Views > May 25, 2008 > Web Only

The American Left: McGovern, Obama, and ‘transformative’ change

By Ken Brociner

One of the most common complaints among progressives is that we don’t have a vision of how to actually change the world.

But to paraphrase Marx, it seems to me that our goal shouldn’t be to just change the world (especially given the abuse of the word “change” in the current election cycle). Instead we ought to transform it.

And in fact, in recent months, the word “transformative” has been popping up with some frequency - usually in reference to Barack Obama.

Is there any truth to this claim, or should we just chalk it up to hyperbole? Certainly if Obama is elected, he would steer America in a fundamentally different direction than Bush has taken us these past eight years. And the fact that Obama would be the first black president in American history could result in a transformative shift in the way that our nation deals with racial issues. But if we look at the likely contours of an Obama administration in comparison to, say, Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, can we reasonably expect that Obama might be a “transformative” president?

Apart from Obama’s views on NAFTA and other free-trade agreements – which are more enlightened than President Clinton’s were — the modest nature of his economic program simply doesn’t offer convincing evidence that the Illinois senator would be all that different from Clinton (either Clinton for that matter) when it comes to running the economy or setting the nation’s spending priorities. Similarly, Obama has given little indication that his foreign policy would differ significantly from either Bill Clinton’s or George H.W. Bush’s (whose foreign policy Obama recently praised).

Ironically, the Democratic presidential candidate who can most help progressives bring our vision of transformative change into sharper focus is a man who ran for president 36 years ago. By looking back to the unfulfilled promise of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, we can learn some valuable lessons for the long journey ahead.

For starters, we can see what a genuinely transformative political program looks like. McGovern’s platform was nothing less than visionary. In fact, McGovern was the most progressive major party candidate for president in American history.

In 1972 McGovern ran on a platform that not only called for an immediate end to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam (on Inauguration Day!), the senator from South Dakota also proposed an “alternative military budget” that included deep cuts in military spending - with the bulk of the savings going toward efforts to end poverty and fund programs that would guarantee a decent paying job to every American who wanted to work.

According to a Time magazine story from Feb. 14, 1972: “The heart of McGovern’s platform is a plan for income redistribution and tax reform and an alternative defense budget. Perhaps no presidential aspirant since Huey Long has proposed so sweeping an economic change as McGovern’s tax and income program.”

One of the main reasons the Democratic Party wound up nominating such an overtly left-leaning populist was because McGovern’s insurgent candidacy generated a nationwide grassroots movement that was fueled by opposition to the war. That movement was every bit as politically potent as the one that has mobilized support for Barack Obama in 2008.

For those progressives who fear that without a highly charismatic candidate like Obama, it would be next to impossible to mount a successful, substantive campaign for the Democratic nomination, McGovern’s first-round victory at the Democratic convention in Miami in July 1972 provides concrete evidence that it can be done.

While the 1972 campaign had the potential (if McGovern gone on to defeat Nixon) to radically transform American society while also having significant international impact, an Obama victory in 2008 would lead to important reforms in the years ahead.

Looking further down the road, eight years of a successful Obama presidency could serve as a bridge to another potentially transformative moment in American history - in, say, 2016. But in order to win that election, progressives would have to go into overdrive to lay the ideological and political groundwork needed to achieve such far-reaching changes.

For this to occur, the president who follows Obama would need to be ideologically committed – as McGovern was - to a program that includes deep cuts in military spending along with substantial economic redistribution. With the trillions of dollars that would eventually be freed up because of these new policies, we would finally be able to transform not only American society, but much of the rest of the world as well.

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• Reader Comments

  Obama recently made some encouraging remarks about what he means by “change” (finally!). These included reforming the tax code, but I think it was mostly a matter of reversing Republican tax policies. This is certainly no economic transformation. As you say, he has made it known that his foreign policy would be that of previous centrist Presidents rather than that of George W. Bush. He has also mentioned Kennedy and Reagan in this regard. What is amazing is that his most ardent supporters refuse to hear what he says.  They believe that he is the progressive candidate, which seems to be a wish-fulfilling fantasy.  To the extent that anyone knows his policies (which isn’t much, and yes I have studied his website), he seems to be fairly cautious and mainstream, leaning liberal. I think there is a chance that he could be progressive on some issues, but the problem is that no one has much basis for believing that, and some of his supporters admit that they really have no idea what he would actually do as President - except that it would be “something different”.  It would not take much to improve over W or McCain, so I think the picture is fairly positive based on his record, but it won’t be pretty a year from now when the faux progressive blogosphere screams that he has betrayed them, when all he is doing is being the President he said he would be. Not being McGovern, maybe he can even win the election, but we’ll still be an imperialist, militarist nation with the top 1% controlling as much or more wealth than the bottom 95%. I would hope for great improvement in judicial nominations and appointments of competent people to run government agencies, and perhaps an end to the most flagrant civil liberties and human rights abuses.

