By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 6th, 2012 
Cynicism is a key cultural characteristic of the political right today. It’s aggressive, different from cynicisms past, much more than the enervating political orientation and questionable political tactic that I studied in the Reagan era. It is central to the “conservative” brand, first clearly presented at “fair and balanced” Fox News. It was shockingly revealed in the speech Mitt Romney gave to the Associated Press editors on Wednesday. I fear that this cynicism has also invaded the Supreme Court and think it is quite apparent in the response to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida.
Romney’s speech pivoted around the open mic exchange between Presidents Obama and Medevev of Russia. Romney sees in this the key that can unlock the mystery that is the Obama presidency:
“Barack Obama’s exchange with the Russian President raises all kinds of serious questions: What exactly does President Obama intend to do differently once he is no longer accountable to the voters? Why does “flexibility” with foreign leaders require less accountability to the American people? And, on what other issues will he state his true position only after the election is over? …
He wants us to re-elect him so we can find out what he will actually do…
With all the challenges the nation faces, this is not the time for President Obama’s hide and seek campaign…
Unlike President Obama, you don’t have to wait until after the election to find out what I believe in – or what my plans are. I have a pro-growth agenda that will get our economy back on track – and get Americans back to work.”
Given the unsteadiness of Romney’s political commitments, this is an odd attack, as was noted by the talking heads on cable after the speech, but I think much more troubling is the way that Romney used a relativity trivial informal exchange between two presidents to provide a cynical account of Obama’s “hide and seek” politics.” This explains the basic pattern of criticism of Obama that Romney, his Republican rivals . . .
Read more: The Aggressive Cynicism of Mitt Romney and His Party: A Cynical Society Update Part 2
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 20th, 2012 
 This is the third in a series of reflections on the Obama Presidency. The first two were on governing with Democrats and governing with Republicans.
Barack Obama has been doing well recently. The public is beginning to experience the economic recovery. Job growth and consumer spending are up, a bit. Obama is shaping the political agenda on his own terms, with the full support of his party. At year’s end, he negotiated more resolutely with the Republican Congress, extending the payroll tax cut thus far for a couple of months, with every indication that it will be extended for a year. He has the political advantage on this, along with other legislative issues, as reported in The New York Times. He refused to be forced into making an abrupt decision in the Keystone XL oil pipeline. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, is challenging the legality of voter ID laws in the old confederacy. His job approval rating is up, as the Republican’s in Congress approval is down.
I think that the improvement in Obama’s standing is related to the change in the public debate, away from the obsession with deficits and cutting, toward jobs, inequality and social justice. This is not only a matter of changed tactics, but of a transformed political environment. Obama can thank Occupy Wall Street for making this possible. It’s an OWS not a Tea Party environment now. But it’s not just a matter of the environment. Obama also has contributed in a significant way. He made these issues his own in his Osawatomie, Kansas speech. I agree with David Howell, it was one of his best. He again revealed his capacity as story-teller-in-chief.
Howell liked the speech because it spoke to a pressing problem and its sociological consequence and political cause: “the massive and continued growth in inequality, linking this to the collapse of the middle class and to the obstructionism of . . .
Read more: President Obama vs. the Republican Congress
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 16th, 2012 
It’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day and I am thinking about the Obama Presidency. I reject the simpleminded criticisms of Obama in the name of King, such as those presented by Cornell West. I think we have to look closely at the political challenges the President has faced. In an earlier post, I assessed Obama’s political performance on the political economy working with a Democratic Congress. Today I consider his work with Republicans. I think it is noteworthy that he kept focus on long-term goals, even as he experienced ups and downs in the day-to-day partisan struggles. I believe he kept his “eyes on the prize.” Although King’s project is incomplete, Obama is, albeit imperfectly, working to keep hope alive. This is more apparent as Obama is now working against the Republicans, pushed by the winds of Occupy Wall Street, the topic for another day. It is noteworthy, though, that it was even the case during the less than inspiring events of the past year.
