Crises
If we have begun with this imagined scenario, it is not only to emphasize its distance from what has transpired in the months that have passed since Obama’s Inauguration on January 20th, 2009, but also to suggest that the theater of “health care” in America, taken up by Obama as a sure-fire winner, must be read against parallel American crises. Among these—taken up by Obama alongside (and at the same time as) the issue of health care—is “climate change.” On the surface, it would seem to be the opposite: a global long-term argument that only takes away from the most urgent and “short-term” present, hurts jobs and companies, and so on. This change in climate cannot be represented or fully comprehended, and can only mean giving things up, including an “Americanness” of sorts (an “Americanness” supported by the fact that, although the United States includes only 5% of the world’s population, it consumes 25% of its energy). The legislative initiatives were begun simultaneously and both appear now largely deferred and dead, even as Obama limps to Copenhagen with an unenforceable fig-leaf equal to half of what the scientists consider the inarguable limits to stave off future disaster. One can ascribe all of this to the “short time” cycles of American mediatric reality, or to the determined interests and markets that have decided that all of this is irrelevant to the hyper-rich and to the corporate economy, which would regardless retain their power and survivability.
In striving to return each fallen Humpty Dumpty back to its perch (the economy, Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, international and diplomatic relations, and so on), Obama misread his moment—and, in so doing, also hastened the very “long-term” catastrophics that he has understood and named clearly. He turned immediately to a managerial restoration mode that relied mostly on financial advisers with ties to Wall Street and the Clinton Administration and that, in the aftermath of the bailout logic of the Bush regime, made the stimulus package the defining initiative of his first 100 days. The battle over the stimulus package, however—which led to a stimulus that was significantly smaller than what was required—set at least one of the stages for the ensuing debate over health care, since its effect on the national debt now is said to constrain what is possible on the health care front.
This is why Obama’s health care initiative must be viewed from within this broader relapse. According to some, Obama has wanted to embody a presidential style very different than that of Bush: unlike Bush, he would not rush to seize power or enforce his will, he would refuse to exploit a crisis for political gain, he would be rational and calm, a flawless manager rather than a rash and arrogant decider. He would give to his Congress the power to formulate a health care plan that would be universal, or at least accessible and optimally cost reductive, but, by the time the smoke would clear, a bouillabaisse of cut deals and loopholes—arguing that, if reform is anti-market, it is anti-individual—would be shaped and shaven by the corporate industry through senatorial hacks. The debate quickly morphed into a political meme, an emotive or marketing opportunity for the Fox News mode of incessant attack, keyword implants, caricature, and disinformation, all of which aimed at the delegitimation of Obama. In this context, Obama becomes less our hoped-for transformer than a tragic figure in the making.
It is essential to trace the means and effects of this effort to unsettle Obama’s credibility. How is it, for example, that those who would be most helped by health care reform (the one-time white working class) appear to go against their own vital interests to, among other things, uphold a meme of Americanism versus the foreign (France, Britain, Canada, “socialism,” and so on) in the interest of corporate acceleration? How is it that America leaves a significant portion of its population uncovered by health care or lets the insurance industry wield brutal license to use absurd technicalities to cut off people from their plans, even as the spiral of profits—autotelic, and mirroring Wall Street—guarantees a crash resulting from medical expenditures in the next several years? It is tempting to read all the contradictions and aporias at work here, including the subtle racial politics they assume. We would need a long review of America’s falling education, its faith-based politics, its open oligarchism and mediatic spells. But as Obama took up this “fight,” he became the Hamlet manager of America’s post-imperial stupor, resulting in a Potemkin plan that itself is on the verge of being scuttled. What interests us is the allegorical text that seems to be unfolding here.