — which are already, as I said, down by about half since his father’s time. Surely a man advocating such policies has a special obligation to level with voters about the extent to which he would personally benefit from the policies he advocates.  Yet obviously that’s something Mr. Romney doesn’t want to do. And unless he does reveal the truth about his investments, we can only assume that he’s hiding something seriously damaging.”

But the more relevant observation was a response to the column by a reader named Joe from Ann Arbor, Michigan, “It is this lack of not knowing the "real" Obama that, perhaps a politically effective strategy, annoys liberals and inspires phobia in conservatives. We see this so clearly here, in the case of Obama not being able to pursue an obvious line of attack because of his own ambivalent relationship with, in the words of FDR, ‘the money powers.”

In effect, money has become so powerful as to obscure the real character of any candidate for the presidency.  So I’m still left with an open question about both Messer’s. Obama and Romney.  If we took money out of the equation and saw the real people behind the façade, what would we see?

I’m afraid we’d see two politicians who are remarkably similar. Two people with fungible ethics.  Two people who can reflect the preferred image of their bases.  Two people who are straining to attract the moderates and independents, while keeping the extremes in their parties satisfied.  Two people who realize that politics is the art of the possible and they need to be in office to play the game.  And finally two people who will say what they need to say to get there.

No politician can get to the top without playing politics.  And politics requires a propensity for rationalizing: that means to attempt to justify behavior normally considered irrational or unacceptable by offering an apparently reasonable explanation.  Sound familiar?    

Robert DeFilippis