How to Rule the World After Bush
Commentary: One of the more curious aspects of the Bush years is that the self-proclaimed "uniter" polarized not only American society, but also its business and political elites.
May 19, 2008
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[Introduction by Tom Engelhardt]
A mere eight months to go until George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office—though, given the cast of characters, it could seem like a lifetime. Still, it's a reasonable moment to begin to look back over the last years—and also toward the post-Bush era. What a crater we'll have to climb out of by then!
My last post, "Kiss American Security Goodbye," was meant to mark the beginning of what will, over the coming months, be a number of Bush legacy pieces at Tomdispatch. So consider that series officially inaugurated by Foreign Policy in Focus analyst Mark Engler, who has just authored a new book that couldn't be more relevant to our looming moment of transition: How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy.
The question Engler is curious to have answered is this: If Bush-style "imperial globalization" is rejected in January, what will American ruling elites try to turn to—Clinton-style economic globalization? Certainly, as Engler points out, many in the business and financial communities are now rallying to the Democrats. After all, while John Edwards received the headlines this week for throwing his support behind Barack Obama, that presidential candidate also got the nod from three former Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen—William Donaldson, David Ruder, and Clinton appointee Arthur Levitt Jr. The campaign promptly "released a joint statement by the former SEC chiefs, as well as former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, that praised Obama's 'positive leadership and judgment' on economic issues."
The United States, however, is a very different creature than it was in the confident years when these men rode high. Now, the world is looking at things much differently. Let Engler explain… Tom Engelhardt
How to Rule the World After Bush
One of the more curious aspects of the Bush years is that the self-proclaimed "uniter" polarized not only American society, but also its business and political elites.
By Mark Engler
Picture January 20, 2009, the day George W. Bush has to vacate the Oval Office.
It's easy enough to imagine a party marking this fine occasion, with antiwar protestors, civil libertarians, community leaders, environmentalists, health-care advocates, and trade unionists clinking glasses to toast the end of an unfortunate era. Even Americans not normally inclined to political life might be tempted to join the festivities, bringing their own bottles of bubbly to the party. Given that presidential job approval ratings have rarely broken 40% for two years and now remain obdurately around or below 30%—historic lows—it would not be surprising if this were a sizeable celebration.
More surprising, however, might be the number of people in the crowd drinking finer brands of champagne. Amid the populist gala, one might well spot figures of high standing in the corporate world, individuals who once would have looked forward to the reign of an MBA president but now believe that neocon bravado is no way to run an empire.
One of the more curious aspects of the Bush years is that the self-proclaimed "uniter" polarized not only American society, but also its business and political elites. These are the types who gather at the annual, ultra-exclusive World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and have their assistants trade business cards for them. Yet, despite their sometime chumminess, these powerful few are now in disagreement over how American power should be shaped in the post-Bush era and increasing numbers of them are jumping ship when it comes to the course the Republicans have chosen to advance these last years. They are now engaged in a debate about how to rule the world.
Don't think of this as some conspiratorial plot, but as a perfectly commonsensical debate over what policies are in the best interests of those who hire phalanxes of Washington lobbyists and fill the coffers of presidential and congressional campaigns. Many business leaders have fond memories of the "free trade" years of the Clinton administration, when CEO salaries soared and the global influence of multinational corporations surged. Rejecting neoconservative unilateralism, they want to see a renewed focus on American "soft power" and its instruments of economic control, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO)—the multilateral institutions that formed what was known in international policy circles as "the Washington Consensus." These corporate globalists are making a bid to control the direction of economic policy under a new Democratic administration.
There is little question that the majority of people on the planet—those who suffered under both the corporate globalization of the Clinton years and the imperial globalization of George W. Bush—deserve something better. However, it is far from certain that social justice advocates who want to encourage a more democratic approach to world affairs and global economic well-being will be able to sway a new administration. On the other hand, the damage inflicted by eight years of neocon rule and the challenges of an increasingly daunting geopolitical scene present a conundrum to the corporate globalizers: Is it even possible to go back to the way things were?
