Michael Lind: Bad influences ... JFK, Ike and Obama
[Michael Lind is Policy Director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation and is the author of "The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution."]
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, it was clear what the nation needed: a return to robust New Deal-style programs in domestic policy to help Americans with stagnant wages and shrinking benefits, and a reduction of U.S. defense spending and commitments abroad. To put it another way, the times required a synthesis of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier in domestic policy and Dwight Eisenhower’s New Look in foreign policy. Unfortunately, President Obama has provided the exact opposite, combining the domestic policy of Eisenhower with the foreign policy of Kennedy.
While the conditions for reform on the scale of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society probably did not exist in 2008, something like Kennedy’s New Frontier was possible. Although it is overshadowed in historical memory by the Great Society, the New Frontier was responsible for significant reforms in the New Deal tradition. In addition to pushing civil rights reform and dedicating the U.S. to manned lunar landings by the end of the decade, Kennedy fought the recession he inherited by classic Keynesian policies, including an increase in post office construction and accelerated highway spending and the tax cut he proposed in 1963. By 1964, the economy was booming. Also in the New Deal tradition were Kennedy’s long-term reforms sought to expand universal social insurance. Under his leadership Congress expanded unemployment benefits and Social Security, lowering the retirement age for men to 62.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s foreign policy was marked by hubris and over-extension. He announced in his 1961 inaugural address that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." In addition to defining America's national interest in terms of an open-ended crusade, Kennedy favored the "flexible response" school, which held that the U.S. should be prepared to engage in limited wars like Korea and in counterinsurgency campaigns against Soviet- or Chinese-backed guerrillas. Whatever Kennedy might have done if he had lived, his logic led to deepening involvement in Vietnam as well as his failed attempt to back the attempt of Cuban exiles to depose Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Neoconservatism in foreign policy began with Democratic hawks in the Kennedy-Johnson tradition....
Obama inherited two wars, expanded one, and has now added a third. How unlike Ike.
President Obama has indicated, to nobody’s surprise, that he will seek reelection. On what platform, one wonders -- the private insurance subsidy policy of Eisenhower and the nation-building crusades of Kennedy?
Read entire article at Salon
When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, it was clear what the nation needed: a return to robust New Deal-style programs in domestic policy to help Americans with stagnant wages and shrinking benefits, and a reduction of U.S. defense spending and commitments abroad. To put it another way, the times required a synthesis of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier in domestic policy and Dwight Eisenhower’s New Look in foreign policy. Unfortunately, President Obama has provided the exact opposite, combining the domestic policy of Eisenhower with the foreign policy of Kennedy.
While the conditions for reform on the scale of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society probably did not exist in 2008, something like Kennedy’s New Frontier was possible. Although it is overshadowed in historical memory by the Great Society, the New Frontier was responsible for significant reforms in the New Deal tradition. In addition to pushing civil rights reform and dedicating the U.S. to manned lunar landings by the end of the decade, Kennedy fought the recession he inherited by classic Keynesian policies, including an increase in post office construction and accelerated highway spending and the tax cut he proposed in 1963. By 1964, the economy was booming. Also in the New Deal tradition were Kennedy’s long-term reforms sought to expand universal social insurance. Under his leadership Congress expanded unemployment benefits and Social Security, lowering the retirement age for men to 62.
Unfortunately, Kennedy’s foreign policy was marked by hubris and over-extension. He announced in his 1961 inaugural address that "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." In addition to defining America's national interest in terms of an open-ended crusade, Kennedy favored the "flexible response" school, which held that the U.S. should be prepared to engage in limited wars like Korea and in counterinsurgency campaigns against Soviet- or Chinese-backed guerrillas. Whatever Kennedy might have done if he had lived, his logic led to deepening involvement in Vietnam as well as his failed attempt to back the attempt of Cuban exiles to depose Castro in the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Neoconservatism in foreign policy began with Democratic hawks in the Kennedy-Johnson tradition....
Obama inherited two wars, expanded one, and has now added a third. How unlike Ike.
President Obama has indicated, to nobody’s surprise, that he will seek reelection. On what platform, one wonders -- the private insurance subsidy policy of Eisenhower and the nation-building crusades of Kennedy?