Obama: From power analyser to prime minister of America
My favourite photograph of Barack Obama is the one his conservative critics always bring out when they are trying to demonstrate that he has links to radical movements.
He is standing at a blackboard sometime during his period as a community organiser in Chicago, doing a "power analysis".
Under the heading "Relationships built on self interest" - and a fourth word, slightly obscured, that we'll come back to.
Out of the word "corp" - for corporations - he extrudes a line to a dollar sign, and thence to the word "mayor" and below that "citizen".
This is the method of power analysis taught by Chicago social activist Saul Alinsky.
Alinsky constructed coalitions of the oppressed, weaving together church groups, community groups, unions and political activists to enhance the power of citizens versus all the forces standing above them on Mr Obama's diagram.
Often the gains were minimal. Always they involved compromise.
This, I believe, explains the through line of Mr Obama's action in Year One of his presidency.
He has managed to enrage both the left and the right - just watch Glenn Beck on YouTube or read Huffpo to get a flavour of it if you are not regularly getting your fix of anti-Obama anger.
In the UK, the Alinsky doctrine is practised by the growingly influential Citizens Organising Foundation (COF), which runs London Citizens and has campaigned successfully for a living wage for cleaners in London, unsuccessfully for an "earned amnesty" for illegal migrants, and is now trying to cap interest rates at 10%.
I once asked Neil Jameson, who runs the COF, what Mr Obama was actually doing in that photograph. Neil was trained by the same people who trained the US president, all those years ago.
Power analysis, he told me, involves three questions: Who can stop us? Who can help us? Who has the money?
Once you understand the self-interest of these groups, you can use it to try and either persuade or force them to do what you want them to do.
If we read the Obama presidency according to these questions, much of the last year becomes intelligible - though that does not change whether it becomes acceptable, either to that large minority of Americans that voted Republican, or to the disgruntled Democrat grassroots who wanted Mr Obama to go further.
We know what Mr Obama wants at the level of ideals: more social justice; a rebuilt social infrastructure; disengagement from no-win conflicts (or an alteration of their terms); a new multilateralism in international affairs; plus a US government and consumer that begins to act as if climate change was a reality rather than a myth stirred up by the nation's enemies.
Who can stop him? He knows that - First, the Republicans in Congress. Second the conservative grassroots who are mobilising in large numbers against every initiative. Third major corporations, such as the big Pharma and healthcare lobbies. Fourth, high finance.
That's virtually the same list of forces who, by 1937, were able to force FDR away from the more radical aspects of the New Deal and it is a list that goes a long way to explaining why Mr Obama's presidency looks nothing like FDR's.
Much of Mr Obama's first year has been spent trying to negotiate a power-relationship with the groups I've listed, just as in East London or Birmingham, Alinsky-ite organisers spend much of their time trying to persuade, cajole and pressure the people who fit the answer "who can stop us?".
On health care reform, faced with the potential opposition of Republicans, centrist Democrats, big Pharma and conservative sections of the public, Mr Obama compromised.
On Afghanistan, though his instinct was clearly to draw down involvement, he has gone with the "surge, build and drawdown" strategy that worked in Iraq (and which he opposed).
Above all with the banks he has kept much of the same team that ran the finance system in the run-up to the crash; and stuck with the Bush/Paulson essential plan - a risk-free bailout for Wall Street that left the CEOs in position and never touched the capital of shareholders.
Much of this has outraged that set of people who you would list as answer to the question: "who is with us?".
That is because, for now, there is no danger that they will not be with him. If Tuesday's Massachusetts senatorial election goes against the Democrats it will be because the Republicans mobilised and the Dems did not.
The question you have to ask always about the power analysis school of thought and action - and indeed the only question it really cares about itself - is "has it worked?".
We'll know in a few days' time whether it has "worked" on healthcare.
If Massachusetts upsets the carefully crafted Congressional majority, making it possible that the whole measure could fall, it could be written off as an accident - but it is one of those accidents that happen while you are trying to negotiate with a web and network of power.
It could even be seen as a microcosm of the balancing act Mr Obama will now have to do between those "who can stop him" and those "who are with him".
The contrast between Mr Obama's statecraft and that of previous presidents, including both Bill Clinton and George W Bush, is obvious.
