President Obama: As American as apple pie

By Money Matters Editors

There’s been a great deal of banter, and, frankly, static and hysteria, concerning President Obama’s economic policies. The most-vocal critics, really a fringe of the American voting public, assert that Obama is ‘a socialist.’ Nothing could be further from the truth: Obama believes in corporate capitalism, and fits into the tradition of a long-line of American reformers who are capitalists.

Europe looks at America with amusement: how can a President who ardently believes in the private sector’s virtues (entrepreneurship, ingenuity/innovation, dynamism, a more-efficient use of resources, reward for work, wealth building, and job creation, among others), and whose systemic reforms largely rely on the private sector, be viewed as a socialist?

Philistines, obstructionists, or both?

The reason is based in the United States’ political culture, which is 1) very private sector-oriented, and contains 2) the fear of a strong central government. There is a long history in the U.S. of autonomically - and in some cases mindlessly - opposing any economic/social reform. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), a liberal, was called a socialist during the debate over Social Security, the now bedrock pension system for most Americans. (Try opposing Social Security now, and see what happens to you, politically.) President Harry S Truman, an ideological moderate, was called ‘a traitor’ for taking, in the interpretation of the extreme ideological right, too weak a stance versus the Soviet Union and communism in the 1940s after World War II. President Lyndon B. Johnson was called a socialist during the successful effort to pass Medicare, the popular health insurance program for senior citizens. In short, any time an American president attempts economic / social reform, the fringe right wing goes into overdrive: it’s opposed to nearly all government programs, except defense.