I'll cut to the chase - no, he is not a socialist. If he was then he would have nationalized the large banks and other financial corporations a year ago. His base was urging him to do it. Instead, he left them as separate but dependent organizations. He informed both the banks that, since they took the TARP, he owned them. He used the TARP in similar ways to force restructurings in GM and Chrysler.
So, if Obama is not a socialist, then what is he? Ron Paul recently called Obama a Corporatist. This may be a good description of him, but 99.9% of the country never heard of corporatism.
I think that the best label for President Obama is the one he gave himself - a transformative progressive in the mold of FDR. Of course, this means that we need to start a national converstion about what progressives actually are, especially under FDR.
FDR is given a lot of credit for his first 100 days. His best-remembered accomplishment was to stabilize the banks. Other accomplishments were later declared unconstitutional. Chief among these was the NRA (National Recovery Administration). It's goal was to produce a planned economy where the government and businesses worked together to set prices and wages. Roosevelt wanted to prevent future depressions and hoped that government planning could prevent future crashes. Compare this with Obama's desire to move beyond "boom and bust cycles."
One point that really needs to be understood is that many of today's problems can be traced directly to FDR's administration. California is insolvent and several other states are following its lead. One strong factor is state unions and union pensions. Unions and union pensions were also the downfall of GM. FDR was a great believer in unions and strengthened them early in his administration.
Union pensions is a problem right now but Social Security will be a much bigger problem within a decade. This is one of FDR's biggest legacies. The system worked as long as there were multiple workers paying into the system for every person drawing from it. Demographics and longevity have undercut this. Already the system is paying out more than it takes in. The amounts are still trivial but that will soon change.
What about the Great Depression? Some historians claim that everything was fine by 1937 and would have continued to improve if FDR had just continued to spend. Others say that FDR's policies prolonged the Depressions. By keeping companies from dropping wages to match deflation, he kept the unemployment rate high.
Obama seems determined to follow in FDR's footprints. He wants to increase government control and scope. He as already expended government in ways not seen since LBJ.
People need to look back at the Roosevelt administration and understand what worked, what did not, and what seemed to work for a while but was not sustainable in the long-run. Obama needs to explain how he will keep Social Security from bankrupting the country before he expands the government further. Democrats have gotten a free ride for the last few years by calling themselves progressives instead of liberals.
The thing here is that calling Obama a socialist confuses the issue. Being a progressive should be bad enough but it will take a concerted effort. We need to educate people on what progressives actually are.
UPDATE: Jonah Goldburg thinks that Obama does qualify as a socialist under a broad definition of socialism. He also puts Progressives into context:
With a few exceptions, the progressive political agenda has always been to argue for piecemeal reforms, not instant transformative change—but reforms that always expand the size, scope, and authority of the state. This approach has numerous benefits. For starters, it’s more realistic tactically. By concentrating on the notion of reform rather than revolution, progressives can work to attract both ideologues of the Left and moderates at the same time. This allows moderates to be seduced by their own rhetoric about the virtues of a specific reform as an end in itself. Meanwhile, more sophisticated ideologues understand that they are supporting a camel’s-nose strategy.
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