Mr Obama proceeds through compromise and negotiation at home, multilateralism abroad. I saw it working first hand at the UN General Assembly and at the Pittsburgh G20. The question is though, does it work?
Iran has thumbed its nose at Mr Obama's multilateral offensive to offer it a way out of confrontation on uranium enrichment. The Taliban has not been defeated. The healthcare bill is not passed. And above all the US economy is not responding to the treatment Mr Obama has prescribed.
In his new book, Freefall, economist Joseph Stiglitz accuses Mr Obama of choosing a "low risk" strategy with Wall Street, which has in fact turned out to be high risk for Main Street. Above all of failing to outline a vision:
"While the risks of formulating a vision were clear, so were of not having one. Without a vision the whole 'reform' process might be seized by those in the financial sector, leaving the country with a financial system that was even more fragile than the one that had failed."
Here Mr Stiglitz has put his finger on the key challenge for Mr Obama's pragmatism, alliance building and network-centric politics - you could substitute the words "financial sector" for Afghanistan or healthcare.
The risk is, always, that as you negotiate with those who can stop you, they actually do stop you, or divert you, so that you hardly achieve anything at all.
And meanwhile your vision - one so clear even if expressed in vague rhetoric - gets smudged beneath the ink of a hundred compromises.
At street level the response to this, from the Alinsky manual, is: you start again. The community organisers are always prepared to pull the plug on talks, go on the streets or even dissolve the alliance they've built if they feel one group within it is exerting too much power. But this is not an option for the president.
What he has found, in power, is that there is a ready template for the man determined to do deals, to pursue the middle way, to think twice before acting etc.
In other Western countries it is the "prime minister" of a party system who has to act like this.
Being prime minister is not very glamorous in American eyes, nor does it fit with the Alinsky doctrine. But it is what Mr Obama looks in danger of becoming at times: ie something no bigger than the leader of a majority in Congress, the commander in chief whose vision can never override the pragmatism of his subordinate generals.
At Pittsburgh I met grassroots Republicans and Democrats who convinced me that politics, society and culture in America are far more divided than the mainstream media understands: that the worker-ethnic minority-social liberal coalition behind Mr Obama wants much more than he can deliver, and that likewise the plebeian right - championed by Sarah Palin, spoken for by Glenn Beck and an army of shock-jocks - wants a radically different America.
If, as doomsayers predict, the USA is headed for a long-term kulturkampf between these two groups, echoing the racial, religious and demographic divides that have remained unresolved since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, then the Obama doctrine of "Who can help us? Who can stop us? Let's appeal to their self interest" eventually falls apart.
By the end of a four-year term his strategy either turns the economy round - at the same time delivering significant reforms to his grassroots on, for example healthcare and labour rights - or it does not.
Likewise it either leads to a peaceful, multilateral resolution of the Iran issue or a violent one that fractures international relations.
This brings us to the fourth box on Mr Obama's blackboard: it's smudged but I read it as "DE-GOP", that is the Democrats and Republicans.
The parties are an equal part of the power system. Party patronage is probably more resilient in the US than here, despite the mobility of leadership and allegiance within the US parties.
For example, for Mr Obama, much of the Clinton-era Democrat party probably belongs in the category "Who can stop us?". It's only necessary to recall that Joe Lieberman, Al Gore's running mate in 2000, is now one of the president's bitterest public foes.
Many pundits in liberal, coastal America believe that the demographics of plebeian conservatism work against the Republicans electorally - choose Mrs Palin or another Christian right winger in 2012, they say, and you can never win a majority, because you alienate the party's metropolitan centrists.
I would imagine this is how Mr Obama calculates too. He is at home in the party system, and on Capitol Hill, and has proved adept at filleting the political opposition to him - for example, look how many Republican governors, having opposed the fiscal stimulus, took the money on the nod and a wink that it could be spent on their local priorities.
Many perceived this as a moral victory over the president - but that is how power analysis works. He got the money into the system; they got to spend it on their pet projects. Win-win.
Ultimately it is too soon to tell whether Mr Obama's "prime ministerial" approach is working. To those used to seeing executive power used, well, executively, it can feel at times hardly like a presidency at all.
But be clear: what we are in the middle of is an experiment. The use of soft power by the globe's hardest power. The deployment of compromise in a culturally fractured nation. The attempt to re-grow the state into an economy philosophically wary of the state.
