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Obama's Revolutionary "Vision"

AIM Report | By Cliff Kincaid | January 5, 2009

On the Fox News program "Hannity & Colmes" in December, analyst Dick Morris made the absolutely critical point that President Bush has taken the country so far to the left, in terms of his socialist-style Wall Street bailout program and his integration of the U.S. economy into a new emerging international financial order, that anything Barack Obama does in this area seems almost mainstream. This is because what we were expecting from Obama we are now getting from Bush. So Obama doesn't look so radical anymore.

This point must be understood in order to have an appreciation of the "moderation" of the new Obama Administration.

Interestingly, some of Obama's strongest "progressive" support-ers are being brutally honest about what is happening. On the Rag Blog website, former Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd defended the "conservative appointments" of the President-elect and said that they are part of a deliberate strategy to "feint to the right" and "move left." He explained, "Any other strategy invites sure defeat."

Rather than immediately propose cutting the military budget, for example, Rudd suggests that Obama will pursue security "through diplomacy and application of nascent international law" and lay the groundwork for eventual defense cuts.

Rudd also declares that left-wingers questioning Obama's cabinet picks should "Look to the second level appointments. There's a whole govt. in waiting that Podesta has at the Center for American Progress. They're mostly progressives, I'm told (except in military and foreign policy). Cheney was extremely effective at controlling policy by putting his people in at second-level positions."

Podesta is John Podesta, a co-chair of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, who runs the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress.

In terms of the Bush legacy, a story by Tyler Bridges of McClatchy News Service captured the terrible reality of what has been happening: "With the Bush administration's Treasury Department resorting to government bailout after government bailout to keep the U.S. economy afloat, leftist governments and their political allies in Latin America are having a field day, gloating one day and taunting Bush the next for adopting the types of interventionist government policies that he's long condemned."

The story quoted John Ross, adviser to the socialist Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela, as saying about the Bush Administration, "They have abandoned every policy that they've advocated that other governments should follow over the past 20 years. And they've adopted the measures that they've condemned other governments for taking."

The Marxist Influence

Based on Obama's associations and influences, which we can document over most of his life and career, one must realistically conclude that he is a revolutionary Marxist. AIM focused on Obama's childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, the communist who was a formative influence over Obama for about eight years of his life. During the presidential campaign, however, the media as well as the John McCain-for-president campaign refused to highlight this.

As Andrew C. McCarthy noted in October on National Review Online, "The mainstream press steadfastly refuses to delve into Barack Obama's radicalism, his Leftist revolutionary collaboration with self-identified communists from Frank Marshall Davis to Bill Ayers… Petrified of being smeared as a racist, McCain has never mentioned Davis, whom Obama identifies only as 'Frank' in his memoir. And, of course, utterance of Jeremiah Wright's name is verboten in McCain circles, notwithstanding that his Trinity Church, where Obama was a 20-year member, is a font of Marxist Black Liberation Theology and thus critical to our understanding of Obama's invocations of 'change' and 'spreading the wealth.'"

The "spreading the wealth" comment was one of those rare moments during the campaign when Obama's revolutionary Marxist views were displayed for all to see.

Red Influence On Obama

Paul Kengor, author of The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, and professor of political science at Grove City College, wrote a column during the campaign noting that Obama's "spread the wealth" comment had to be understood in the context of examining the writings of Frank Marshall Davis, "the communist journalist-agitator who mentored Obama in Hawaii." Kengor explained, "While much attention has been paid to Obama's relationship with communist-terrorist Bill Ayers-and rightly so-much less attention has been devoted to Davis. That's a mistake, since Obama was influenced more by Davis than Ayers."

Kengor cited a Davis column, a January 26, 1950 piece, "Free Enterprise or Socialism?," in which "Davis hoped that America and its economy were at a turning point, as if a kind of perfect storm was brewing that could at last allow him and his comrades to realize their dreams of a socialist America. They would need to trash the current free-enterprise system and argue for a change to something else. Of course, they could not fully disclose themselves, their beliefs, and their intentions, although any thinking observer could easily read between the lines. The key was to gain the support of the people who didn't know any difference."

This almost seems like a blueprint for Obama's campaign and the course he is now on.

Obama A Centrist?

What we are witnessing is a process that is fooling a number of people and which is clearly designed to pull the rug out from under the prospect of political opposition to the Obama agenda. It seems like some conservatives are eager to raise the white flag of surrender and even support the Obama administration. William Kristol of The Weekly Standard declared, "Fine with me," when discussing the nomination of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He thought she would turn out to be fine on Iraq and Iran, which seemed to be all that mattered to him.

David Horowitz, the editor of Frontpagemag.com and a former Marxist-turned-conservative, said, "Now, as president-elect, he has just formed the most conservative Democratic foreign policy team since John F. Kennedy, one well to the right of Bill Clinton."

One of Obama's more troubling associates is Anthony Lake, a Democratic Party foreign policy specialist who made headlines by doubting whether Alger Hiss, the United Nations founder and a U.S. State Department official, was really guilty of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. Lake is not a figure from Obama's distant past; rather, he has been one of Obama's closest foreign policy advisers for the last two years. In the 1980s, he had controversial ties to the pro-Marxist think tank known as the Institute for Policy Studies, which was dedicated to the establishment of revolutionary Marxist and anti-American regimes in Central and Latin America and elsewhere. He was a national security adviser to Bill Clinton but lost out on a job as CIA director when he voiced those doubts that Hiss had been a Soviet spy.

