What Obama wants

LITTLE ROCK — Are-elected, puffed-up Barack Obama has dropped the mask of moderation and is now energetically pursing the agenda that his ideologue nature dictates.

All of which raises the question of what Obama wants; more precisely, what contemporary political liberalism (of which Obama is the pitch perfect ideological exemplar) wants. More specifically, if Republicans toss out their principles and give Obama everything he demands, where would he take us?

Actually, the goal has been the same since Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives up through Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society-creation of a European-style social democratic state, replete with more generous entitlements and greater economic regulation (particularly of labor markets), funded by much higher and more redistributive taxation. What Sweden or France are, Obama and liberals in general want America to become. The only difference between now and four years ago is that Obama is free to more openly pursue this dream.

Regarding which, several observations:

First, that the ideological space between European social democracy and American liberalism has diminished to the point where there is virtually no difference in programmatic content between what Obama wants and what Francois Hollande’s Socialist government in France or the German Social Democratic Party are proposing. Label it liberalism or “progressivism” or “leftism” and it still comes out as European social democracy, historically defined as a more moderate version of Marxian socialism.

Second, that Obama sees the creation of such a social democratic state as the fulfillment of what Progressive Herbert Croly called, in the title of his influential book from a century ago,The Promise of American Life. For Obama and his ilk, the future clicks only to the left, in the sense of creating more entitlements, a larger welfare state and a more-managed society with greater centralized power in Washington, D.C.What Wilson and Roosevelt began and LBJ expanded, Obama wants to complete. That is the legacy he yearns for, and that which will presumably earn him his place in the history books written by liberal historians.

Third, Obama is gambling that the social democratic welfare state that he is putting the finishing touches upon will ultimately be embraced by the American public, which will become accustomed to and dependent upon its offerings. Industrial and post-industrial politics ratchets only to the left over time because political psychology tells us that benefits once acquired and entitlement programs once put in place are never given up. All liberal victories are therefore permanent and the basis for future triumphs, all conservative resistance and victories only ephemeral.

Fourth, that Obama assumes his social democratic state will eventually be sustainable by the only means available, which is massive tax increases, including upon the thus far shielded middle classes (because that’s where the money is). Obama isn’t interested in discussing deficits or debt because to do so would jeopardize his social democratic dream; rather, the conscious goal is to postpone discussion of such matters until later, until after that social democratic regime is firmly installed and the American people have become fully appreciative of it. Passage comes first, questions of funding later, as with the logic of that key component called Obamacare.

Finally, that Obama is attempting to do something-create a still larger American welfare state, based on the European model-precisely at a time when that original model is falling apart across the Atlantic. It is one thing to construct such a state, as most European nations did 50 or 60 years ago, another to try to bring it into being in the here and now.

The welfare states of the eurozone have become unsustainable, even with European-level taxation, because the benefits became too generous over time and because demography intervened in the form of lower fertility rates, lower labor-force participation, and longer life expectancy. These factors are increasingly affecting American fiscal solvency as well, raising serious doubts as to whether Obama’s dream can be realized, even at the higher tax rates for virtually all Americans that he apparently believes we will eventually accept.

All of this works to explain why our president has evinced so little interest in deficit-reduction, spending cuts of any kind or entitlement reform, and why a Senate controlled by his party refuses, year after year, to pass a budget. Obama’s goal, reflected in the social democratic concept, is to increase spending, not cut it, and to create new entitlements, not reform existing ones. And one can’t pursue such goals if too many people notice the record deficits and debt.

Obama was never a centrist; he only pretended to be one when elections rolled around. The most liberal member of the U.S. Senate when he resided in that chamber, he is now free to embrace such unbridled political liberalism in the Oval Office. What we now see is the “real” Obama, no longer constrained by the prospect of facing the voters or by a Republican Party in disarray.

All of which raises the obvious question: How many of the 51 percent who cast their ballots for him in November knew that this was what they were getting?

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.