It is way too early to say whether Mr Obama can use all these "relationships built on self interest" to succeed. But it's worth understanding what "success" might look like.
Power analysis folks and community activists do not live in a binary world of victory versus glorious defeat. They live in a world of incremental change, uphill struggle, reverses, compromise, unglamorous backroom deals and thanklessness.
So, for now, does Barack Obama.
Comment number 1.
At 19th Jan 2010, duvinrouge wrote:Whilst politics is very much about the battle of ideas & persuasion, history shows that it is the economics that shapes the political ideas.
The failure of neo-liberalism has opened the door for Keynesian state intervention - enter Obama.
But a good understanding of the economics, in my opinion, shows that a return to the Keynesian state intervention is unaffordable.
Unaffordable not because there is less wealth than 40 years ago.
But unaffordable given the rate of profit.
The important point to remember is production only takes place if a profit is expected.
In otherwords the initial capital must be turned into a larger capital.
The decline in the rate of profit has been hidden in the last 20 years or so by the increases in asset prices (shares, property, commodities, etc), in turn a result largely of the US dollar becoming unpegged from gold.
The recent financial crisis was reality kicking in.
But the authorities have pumped more fictitious capital into the system to again hide the true fall in the rate of profit.
With current government debt levels they are unlikely to be able to do this again.
So the big economic question that casts a big shadow over political power analysis is how long before the next, much bigger & more shocking economic collapse?
When it happens there will be more parts of the US looking like Haiti with US soldiers trying to protect the property rights of the rich.
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Comment number 2.
At 19th Jan 2010, stayingcool wrote:'the growingly influential [US] Citizens Organising Foundation (COF), which runs London Citizens' ??
And having said that you have no further comment??
I had noticed that everyone I'd met from 'London Citizens' had an American accent. Not very 'London citizen' I had thought to my London citizen self.
We don't need this US group - especially campaigning for an amnesty. Along with Boris Johnson. And the corporation of London. And the financial services corps based there, mostly foreign.
Surely something sparks a little bit of suss?? What's wrong with you?
You keep saying how great the London Citizens org is. Well think again.
I am glad you have made this forthright revelation anyway.
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Comment number 3.
At 19th Jan 2010, TomUk wrote:duvinrouge, absolutely spot on. We are all aware that the global economy will collapse again at some point this year, the only question is when and what form it will take. The rest is just arranging deckchairs on the Titanic and the job of the politicians is to invent an external enemy to blame. The Republicans/Democrats sideshow is just a distraction for the people to make them think they live in a democracy.
As Matt Taibi says here ( the Limbaughs and Becks of this world merely manage to divert attention away from the financial terrorists who are busy blowing up the system, and towards irrelevant issues on which the people can squabble while missing the bigger picture. Why aren't people focusing on the insolvency of Illinios, California and effectively 45 other states? They will be soon.
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Comment number 4.
At 19th Jan 2010, jauntycyclist wrote:you raise some interesting points and highlighting that a person's philosophy is not only the architectural blueprint of their character but is also their 'nation building' model- that much neglected science.
the essential problem some might have with democracy is that it is not a dictatorship? What other way is there but relationship building? The gun at the head?
Given the hassle the creation of the NHS got its not surprising the same self interested groups oppose it in the usa? In the end in the uk their mouths were 'stopped with gold' which is the usual solution in a democracy. Democracy in action in this case is legalised bribery?
Further what we have is a financial oligarchy masquerading as democracy. The risk has always been privatise the profit socialise the loss which means main st always does suffer. its not new. That realisation among a wider group after the recent events might be new?
As for the pace of change they do say Rome was not built in a day. Stable societies do not fall out of the sky. They are built by the generations of thankless work of many unseen and unpraised hands. Stable society is not the 'default' position of a state. Kalashnikov Anarchy is.
As the historian John Romer said Rome did not fall it just got poor. Poor people cannot project power through expensive vanity projects but through yearly tilling the soil of their nation making it a little better every year. When there is no magic financial wand what we see creeping in is the politics of poverty.
Unlike the talibanic or maoist state the democratic state is not finished in conception but a work in progress?
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Comment number 5.
At 19th Jan 2010, barriesingleton wrote:WHO DID WE SELL OUT TO ON THE WAY UP?
("Who can stop us? Who can help us? Who has the money?")