  Posted by DeanOR on May 25, 2008 at 1:26 PM

  While the 1972 campaign had the potential (if McGovern gone on to defeat Nixon) to radically transform American society while also having significant international impact, an Obama victory in 2008 would lead to important reforms in the years ahead.

  Well, yes, but back in the real world McGovern was crushed in the popular vote and in the Electoral College, meaning that the great majority of the American people rejected McGovern’s Leftist views, regardless of Brociner’s admiration for those views. 

  Now, stop and consider: When was the last time an overt leftist was elected to the office of President?  Exactly never, of course. 

  The only two successful Democratic candidates for President since the Democratic Party went Marxist forty years ago were Carter and Clinton, both non-ideologues as Democrats go.  There is a precise calibration in the degree of leftist tendencies in a Democratic candidate for President and the magnitude of his loss; the further left he is the worse he will do in the general election.  And Obama is the leftmost candidate since McGovern, at least.

  Why is this?  No Communist/Socialist/ Progressive/Liberal revolution has ever been led by the workers in whose name the revolution is conducted.  Lenin’s revolution was financed by Stalin, who robbed banks for the Party.  The leaders of such revolutions are professional agitators and the intelligencia: journalists, professors, lawyers, and such.  Real workers bail when they have the opportunity, as the voters in West Virginia and Kentucky recently did.  You can’t win a presidential election in the United States when your only constituencies are UCLA, NYT, CBS, and Blacks. 

  Brociner may not be perfectly happy with Obama, who fails in the degree of Leftist perfection in comparison to McGovern, but the workers of the United States have BO’s number.  Brociner may take consolation in that Obama’s crushing defeat at the hands of American workers will rival that of his hero, George McGovern.

  Posted by scorp on May 26, 2008 at 6:17 AM

  The magnitude of McGovern’s loss to Nixon in 1972 was due to a wide variety of factors - many of which had nothing to do with McGovern’s progressive politics. This is not to say that McGovern would have won had it not been for, say, the terrible damage his reputation suffered as a result of the fiasco that resulted from his choice of Thomas Eagleton as his running mate - to name only one of the non-ideological factors that contributed to his landslide defeat.

  But really, scorp, if you honestly believe that “the Democratic Party went Marxist forty years ago”, I would suggest you brush up a bit on the basics of political ideologies and American history.

  Posted by kenbrociner on May 26, 2008 at 9:51 AM

  Duplicate post withdrawn.

  Posted by scorp on May 26, 2008 at 6:44 PM

  Ken -

  The magnitude of McGovern’s loss to Nixon in 1972 was due to a wide variety of factors - many of which had nothing to do with McGovern’s progressive politics.

  Why, sure!  The Soviet Union collapsed as a result of Socialist corruption, inefficiency, and incompetence, in addition to Marx’s faulty philosophy, and I have no trouble attributing McGovern’s collapse to additional factors characteristics of McGovern’s Socialist ideology.  Ditto Dukakis.  Ditto Mondale.  Ditto Gore.  Ditto Kerry.  Did you actually read what I wrote?

  Kerry is the classic case of moral corruption combined with Socialist ideology.  Kerry voted against the Gulf War, which was undoubtedly his core belief.  But in the event, the Gulf War was one of the most brilliant feats of arms in history (thanks to John Boyd and Dick Cheney).  So, after 09/11 Kerry did not want to be on the wrong side (bad for his Presidential prospects, you know?), so he voted for the Iraq War, an act of political expediency in violation of his core anti-war beliefs.  Then he voted for funding the war before he voted against funding the war (Or do I have that backwards?  Whatever.) Then he ran for President as a war hero and an anti-war hero. 

  Now I am sure that you Socialist ideologues have no problems with Kerry’s moral and rational gyrations and flip-flops in pursuit of your Socialist objectives, but Socialist ideologues are less intelligent than American workers - and that is why you keep losing elections.  And BO has less substance and more Socialist ideology than anyone in recent memory, an honor he won from the previous least-qualified-ever presidential candidate, John Kerry. 

  I would suggest you brush up a bit on the basics of political ideologies and American history. 

  Please don’t worry.  I took honors in American and world history before becoming an engineer, and I need no instruction from you on the subjects.

  I am sure that it would be technically more accurate to label contemporary leftist ideology as Gramscian rather than Marxist, but that hardly negates my observations.  Gramsci’s cultural communism is not doing too well as the leftist media decays, the Episcopal Church divides, and left-wing politicians pretend to be anything other than what they are.

  Posted by scorp on May 26, 2008 at 6:47 PM

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Also by Ken Brociner

• The American Left:  Does a Nationwide ‘Progressive Movement’ Actually Exist?
  
• The American Left: Dogmatic rhetoric is self-defeating
  
• The American Left: What Progressives Can Learn from Obama
  
• The American Left: McGovern, Obama, and ‘transformative’ change
  
• The American Left: A Tale of Two Conferences
  
• The American Left: Liberals, Progressives and the Left