Responding to the Republican victories in the 2010 elections, the President had to face a fundamental fact: elections do indeed have consequences. While his election provided the necessary mandate for his economic policies and for healthcare reform, the Republican subsequent gains in the House and Senate, leading to a smaller majority for the Democrats in the Senate and the loss of the House, empowered the Republican calls for change in policies. And, even though divided government became a reality and gridlock was the basic condition, action was imperative. The sluggish economy, long-term budget deficits and the debt ceiling defined the agenda after the bi-election. The approaches of the Republicans and the Democrats could not have been more different.
Obama had a choice, to fight the Republicans head on, or to try to accommodate the new political situation and seek compromise. He chose compromise. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it particularly successful as a political tactic.
The Republicans made clear that their first priority was to turn Obama into a one-term president, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell infamously put . . .
Read more: Thinking about Obama on MLK Day: Governing with Republicans?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, January 4th, 2012 
It’s déjà vu all over again, a nursery rhyme with a political twist.
“The Republican Party sat on the wall. The Republican Party had a great fall. All the Party horses and all the Party men couldn’t put the Party back together again.”
Last night in the Iowa caucuses, the Reagan revolution died before our eyes, and no one seems to be noticing. The fundamental components of the Republican Party, forged together by Ronald Reagan in1980, are no longer part of a whole, ripped apart by the Tea Party and its unintended consequences. The only thing that may keep the party going is hatred of Barack Obama.
“Reaganism” was never a coherent position. It involved tensions that were unified by the power of Reagan’s sunny televisual personality.
In 1991, in The Cynical Society, I observed:
“The ‘conservative mood’ was not a … natural creation. It was constructed … by Reagan himself…his package brought together a new combination of symbols and policies…Fetal rights, a balanced-budget amendment, advanced nuclear armaments, tax and social-welfare cuts, and anti-communism do not necessarily combine. Reagan combined them.
As the satirical columnist, Russell Baker glibly put it, some supported Reagan so that he could be Reagan (the ideologues – this was the well-known refrain of the New Right), others supported him so that he could be the Gipper (the nice guy) he portrayed in an old Hollywood football film. But both sorts of supporters, who were fundamentally in conflict, created the new conservative mood. They constituted the Reagan mandate. Reagan did not represent a diverse constituency. He created it as the political majority.”
Neo-conservatives concerned then about the Communist threat, now are concerned with Islamofascism. Christian moralists, libertarians and corporate conservatives conflict on many issues. Reagan minimized this through his media presentation of self in political life.
The coalition persisted through the one term presidency . . .
Read more: Iowa: The Republicans Fall Apart
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 28th, 2011 
There have been three distinct phases of Barack Obama’s presidency, thus far. There was the period when the President worked with the Democratic Party dominated Congress, the period when he attempted to work with the Republican Party dominated Congress, and the present period, with Obama fighting against the Republican Party dominated Congress and starting his re-election campaign. He has engaged in different tactics in each of these phases, geared to the prevailing political environment, but he has also revealed himself as being a political leader with a long-term strategy meant to change the environment, not simply adapt to it.
While most political coverage over the last three years has been focused on the tactics and the day-to-day ups and downs, serious assessment of the first term of the Obama presidency requires evaluation of the strategy, and its successes, failures and continued promise. President Obama is a principled politician with clear commitments, even if without a unifying simple ideology. He is a centrist, working to move the center to the left, trying to make the American Dream more inclusive and politics more civil, serious and participatory. He is working for a major political transformation, as I have explored carefully in my book, Reinventing Political Culture and have examined here at Deliberately Considered as well. In this post and in two future posts, I will review what we have learned about his attempt to move the political center to the left, specifically as it involves economic policies and social reform. I will review other dimensions of the Obama transformation in further posts as the Presidential election season develops.
Obama with Democrats:
Given the global crisis that greeted the new president, the economy was the initial focus of Obama and his administration. Even before he became president and then in the early days of his . . .