I watched Obama orating his way to the Whitehouse, and wondered who owned his soul - in return for funding.
Tony Blair was never the Good-Guy the masses thought he was. Obama will prove likewise.
Might one reasonably sing: "O-ba-ma, Super-Star, DO YOU THINK YOU'RE WHAT THEY SAY YOU ARE?"
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Comment number 6.
At 19th Jan 2010, tawse57 wrote:For several months after Obama got elected I kept thinking that he would be the subject of an assasination attempt - either from one of those fundamentalist right-wingers for whom, in their minds, Obama is just a non-white communist with a muslim name aiming to turn the US into a pseudo Islamic/Communist paradise... or from some San Francisco radical liberal who feels that he is simply not radical enough.
But I don't think that either side particularly cares much, long-term, about Obama anymore. With each week that passes he is looking more and more like a lame duck President - a lame duck who most likely will not get a second term in office because he simply will not be voted back in in 3 years time.
In the US people want things and they want it now.
Fast service is as core to the US as apple pie and the fourth of July. Obama has not provided that service.
He has saved the banks and made a lot of bankers richer but, to the average American, things are worse now than a year ago. Unemployment is still rising, house prices are still falling, tens of millions of Americans are either on benefits or dependent on charity food parcels to get by. Americans, remembering the Reagan recession for example, will no doubt remember the Reagan stimulus package and how rapidly that turned around the US economy. Obama is spending but only the rich are getting the benefits.
At some point in 2010 it will all come crashing down. There has been no real stimulus in the US economy at grass-roots level. The recourse Option-ARM and Alt-A mortgages are about to come home to roost and another collapse in US house prices will inevitably follow. More bail-outs? More devaluing of the mighty buck? Sooner or later even the Fed's printers will run out of ink - but before they do so will the patience of international bankers wishing to buy US debt!
No, Obama has so far failed the average American be he/she Republican, Democrat or simply an Americans who no longer cares. He won't be given a second chance.
In the background, lurking always, is the ghost of the President yet to be! Anyone know how her chat show is coming along?
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Comment number 7.
At 19th Jan 2010, Jan wrote:They say that for any new job things get done in the first 2 years so Obama needs to stop pussy-footing around and just "do it". You can never please all of the people all of the time. Mrs T was either revered or hated (depending on your point of view)in the UK and not for nothing was she known as the Iron Lady. She did though stand up to the unions who had too much power and without such a stand goodness knows what would have happened here. Sometimes it's necessary to dig your heels in and do the right thing.
Unfortunately all the power lies in the hands of the money men (now more than at any time in history) so Obama's hands are tied to a large extent and despite good intentions maybe ultimately he won't achieve what he set out to do. I really hope he finds a way to stop the wars and to get some basic healthcare system in place. I find it hard to understand why anyone would want to block such aims but they do.
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Comment number 8.
At 19th Jan 2010, stanilic wrote:I think too many high hopes were put on Obama by his supporters. Now they have woken up to the reality that being part of the system he has to work the system.
This article does not surprise me in any way as clearly Obama had his political origins in the district and had learned his techniques at street level. He is obviously a compromiser and an incrementalist rather than a confronter. If it works for him then why not?
There are very distinct differences between US politics and UK politics and to make comparisons is not always very useful. The measure of either system needs to be whether or not or how much of the popular mandate is executed within the set term of office.
One year in is too early to judge any President.
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Comment number 9.
At 19th Jan 2010, singsandroundabouts wrote:Thank you 'stayingcool' for highlighting what I almost overlooked with regard to the Citizens Organising Foundation. A brief look at their website confirms my worst fears in that they are nothing more than another unelected body making choices and decisions on behalf of everybody whether we like it or not. Anything that involves faith groups so predominately, such as they do, begins to ring alarm bells not least because there isn't one 'faith' that treats women as equals. Start dragging religion into the debate and you know at once they are working to a different agenda.
Also interesting to see in the 'Affliates' section number one is an American organization the Industrial Areas Foundation.
For a body that aims to change policy on behalf of everybody their funding page looks interesting too. I think they deserve further investigation Paul.
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Comment number 10.
At 19th Jan 2010, MadameSmith wrote:Mr Obama. I thought he'd been elected President.
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Comment number 11.
