Is Who Becomes the Next President All That Matters?

BERLIN, MAY 14, 2008: I know, I know how this is the most important election in history, and why the next occupant of the White House will not only be answering the red phone at 3 AM, but possibly be saving these not always United States from the decline that even Time Magazine has announced the country is facing.

Yet, as I travel outside the country, I can’t help but feel, or is it fear, that this logic leaves out some rather important considerations.

Like the fact that the US cannot unilaterally impose its will on the world anymore, as our dollar falls and our credibility falls with it. Even a strategy of negotiation, as opposed to confrontation, is not a recipe for success because in a multi-polar world other countries and power blocs, like the Russians, the Chinese, the EU, The Persian Gulf and OPEC have their own interests. They will listen to our proposals, but may reject them if they are at variance with their own needs.

We just don’t have the power to impose our will, even as we still suffer from “the USA is number one” syndrome and think that we can kick ass and take names if anyone stands in our way.

Whoever becomes President may not have the power he or she assumes goes with the office. (In fact, after the fact, in their memoirs, most presidents complain they often felt powerless, besieged by lobbyists, party factions and reticent bureaucrats at every turn. They see themselves constrained by institutional obstacles after every decision.)

In many ways, Mao was right, the occupant of the oval office is a paper tiger.

In this new world, if we want others to do our bidding, we can’t threaten to obliterate them or strut around like Mighty Mouse when so many in the world see us as the Mouse that Roared.

So many of our problems today are global and shared by others. Globalization has assured that. We are all impacted by global threats like climate change, escalating food prices, world hunger, endemic poverty, and pandemic disease that the White House can’t wave a magic wand to cure. Sadly, most Americans are not educated about these issues and the press downplays them.

Even when we cause problems, like the mortgage collapse, markets worldwide feel the pain in an internationally entangled financial system where we are dependent on monies from China. Meanwhile, others invest in the US to keep their own profits up and compete with our companies on our home ground.

Sure, we are a militarily powerful, but apparently not powerful or smart enough to subdue Iraq or Afghanistan after five years. Our warriors on terror have yet to capture Bin Laden or even neutralize the Taliban. The truth is the Democratic candidates don’t think they can tell the military what to do and so have withdrawal plans that will take years. That’s the reality. The military industrial complex often has a mind of its own.

And so does Wall Street, which won’t take marching orders from any President. Both Clinton and Bush turned to Goldman Sachs to run the Treasury and it’s not clear if their former execs were ambassadors to The Street or from the Street. Financial power trumps political power in a country dominated by a corporate system.

Who can impose an excess profits tax on Big Oil? Who will dare?

In fact, look at the credit crisis. It started with the mortgage meltdown of August 2007. At least one million families have lost their homes. Another two and half million are threatened. The New York Times reports that even their storage spaces are now being auctioned off because many folks can’t afford the monthly charges. The ONION jokes that a family burned their stimulus check because they can’t afford heat. Sometimes fiction like this gets to the heart of “faction.”

Times’ Business columnist Gretchen Morgenson notes that in all these months of obvious economic calamity, NOTHING meaningful has been done by our government to help people in need, writing, “as the great American credit crash continues to reverberate, we still have nothing that resembles an intelligent and comprehensive plan for dealing with mass foreclosures and the economic consequences associated with the debacle.”

Why? There is an ideological clash of course. That’s obvious. An Administration that has foreclosed on the American Dream cares as much about our homeowners as it did about the victims of Katrina.

But beyond that, they don’t know what to do; they have no “fix.” There may not be one. We are dealing not with a political debate, but a structural crisis of American capitalism in an era of waning Empire. We can throw money at these problems as we probably should, but they are all intricate and subject to pressure politics. When The Senate run by Democrats tried to bring relief to distressed homeowners, their final bill was shameful with more giveaways to homebuilders and lenders than mortgagees.

So, let’s temper our expectations about what the candidate of our choice can actually get done in a system of many checks but very little balance. The Presidency is a bully pulpit. The President can lead but Congress need not follow. Sure, change is needed, and badly, but the changes being proposed - like a summer time tax break at the pump - won’t do much about the deeper energy crisis. Many of the proposals being debated are tinkering with deeply flawed policies. They aim to bail the water out of the Titanic while it is sinking.

Unfortunately, our scandal obsessed “Gotcha” media is useless in explaining or investigating these deeper problems. It focuses us only on the horse race. Cable news is increasingly a pundit heavy distraction machine, where opinionizing has replaced reporting, and, yes, still a Weapon of Mass Deception, as one film I made years ago argued.

Please think about this, and what’s not being covered. Sorry to rain on the parade as the primaries roll on and the excitement builds like in a sports event.

Who the next President is matters, matters deeply, but is that all that matters?

– News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs for Medachannel.org. He directed In Debt We Trust (indebtwetrust.org) and has finished a book on the financial crisis called PLUNDER. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

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PTP ( Point To Ponder ) PTP 101 ;

A MAGIC PAIRING ??? HILLARY COULD ANNOUNCEHER CHOICE FOR VP AS BILL CLINTON !!!! THIS WOULD ELECTIVFY THE DEMS AND FENCE SITTERS AND SPECIAL DELEGATES. ALSO, THESONG MADE FAMOUS IN THE 90′S CAMPAIGNCOULD BE PARODIED TO ” CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT NOVEMBER, THAT’S WHEN WE’RE GONNA BE THE WINNER !!

GO AHEAD AND READ THE CONSTUTION- IT IS ALL LEGAL. THE CONTEST WOULD THEN BECOME THE THIRD TERM FOR BUSH VS. THE THIRD TERM FOR THE TWO-FER- ONE CLINTON’S.( WITH A FOURTH TERM IN THE OFFING ???) . ANOTHER SONG TO PARODY–WE DID IT BEFORE AND WE CAN DO IT AGAIN

THIS IS SURE FIRE. SOMEBODY GET IT TO HILLARY NOW KEEP IT MOVING.

THE SHADOW ( ONLY HE KNOWS )

The corrupted two-party system and the CIA-controlled MSM have just about killed any chance for the discussions you propose to even be seriously considered.

No reasonable discussion can begin without the economic realities of faulty supply chain management and lost Constitutional liberties brought into the mix.

How else can Americans regain national sovereignty for their country and win back their individual freedoms?

How else will we be able to uncover all the crimes and corruption which brought us to this precarious point?

Why were destructive communitarian laws ever allowed to be introduced into this country in the first place?

I suspect we’ll have to return to genuine voluntary contracts and legislate reforms to undo all the damage done by the Industrial Age as well.

But first must repeal the unconstitutional 16th Amendment and do away with the IRS.
Our currency must be made transparently sound to have intrinsic value again.

It matters little who the next occupant of the white house is.
4 years later we will once again find ourselves at this same crossroad. We want a quick fix for everything. We are so far up the creek without a boat, much less a paddle. There is not going to be a magic pill or wand to get us out of the current messes.
Leaders can only be leaders if they have followers, and we continue to follow so we don’t have to take personal responsibility. Washington needs to become an irrelevant part of our lives. Instead, every 4 years we get all excited about this candidate or that one. We mean well, but we are kidding ourselves with the conviction that this person has the quick fix that we need. And after the always disappointing performance, we start over again. I think it’s comical, but not funny. Washington DC will remain broken beyond repair until we’ve had enough. By all indications, we have not yet had enough and so the game continues. But at some point we may have to explain to our grandchildren how we could have been so complacent, and what could have been resolved with a band-aid years before, will then require major surgery to fix. We know a lot, but we are not smart.