Obama Inauguration: looking back at the primaries

By Tom Miller

The inauguration has me thinking about the feelings of Labourites in the UK towards presidential candidates, Obama in particular.

Many people, particularly on the Blairite wing of the Labour Party, were supporters of Hillary Clinton. There could be many reasons for this, but I suspect that the reason she achieved such popularity on this particular wing of the party was not policy (there was very little between her and Obama, but a massive difference in style, emphasis, and forward planning).

Being Neither a Blairite nor a Clinton supporter, I can’t say I’m sure why, but I’m going to have a stab.

I think that the reasons for the general trend were firstly a sort of association with her husband, with whom Blair is often correctly linked… the Clinton era was Blair’s most popular period, and they were both third-wayers (though I would say that Blair ended up leading Britain in a more rightwards direction than even Clinton did in America; Clinton never adopted the ‘if my party likes it, it’s bad’ mantra which later typified the Blair years).

My simple objection is that nostalgia for the past has no place in making the politics of the future.

I can’t identify with this. Clinton is part of my pre-political childhood. I am part of a new generation with its own project, problems, ideas and passions.

This nostalgia completely lacks any optimism, or desire to break consensus; and the consensus in America was rotten.

More to the point, sympathy for a distant past is no decent way of testing leadership and policy.

Further, the extent of Bill Clinton’s third-way tendencies, for me, meant that he completely failed to change the political consensus in the way Reagan and FDR did, leaving public policy open to the ravages of Bush and his army of evangelising loonies.

The second reason that I think many Blairites supported Hillary is simply that she was a woman.

Presumably the argument was either that it was safer to go with a woman than a black man (a despicably cynical and pessimistic view), or that her ‘softer’ image would chime well with the electorate. I think she comes across as far less soft than many of her opponents; the softness thing is just a sexual stereotype that means absolutely nothing.

She fought a filthy and party-damaging campaign (perhaps Blairites simply like those who portray themselves as ‘feisty’ ‘fighting women’; think Hazel Blears during the DL contest).

Personally, I backed John Edwards, purely for policy reasons, and his closeness to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party (though I also thought he could have won). After it became apparent that he had been completely out-organised, I switched to my second choice, Barack Obama.

I don’t regret it, though I disagree with him on some things. I can’t think of anyone else who has had such an impact on my deeper thoughts over such a short period of time, about what it means to be a man, but also about how to organise and campaign successfully, and how to conduct politics with dignity and respect (something I tend to give too little attention).

More to the point, though he may (just about) satisfy certain Blairite shibboleths about foreign policy and the like, he is the first president since Carter standing on a platform explicitly about taking America leftwards from where it is now.

As I’ve explained before, directional politics of the leftwards variety is what I’m all about.

The Blairite argument was that such a politics cannot win the centre, or an election (for Blairites, these are the same thing; one wonders how many council estates they canvass in their marginals).

This argument, at least in the American context, has now been proven to be little more than… well, a load of complete toss.

Obama’s campaigns and wins have been convincing. The public have endorsed his clearly left of centre program much more enthusiastically than the Democratic Party did. He has gone forward with a politics of optimism, which is how I always like to think and work myself. This I do identify with.

This inauguration represents a giant egg on the face of the GOP. But it also represents a substantial egging for the pessimistic politics and crass nostalgic self-regard of much of the Hillary crew.

That’s why ‘hope’ and ‘change’ mean something. Change is a rallying call against more of the same, and hope spurs us to be optimistic about the prospect that we can actually redirect the status quo rather than obsessively navel gazing ourselves to isolated and inflexible accommodation with it.

In my view, this is what Blairism is all about, and is why it needs abandoning.