Obama and the End of White Elite Politics

By Laura Carlsen, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted November 19, 2008.

We might not have to reach a total breakdown to arrive at a transformative moment. The ideological and logical argument for an unfettered market system has collapsed in the eyes of the minority majority and much of the world. Right-wing messaging made this election primarily a competition between the free-market system and government-led redistribution of wealth. Now they have to accept that the latter prevailed, and we have to build on that.

The mobilized minority majority calls for stronger state intervention to create jobs at home, regulate the excesses of monopolistic capitalism that led to the crisis and reduce the privileges of Wall Street over Main Street on which the economic model is built. But what does this mean for the future of U.S. foreign policy?

Comparisons between Barack Obama and FDR abound in the media and among policymakers. TIME magazine's cover of Obama as FDR under the title of "The NEW New Deal" reflects the similarities between the two men and the reforms they represent. FDR came into office during a crisis, and instead of postponing foreign policy reform to address the domestic crisis, he united the two in a restructuring of the economy and a non-interventionist "Good Neighbor" policy abroad, especially in Latin America.

In our globalized age, the union between domestic and foreign policy is far more pronounced than in the 1930s. Digging the United States out of the economic crisis with an emphasis on poor families who are most vulnerable is indeed a foreign policy challenge. Obama has promised to review free-trade agreements, including renegotiation of the paradigm agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). He has called for economic stimulus packages as part of the bailout and programs to reduce home foreclosures. These measures fly in the face of many current rules of globalization, which prohibit state intervention to redistribute wealth, even when grave inequalities exist. By adopting them at home, the United States would be forced to re-evaluate restrictions placed on developing nations that are attempting to carry out similar programs.

The minority majority that elected Obama overwhelmingly believe the United States should renounce its role as global cop and protector of elite economic interests and rejoin a global community governed by international law. The Obama team has already announced that foreign aid will be reduced due to the economic crisis. Obama supporters must now pressure the new administration to channel the gargantuan military budget into development goals that do far more to stabilize international relations than the U.S. military presence, which has caused resentment throughout the world. Withdrawal from Iraq alone would free up millions of dollars and vastly improve the U.S. image abroad.

Progressives who ignore the new political composition and the potential for it to forge new democratic directions for the country do so at peril of being sidelined in a historic moment. Their cynicism also reflects disdain for precisely the people -- the poor, people of color, youth, the GLBT community and others -- who pinned their hopes for a more inclusive America on these elections.

The responsibility now lies not only on President-elect Obama but on the people who elected him to ensure long-term citizen-based solutions to the problems that confront the new administration. The agenda cannot be to convince them that their hopes were misplaced and their expectations misguided. The change that came about with the triumph of the mobilized minority majority creates a platform to move forward, inside and outside the presidency.

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Laura Carlsen directs the Americas Program of the International Relations Center (IRC), based in Mexico City, Mexico, online at AmericasPolicy.org.

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