The Revolt of the Corporatists
Throughout their time in office, despite fulsome evidence of failure, George Bush and Dick Cheney have maintained a blithe self-confidence about their ability to successfully promote the interests of the United States, or at least those of their high-rolling "Pioneer"-class donors. Every so often, though, the public receives notice that loyalists are indeed scurrying to abandon the administration's sinking ship of state. In October 2007, for instance, in a front-page story entitled "GOP Is Losing Grip On Core Business Vote," the Wall Street Journal reported that the party could be facing a brand crisis as "[s]ome business leaders are drifting away from the party because of the war in Iraq, the growing federal debt and a conservative social agenda they don't share."
When it comes to corporate responses to the President's Global War on Terror, we mostly hear about the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater—companies directly implicated in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and with the mentality of looters. Such firms have done their best to score quick profits from the military machine. However, there was always a faction of realist, business-oriented Republicans who opposed the invasion from the start, in part because they believed it would negatively impact the U.S. economy. As the administration adventure in Iraq has descended into the morass, the ranks of corporate complainers have only grown.
The "free trade" elite have become particularly upset about the administration's focus on go-it-alone nationalism and its disregard for multilateral means of securing influence. This belligerent approach to foreign affairs, they believe, has thwarted the advance of corporate globalization. In an April 2006 column in the Washington Post, globalist cheerleader Sebastian Mallaby laid blame for "why globalization has stalled" at the feet of the Bush administration. The White House, Mallaby charged, was unwilling to invest any political capital in the IMF, the World Bank, or the WTO. He wrote:
"Fifteen years ago, there were hopes that the end of Cold War splits would allow international institutions to acquire a new cohesion. But the great powers of today are simply not interested in creating a resilient multilateral system.... The United States remains the only plausible quarterback for the multilateral system. But the Bush administration has alienated too many players to lead the team effectively. Its strident foreign policy started out as an understandable response to the fecklessness of other powers. But unilateralism has tragically backfired, destroying whatever slim chance there might have been of a workable multilateral alternative."
Frustrated by Bush's failures, many in the business elite want to return to the softer empire of corporate globalization and, increasingly, they are looking to the Democrats to navigate this return. As a measure of this—the capitalist equivalent of voting with their feet—political analyst Kevin Phillips notes in his new book, Bad Money, that, in 2007, "[h]edge fund employees' contributions to the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee outnumbered those to its Republican rival by roughly nine to one."
This quiet revolt of the corporatists is already causing interesting reverberations on the campaign trail. The base of the Democratic Party has clearly rejected the "free trade" version of trickle-down economics, which has done far more to help those hedge-fund managers and private-jet-hopping executives than anyone further down the economic ladder. As a result, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running as opponents of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and of a newer bilateral trade deal with Colombia, a country in which organizing a union or vocally advocating for human rights can easily cost you your life. The tenor of the current campaign represents a significant shift from the 1990s, when top Democrats were constantly trying to establish their corporate bona fides and "triangulate" their way into conservative economic policy.
Still, both candidates are surrounded by business-friendly advisors whose views fit nicely within an older, pre-Bush administration paradigm of corporate globalization. The tension between the anti-NAFTA activists at the base of the Party and those in the campaign war rooms has resulted in some embarrassing gaffes during the primary contest.
For Hillary Clinton, the most notable involved one of her chief strategists, Mark Penn, a man with a long, nefarious record defending corporate abuses as a Washington lobbyist. As it turned out, Penn's consulting firm received $300,000 in 2007 to support the "free trade" agreement with Colombia. Even as Clinton was proclaiming her heartfelt opposition to the deal and highlighting the "history of suppression and targeted killings of labor organizers" in that country, a key player in her campaign was charting strategy with Colombian government officials in order to get the pact passed.
The polarization of America had nothing to do with Bush. It existed before Bush and was caused when moral people pulled away after the skank clinton got caught getting his d**k worked on the the oral office. He drove a wedge in our country that will take decades to heal.
About 60% of the people were disgusted, and the other 40% made excused for him, and thought it was great that he taught our children that sex was NOT sex... HAHAHA What a joke he was.
Bill