Exactly a year ago, the U.S. presidential election cycle was in its final days. Emotions ran high in both the Barack Obama and John McCain camps. McCain unleashed a final, furious wave of allegations against Obama — chief among them was the notion that Obama, if elected, would act on his purportedly steadfast commitment to the redistribution of wealth in American society and cause a dramatic, socialist political shift.
Not many in the political mainstream took the allegations seriously, McCain's standings in the polls further declined and the rest, as they say, is history. But now, a year removed from one of the most intense elections in recent years, have McCain's then-seemingly ridiculous allegations of an Obama socialist agenda been adequately quashed?
Socialism, as per the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is defined as a movement "advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods." It generally is not a concrete philosophy as much as it is a set of social interventions and economic planning initiatives. Furthermore, socialists see capitalism as inherently flawed and argue that capitalism, if it must exist, can only function within the context of centralized planning to address its inherent distribution inequities.
The United States has nationalized a number of major financial institutions and automakers over the past year — nationalization of industry is one of socialism's cornerstones. Yet the major focus of controversy surrounding the bailout was whether or not the plan would actually work and whether more power should have been extended to the Treasury Department. It did not concern the bailout's socialist roots.
What about the federal measures unveiled last week to limit pay for executives in charge of firms who have yet to repay the bailout sums they received? The measures were received as a symbolic act and mainstream concern was raised not over a seemingly socialist encroachment on free-market capitalism's resource allocation, but rather whether the measures extended far enough.
And what of health care? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has guaranteed that the health care bill to be presented before the Senate will include a public option. Are President Obama and Reid together pushing their socialist, redistributive health care agenda through the Senate? Reid's public option includes an opt-out for states which do not want to participate. This policy ensures that the very costly public option, if approved, can be avoided by individual states. Obama and Reid both know how divisive the public option is — Obama has stated it is not required for him to sign a reform bill into law — but included it to appease those on the left, while the opt-out keeps those on the right happy. The public option was constructed to be non-binding and non-compulsory for states. Obama and Reid are career politicians; if they truly wanted to reorder American society and begin doing so with health care, they'd engineer a strict, binding and more encompassing policy than the current joke of a public option with an opt-out.
The fact of the matter is that our nation has had programs like U.S. Welfare and entitlements like Social Security for many years — the dirtiest secret of American capitalist politics is that our bastion of sheer economic might and high quality of life owes some of its success to a measure of socialism fused with raw capitalism. The exact capitalism-socialism ratio in American politics varies per administration. Although more quasi-socialist philosophy has made itself apparent in the Obama administration's rhetoric and policies — namely the tax hike on the top five percent of earners — the American political system will certainly separate the useful, progressive political wheat from the useless, leftist political chaff over time, beginning with midterm elections next fall.
So is Obama a socialist? That is largely dependent on whether or not one chooses to accept the dirtiest secret in American politics.
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Teddy Minch is a senior majoring in political science. He hosts "The Rundown" on WMFO. He can be reached at Theodore.Minch@tufts.edu.
