Who is Robert Reich. If you listen to NPR, you know this:
Robert B. Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written eleven books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Mr. Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. His weekly commentaries on public radio’s “Marketplace” are heard by nearly five million people.
His conclusion?
The sad news is that whether the Clinton scorched-earth strategy ultimately succeeds or fails, it will have caused great harm. In the unlikely event it succeeds, the result will be a shame and not a little ironic. Barack Obama has breathed life into the Democratic Party, and into American politics, for the first time in forty years. Not since Robert Kennedy ran for president has America been so starkly summoned to its ideals; not since then has America — including, especially, the nation’s youth — been so inspired. The Clintons would prefer to write off “Obamania” as a passing fad, but the reality is that idealism and inspiration are necessary preconditions for positive social change. Nothing happens in Washington unless Americans are energized and mobilized to make it happen. HRC’s tactics are the old politics the nation is recoiling from — internal division and national fear. This only serves to deepen Americans’ cynicism about politics, and makes social change all the harder to achieve.
Now I can’t buy into much of the “American ideals” talk:
Not since Robert Kennedy ran for president has America been so starkly summoned to its ideals;
because this seems to me to be making “America” into a spiritual force that supercedes what for Christians should belong to the mission of the church; and if you listen to a lot of progressive Christian analysis of American politics, they tend to take on the language of “American ideals” and “The Constitution” as holy document. But beyond this, there is the matter of what kind of politics reigns in the secular state, and I think it matters what happens there. Hilllary is using what appears to be the Rove playbook. And this is extremely cynical and disgusting to me.