Read more: President Barack Obama: Governing with Democrats
By Gary Alan Fine, November 21st, 2011 
 One of my first contributions to Deliberately Considered was an essay on Glenn Beck (“Beck and Call”), a commentator who at that moment (February 2, 2011) was riding high. But who hears Glenn Beck today? He has a website that requires a subscription. In the past year, Mr. Beck has become marginal to the public debate, and perhaps in becoming marginal, the sharp fringe of the Tea Party has become so as well. He was the tribune for the aggrieved during the Tea Party Summer.
Last winter – back in the day – Glenn Beck was a roaring tiger. His claws were thought so bloody that when he attacked Frances Fox Piven, one of the leading activist scholars of social movements, a string of professional organizations rose to the lady’s defense, including the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. After the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, many progressives concluded that Professor Piven was next in line for assassination from the rightists roiled and boiled by Beck.
Today we frame Glenn Beck’s symmetry as less fearful. Those who worried that Professor Piven was walking on a knife’s edge might be surprised that her latest book, published in August, is entitled Who’s Afraid of Frances Fox Piven: The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate. Glenn Beck has become Professor Piven’s marketing tool. Without Glenn Beck’s opposition, Piven’s writings might seem less essential. (As a fellow former president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, I am pleased that her deservedly influential writings have become essential. I am attempting to find someone of equal stature to hate me. The placid readers of this flying seminar know that I try my best.)
However, my point is . . .
Read more: Glenn Beck, Prophet?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, November 11th, 2011 
What do these people want? What are they advocating? In the opinion of many, including Gary Alan Fine in his last post, it is easy to discern what OWS is against, but unclear what they are for. They know how to say no, he knows, but he wonders if they can say yes. He thinks this both about OWS and The Tea Party, as a detached but sympathetic observer of both.
Looking at OWS up close, taking part in a small but significant activity, I think the positive commitments of OWS are actually quite clear, and in marked contrast to The Tea Party. As I maintained in The Politics of Small Things, the democracy is in the details. I had an opportunity to look at some details in a corner of Zuccotti Park, joining the OWS Think Tank.
Many of the OWS activists who have taken part in The Flying Seminar sessions are active in the Think Tank. We started working together at The New School teach in. They have been among the active members of the seminar. I have visited them a couple of times in Zuccotti Park, and earlier this week, on Monday, I joined them in their work there. It was an illuminating afternoon.
From noon to 6:00, the Think Tank conducts discussion sessions of a special sort on a variety of topics. Many different people facilitate the discussions. I responded to an email call for help and volunteered to do my part. The workshop topics range from the quite general, to the immediate and practical. They hope to inform decision-making in the park and to further understanding of problems of broad public concern, and even contribute to the formulation of policy positions and recommendations. It’s one of the spaces where the big questions about the occupation are being answered in daily practice, a striking case of the politics of small things. It confirmed for me that in politics the means are a significant part of its . . .
Read more: The Clear, Present and Positive Goals of Occupy Wall Street
By Gary Alan Fine, November 4th, 2011 
 Grievance is the electricity of the powerless. It energizes masses. Yet, lacking bright vision, cursing the overlords cannot become a political program. Cures need calm confidence. Complaint awakens protest, but it is insufficient for transformation. Escaping dark plagues begins collective action; spying Canaan must follow.
In our dour moment in which citizens of all stripes are taking to the streets, the plazas, and the parks, we see accusing placards, but no persuasive manifestos. As sociologist William Gamson has pointed out, the first step is to demonstrate an “injustice frame” as a precursor to action. Point taken, but it is a start.
Despite their manifold and manifest differences, the polyester Tea Party and the scruffy Occupy Wall Street protests have at least this in common: palpable anger and resentment. We feel at the mercy of distant puppet masters, and elites in pinstripes and in gowns have much to answer for.
Neither the Partiers nor the Occupiers are wrong to recognize the sway of elites, even if they are not sufficiently aware of those powers that stand behind their own movements: David Koch, the Alliance for Global Justice, and FreedomWorks. Anti-elites are the playthings of the powerful.
