Callinicos on Obama/Empire

There is much to agree with in Alex Callinicos' article on Obama in Socialist Worker this week. He rightly lambasts Obama for his pathetic speech to AIPAC and his weasel words about "the military option" and the Iranian nuclear issue. He correctly claims, following Schlesinger, that the U.S President, for a variety of reasons, wields most of their power in the foreign policy arena. He suggests that Obama may, once President, "water down" his opposition to the Iraq War - so important to his victory over Clinton in the primaries.

However, I must admit that parts of the article left me completely baffled.

First of all, in a strangely weird vein he claims that part of Obama's success is that he offers the U.S ruling class a "better face" for their exploits across the world. Now, I don't know if there capitalists who support Obama because he'll make imperialism more palatable - perhaps there are. But this doesn't explain his popularity or his defeat of Clinton in the primary process. There are not many members of the U.S ruling class voting in the Democratic primary in Wyoming, I'd guess.

Secondly, most of the more venal members of the foreign policy intelligentsia are not rushing to support Obama. Men like Bill Kristol, the egregious Charles Krauthammer and the late Christopher Hitchens have not been desperate to jump aboard. True, there are some members of the liberal foreign policy establishment (Samantha Power, Brzezinski) who have hitched their wagon on to Obama, but this has more to do with his opposition to the war than anything else.

Alex then says Obama's victory was "clinched" by superior fundraising and that this shows how he will be "dominated" by money, just like all the other candidates. It's true that Obama did raise more money than Clinton, although as I said in a previous post, none of it was from so-called "federal lobbyists" and lots of it was from ordinary people making small donations. He powered his campaign by a mixture of donations from "traditional" Democratic sources (liberal sections of the capitalist class, unions) and a healthy stream of small donors, contributing ten or twenty dollars a time.

The question also must be asked: if the idea of a black man as President (or a "black Emperor", as Alex puts it) is so appealing to the U.S ruling class, why is Obama the first? I mean, if having black men running the show is so appealing, why all this resistance to it? Why all the support for McSame? Why all the "questions" about his past? Why is the current President, an appalling Imperialist war criminal positively aching to see America's dominion spread far and wide, so supportive of McCain - a man with whom he shares a volatile past as well as party allegiance?