Obama the "Socialist"

It's become very popular among conservatives to label President Obama a socialist because of the recent government intervention in the financial and automotive sectors of our economy. However, the use of the term 'socialist' in this context is incorrect. In order for the bailouts of Wall Street and Detroit to be truly socialistic, the government would have to 1) own the affected institutions, or at least a controlling interest in them, and 2) run them as not-for-profit corporations to maximize production at a given cost. Neither of these is true in either case. In fact, I would go so far as to say that President Obama has been a staunch defender of capitalism. The amount of money that has been invested by the government for the benefit of these huge corporations is staggering, while the amount of direct economic relief to individual citizens pales in comparison. Whether you feel this is right or wrong, it is clearly aimed at ensuring the health of our capitalist system.

But the sad truth is that this lopsided intervention has at least as much to do with corporate influence in Washington as it does with a desire to preserve our economic system. And this influence is on display in Congress much more than it is in the White House, with Republicans and Democrats alike defending the corporate-influenced status quo. This was evidenced most recently by the health insurance reform debacle, where lobbyists and special interest groups used corporate money to dilute the proposed legislation until it is now little more than a mandate to drive new customers to insurance companies.

Our government is broken, yet the people who are clamoring most vocally for change would only make things worse. The current anti-government movements (e.g. Tea Party, Libertarians) fail to understand that scaling back government and reducing regulation only serves to give the monied elite more power, ultimately leading to lower wages and benefits for the average American and a shrinking middle class. And this is exactly what has happened since the days of downsizing and deregulation in the 1980s. Should it continue, this trend toward ever more "free" markets will have the opposite of the desired effect, drying up the pool of consumer capital that drives our economy and ultimately leading to its demise.

At the turn of the 20th Century, when corporations most dominated our nation, it took Republican president Teddy Roosevelt to see the threat contained in such lopsided prosperity and to act before worker revolts led to revolution. We need another leader as visionary, independent and strong to fix the government so that it again works in the interests of the people, rather than tearing it down as so many are now trying to do.