The dreaded S-word, &c.

Jay Nordlinger
Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Some people have called Obama a socialist, and that has other people all shaken up — even “all wee-weed up,” as the president himself might say. I have a couple cents to add to this discussion — and whether these cents are sense, I don’t know.

For some years — starting long, long before Obama — I’ve played a little game. It goes like this: “If Politician X were not an American, but a politician in some other country, what party would he belong to? If his views and outlook were exactly as they are now — if it were merely a question of nationality, or venue — what party would he belong to?”

Well, let’s play with Obama: If he were a Frenchman, what party would he belong to? What would be his natural political home? And if Italian? Why, in either case, he’d be with the Socialists, right? I mean, he certainly wouldn’t be a Conservative or a Christian Democrat. What if he were German? SDP, right?

And take the countries whose main socialist party is a Labor party: Britain, Israel, Norway, etc. (Kind of funny to think of Obama as an Israeli, isn’t it?) What party would he belong to? He’d be a Laborite, right? I mean, no doubt.

Sometimes I play this game with myself (that didn’t sound quite right), particularly with regard to countries I’ve visited, and whose politics I’ve studied: “What party would I belong to?” Sometimes the answer isn’t perfectly clear. Sometimes — most often, I think — it is. (I would go with the most Reaganite party available. And if none were suitable — I’d be an independent, and maybe dream of starting a party of my own.)

“Socialist” is a heavy charge in America, causing the wee to flow. But that’s a little weird. Most of the world’s democrats are socialists, don’t you think? I mean, free-marketeers — genuine free-economy people — are always in the minority. Some portion of the world’s people are democrats — let’s hope it’s a majority, and a big one. And most of those are surely socialist: certainly more than they are Friedmanite (as in Milton) — or Reaganite, or Goldwaterian.

In America, just about everyone on the left — just about everyone who leans toward statism — is in the Democratic party. If your inclinations are socialist, you are probably a Democrat, or vote Democratic. We are a two-party system: with two big ol’ parties. Bella Abzug was a Democrat; Ike Skelton is a Democrat. Kind of a funny system we have.

Bella was once in love with Stalin and Stalinism; I’m not entirely sure she fell completely out of love. As for Ike, he’s basically a Midwestern conservative — like that other Ike, who won a world war and became president.

There’s something I admire Sen. Bernie Sanders for: He calls himself a socialist, by golly. He makes no bones about it. He ran for the Senate as an independent, and the Democrats put up no candidate against him: He stood for them, really. Is that suggestive? No?

We have a Socialist party in America, but it’s very small — if you’re not one of our two big parties, you’re small. I remember that, in one of his presidential campaigns, Jesse Jackson received the endorsement of the Socialist party. He took some needling for this: but he wouldn’t disavow it. I always wanted a reporter to ask him, “Reverend, what are your economic views, broadly speaking? Are you a socialist? A capitalist? Which are you closer to?” The answer might have been interesting.

And I wonder, idly: Does it bother the Socialist party that socialists in America tend to affiliate with the Democratic party, or at least not with the Socialists? It must. (Does it bother the Libertarian party that so many libertarians affiliate with the Republicans? Not sure.) (One point of view is: It’s in the Socialists’ interests for the Democratic party to become more socialist, and in the Libertarians’ interests for the Republican party to become more libertarian.)

I’ve just checked out the website for the Socialist International — slogan, “Progressive Politics for a Fairer World.” Does it make me a total McCarthyite to say that sounds just like our Democrats? A partial McCarthyite? Well, doesn’t it sound like them, exactly?

And check out the names on the Presidium: The president is George Papandreou (of Greece, needless to say). (Nice job there, by the way!) Vice presidents include Bachelet (Chile), Barak (Israel), Brown (Great Britain), and Zapatero (Spain). Are those politicians so different from Obama? From Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and scads of other Democrats? Really? Of course not. It’s just that, in America, when someone says “socialist,” we all go, “Eek, a mouse.”

Someone was saying the other day that Kerry might become secretary of state, in a second Obama term. As far as I’m concerned, that’d be pretty much exactly like Joschka Fischer becoming foreign minister. Kerry and Fischer: They are cut from the same philosophical, political, and attitudinal cloth, aren’t they?

I believe that President Obama, and his closest allies, would like the United States to be a lot more like European social democracies. Is that such an outlandish statement? I think Obama et al. probably think that Norway is fundamentally more just than the United States. Remember the Socialist International slogan: “Progressive Politics for a Fairer World.” That’s the ticket.

The Norwegians gave Obama their most precious gift, the Nobel Peace Prize. Why do I say “the Norwegians”? Well, the Norwegian Nobel Committee is composed of five men and women who were appointed by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. The committee is therefore a reflection of the country’s political culture. The chairman, Thorbjorn Jagland, is a major Laborite, and a former vice president of the Socialist International. Obama is a president after his heart, and the committee’s heart. He is a soulmate of theirs. They share an outlook, a worldview.

Now, this is simply true. (May I say I’ve studied the matter in intimate detail?) You may think it a positive thing, or a negative thing — just possibly, a neutral thing. In any case, it’s true.

Tell you a quick story: I was in Oslo, shortly after the signing of our new “ObamaCare” law. A hotel clerk, learning I was American, said, “We’re so happy for you: so happy that you have health care now.” I just smiled at her.

I don’t think it’s too reprehensibly right-wing to say — too McCarthyite or gap-toothed to say — that Obama is not entirely comfortable with American exceptionalism. Okay? Does that cause wee? You may remember something that happened right after ObamaCare was passed and signed: Obama went out and met the people, and a lady expressed great concern over tax hikes and ruinous statism. Obama gave a long, long answer — rambled for 17 minutes. This received some mockery in the press, even the mainstream press.

And I was struck by the way he began his answer, his ramble — he went right to comparisons with other countries: “Here’s the bottom line. Number one is that we are the only — we have been, up until last week, the only advanced country that allows 15 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance.” America has been exceptional in many ways. And, as a rule, this exceptionalism has worked: which is why millions, and hundreds of millions, have wanted to flee their unexceptional countries to join up.

Some years ago, just before he left the Senate, I interviewed Phil Gramm — the old econ prof. And I asked him whether the Democratic party was, in effect, socialist. (This is long before Obama, mind you.) He said it was, “if by ‘socialist’ you mean the redistribution of wealth, more decisions made by the central government — no question about it. My grandmother thought of the Democrats as the party of the people. What they are is the party of government.” Tell it, Phil.

Are socialists a bane of society? Well . . . look, Sidney Hook was a socialist, and Reaganite hawks like me revered him.

As I’ve long commented, our terms are a little screwed up here in America — our political terms, I mean. We are weird about “liberal.” What we really mean, most of the time, is socialist, or collectivist, or statist, or leftist. That’s why our MSM had difficulty with John Howard: “the right-wing, Bush-supporting, warmongering prime minister of Australia — by the way, leader of the Liberal party.” And we are kind of hopeless with the word “socialist.” All we know is, “We don’t say that here — except when Bernie Sanders wants to.”

Is Obama a socialist? I don’t know — give me a definition. Are socialists limited to those who call themselves socialist, à la Bernie? Bob Novak said, “If you call yourself a journalist, you are a journalist.” I agree (mainly). Does something similar apply here? An old song goes, “I got it bad, and that ain’t good.” I don’t know what Obama is, politically, but — from the point of view of this Reaganite — it ain’t good.