At 19th Jan 2010, tawse57 wrote:#10 -
'Mr Obama. I thought he'd been elected President.'
Could be worse - he could be just 'Obama' like all those 主播大秀 newsreaders who appear to be on first name terms with 'Gordon'.
From watching the evening news I am convinced that Huw Edwards finishes his shift and then pops round to Number 10 each night for a curry and a pint with 'Gordon'.
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Comment number 12.
At 19th Jan 2010, shireblogger wrote:鈥淏ut too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.鈥 Obama February 2007.
Isnt he saying to his opponents across the aisle : hey, lets reject the lobbyists and special interest groups who have these powers to thwart. Isnt he appealing to Republicans in Congress to agree his objectives, if not every detail. Standing with Bill Clinton and George W Bush in his address on Haiti, he's getting the message out. He admired Reagan cos he held the respect of Democrats. Reagan got more things done. He wants the same. Its not a core-vote strategy but a nation-building one.He inherited a nation at war and in economic decline. You cant rebuild this stae of play on your core vote.
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Comment number 13.
At 19th Jan 2010, barriesingleton wrote:A MATTER OF JUDGEMENT OR A JUDICIOUS MOVE? (#12)
"Standing with Bill Clinton and George W Bush in his address on Haiti, he's getting the message out."
Not a message I would want to send. This looks like using the Haiti tragedy to adjust the 'political picture', for internal viewing.
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Comment number 14.
At 19th Jan 2010, shireblogger wrote:#13 barriesingleton
"And by coming together in this way, these two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and to the people of the world: In these difficult hours, America stands united. We stand united with the people of Haiti, who have shown such incredible resilience, and we will help them to recover and to rebuild."Obama.
Partisan politics is out on this tragedy. Isnt that right.
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Comment number 15.
At 19th Jan 2010, watriler wrote:He's got three more years. Are we forgetting the separation of powers as the foundation of real politic in the USA. Not a problem for a British PM with an overall majority. Remind me what executive powers the Queen has in common with the president of the USA! Radical political/social reform in the USA? - the right wing have got most of the tanks. The left need to be in continuous election mode to stand a chance.
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Comment number 16.
At 20th Jan 2010, barriesingleton wrote:ARE YOU SURE THE HAITIANS READ THE MESSAGE THAT WAY? (#14)
Unless I have been seriously misled by the meeja (not uncommon) Dubya and his right hand man 'Brownie' did not endear themselves to the poor black people of New Orleans, when disaster struck there. Why would similarly disadvantaged Haitians welcome Dubya's brand of 'expertise', applied to their plight?
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Comment number 17.
At 20th Jan 2010, barriesingleton wrote:INCREDIBLE RESILIENCE?
"We stand united with the people of Haiti, who have shown such incredible resilience" (Barack Obama)
The human spirit can only stand so much. By all reports, the trauma of the Haitian earthquake, and associated mayhem, was ABSOLUTE.
Yet the Obama rhetoric speaks of the Haitian's 'INCREDIBLE RESILIANCE'. To me that can only be self-serving. A complete flight from reality to the 'Land of Good Guy' where positivism is ALWAYS a virtue.
Does an inmate of Guantanamo who, after years of 'civilised abuse' is utterly broken, show INCREDIBLE RESILIANCE, in abject defeat, Mr President?
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Comment number 18.
At 20th Jan 2010, shireblogger wrote:Thanks, Barriesingleton
In the pit of darkness the Haitians would want to hear from their close neighbour and superpower that it is mobilising help and money ( across the political divide) that their government cant. I dont suppose they are making cynical judgments about what happened in New Orleans. That's for the comfort of people in armchairs elsewhere.I read your vitriol but I dont understand where it's aimed.
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Comment number 19.
At 20th Jan 2010, barriesingleton wrote:"I dont understand where it's aimed". (#18)
ORATORY RHETORIC VACUOUSNESS HYPOCRISY MEGALOMANIA DECEIT DISSEMBLING DISINGENUOUSNESS OBFUSCATION SPEECHWRITERS PHOTOSHOPPING
MANIPULATION BLACKGUARDING UNDERHAND-DONATIONS STATE-BRIBERY VOTE-RIGGING
spring to mind. the list is not exhaustive.
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Comment number 20.
At 20th Jan 2010, shireblogger wrote:Ah, I thought it was the Americans. I was too superficial!
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