Yet, despite their backers, both the Partiers and the Occupiers are solidly 99%’ers. Both radicals of the left and upstarts of the right think that there is not so much difference between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration. The oil establishment and the financial services establishment could share breakfast of caviar and champagne, discussing whether their interests are better served by this president or the last one. Peasants with pitchforks are on no guest lists, whether they dress in denim or dacron. Despite partisan bickering, it is easy to feel that on the basic issues of security and capital the gap between competing establishments is small. I am struck by how little fundamental restructuring, hope and change has brought. The same powers will control health care, energy development, and financial services.
The fatal illusion of the Tea Party Movement is that America could . . .
Read more: The Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street: Unhappy Warriors
By Harrison Schultz, October 24th, 2011 
I unofficially joined the Occupy Wall Street movement on August 2nd of 2011, not because I wanted to demand anything from the government, but because I wanted to use what I had learned over the past several years as a data analyst at a global advertising agency to somehow attack the system. I had, and still have I suppose, an agenda to somehow turn corporations upon one another, make them divide and conquer themselves so that we (I) can stop working for them and so that they’ll start working for us. Many of my comrades abhorred my ideas and proposals, like the one I had discussed in a private email to Micah White about having corporations actually fund us while we camped out. However, no one told me I was unwelcome, and I actually have met other individuals who found my ideas appealing. I, furthermore, have yet to be told that I am unwelcome at camp in spite of the fact that the same email thread was publicly leaked, and I have since been accused of being a corporate stooge by several conspiracy theorists with blogs. The movement is tolerant of diverse and extreme opinions, which is its strength as well as the reason why there isn’t a coherent message. Or is there?
I’ll confess that I never really imagined that Occupy Wall Street would actually happen. I knew the turn out wouldn’t be anywhere near the 20,000 that Adbusters had called for. There had been 200 at most at the New York City General Assembly meetings leading up to the 17th, and the occupywallst.org website didn’t even begin receiving more than a few thousand visitors until the 17th. I didn’t bring my sleeping bag to Wall Street. I ran home and returned to the park with it. Waking up in Liberty Plaza on the morning of Sunday, September 18th, was surreal. I thought the cause was lost on the morning of September 20th while in my office cubicle I typed out an unanswered email for help from the New School community as I . . .
Read more: The View From Zuccotti Park: On the Post-Political Thrust of OWS
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 21st, 2011 
Occupy Wall Street reminds my friend, colleague, and frequent “co-conspirator,” Elzbieta Matynia, and me of our long term engagement in the democratic opposition and alternative cultural movements in East and Central Europe. There and then, we coordinated an international seminar, before and after 1989, between scholars and activists, concerning the theoretical and practical problems of democracy, “The Democracy Seminar.” As we observe Occupy Wall Street with a great deal of interest, appreciation and in support, we are moved to act.
We therefore have proposed to The New School community and the activists in OWS the creation of a new seminar, as a place for mutual learning and discussion that can inform action, The Flying Seminar (the name inspired by a dissident academic program during the late 70s and 80s in Poland). The idea came out of an informal chat with one of OWS’ outreach people at Zuccotti Park. Tomorrow at 3:00 pm, we will have a planning meeting and a first conversation, as part of an Occupy Wall Street Teach In at The New School.
We propose to organize a series of portable conversations with key participants and dedicated observers in various movements and actions in the United States and beyond, which could help to crystallize the differences and parallels between projects of resistance then and now. We had in mind, for example, the Civil Rights Movement , SDS, the 1968 movements in Europe, the second wave feminist movement in the States, the Solidarity Movement in Poland, The Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa (its peaceful and its militant side), the Green Revolution in Iran, and the Arab Spring. Our goal will be to facilitate discussion about movements past, from here and elsewhere, as a way of guiding the future of movements present. The hope is that this discussion could help address the key question of what is to be done now.
We agree with many . . .
Read more: A Flying Seminar and Additional Reflections on the GOP, BHO and OWS
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