Melanie Phillips of the UK Spectator believes that commentators have been tricked by some of Obama's so-called "moderate" or "centrist" appointments into believing that Obama has changed his far-left political views. She points to the New Zeal blog of New Zealand anti-communist researcher Trevor Loudon, who unearthed the comments by former Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd quoted earlier-to the effect that Obama is proceeding on an incremental basis to accomplish his radical objectives.

Loudon, the first researcher to reveal that Obama's mentor "Frank" was the communist Frank Marshall Davis, has concluded that Obama is now pursuing "covert socialist tactics" that are even confusing conservatives about his real objectives.

The Communist Party People's Weekly World told its readers that in order to "consolidate his victory and move ahead, his administration must build a strong record of accomplishments, working with a Congress in which Republicans, though weakened, continue to exercise considerable leverage, and responding to concerns of the 46 percent who did not vote for him. This requires considerable tactical skill and thoughtfulness. It's entirely logical and sensible that Obama would pick figures from the broad political center for Cabinet seats requiring Senate confirmation and other prominent positions."

Veteran left-wing operative Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America's Future says, "There's a hope that he is using very experienced people with centrist credentials to drive a very bold, progressive program." But he must know it is not only a hope but a strategy.

Semantics As A Weapon

Part of the perception problem, certainly in the economic realm, is the common but fallacious assumption that Big Business and Wall Street are Republican entities. Hence, Timothy Geithner of the Federal Reserve, who is a member of the Wall Street crowd and close to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman Sachs CEO, becomes by definition somebody whom conservatives can automatically respect. Geithner is Obama's pick to be Treasury Secretary.

The respected and usually reliable conservative writer Mona Charen wrote on National Review Online that "As president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank he [Geithner] has been knee-deep in bailouts over the past three months. But that datum doesn't distinguish him from the Bush administration or anyone else in the mainstream of America's economic elite." She concludes that Geithner and others constitute a "centrist" economic team.

Taking a similar tack, former Bush deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, writing in the November 28 Wall Street Journal, described Geithner as "respected" and "mainstream."

But these selections have to be understood in the context of current events. President Bush is providing Obama with an opportunity to continue and expand upon a massive effort to socialize the U.S. economy. This is what Obama wanted to do all along.

As columnist and commentator Diana West wrote on http://www.dianawest.net: "I think this strange rapture on the Right over what is being touted as a 'centrist' Obama cabinet is evidence of the deep confusion over the political spectrum itself that has resulted from eight Bush White House years of liberalism: ever-expanding government, still-open borders, nation-building galore, PC policies against 'extremism,' and of course this latest, extremely dislocating and most shameful rush to socialize the US economy."

Think about it from Obama's perspective. He tried desperately to conceal his Marxist background, especially his connection to Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis, and his socialist leanings.

But the façade started to unravel near the end of the campaign when Joe the Plumber got him to admit to a philosophy of spreading the wealth around. The McCain campaign did try to seize upon this. But the financial crisis, which emerged just six weeks before the election, seemed to convince many people that Obama's Marxism was less of a concern than the collapse of America's capitalist system, which they blamed on the Republicans.

Hilmar von Campe, who grew up under the Nazis and wrote the book, Defeating the Totalitarian Lie, offers comparisons between Nazi Germany and America today. "Our nation has elected an anti-American left-wing radical if not Communist to be president of the United States," he warns. "We better begin to plan now for the reality and not for a democratic daydream. The ideological war has reached us at the top of our power structure threatening our very existence from inside."

The economic crisis, in which people have experienced losses of as much as 50 percent in their retirement accounts, was the key to Obama's victory.

In a December 4 column in Investor's Business Daily, J.T. Young noted that "Saddled with some of the worst circumstances to befall a presidential nominee, John McCain was, against all odds, doing well as late as September."

He explained the timing of the crash and its impact on the November 4 elections: "According to Gallup's national tracking poll, McCain overtook Obama on Sept. 6 and on Sept. 8 led 49%-44%. He continued to hold the lead, and 'blue states' such as Michigan appeared in play. Democratic angst was palpable that they might once more 'snatch defeat from the jaws of presidential victory.'

"Then on Sept. 14, America's financial system appeared ready to collapse. The New York Times called it 'one of the most extraordinary days in Wall Street's history,' and at 9:30 that evening the Federal Reserve announced efforts to prevent a crash.

"The day before, Gallup's Sept. 13 tracking poll showed McCain still clinging to a 47% - 45% lead.

"By Sept. 17, McCain had relinquished the lead, and no major national poll showed him leading again after Sept. 21-just a week after the financial sector debacle began."

But Young, who served in the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, did not highlight the role of Treasury Secretary Paulson in this unfolding debacle.

As AIM has documented, Paulson is the one who sparked the panic by convincing Bush to go public on September 18 with demands to Congress for hundreds of billions of bailout dollars. China's role in the U.S. economy-and its threat to cut off lending to U.S. banks-seemed to be the catalyst for Paulson's actions.

Obama must be thinking how incredible it is that he can pursue a socialist course as president by relying on Wall Street and Big Business figures, rather than having to appoint left-wing "progressives" from his far-left base who might engender opposition from the Republican Party and be potentially controversial or difficult to get confirmed. Indeed, Obama is forever in debt to the forces on Wall Street which collapsed the economy at the best time possible to benefit him politically. He is in debt more ways than one, by virtue of the fact that he took so much of their money to get elected.

In terms of foreign policy, the same sleight-of-hand can be seen, and once again some conservatives are falling for it. "The losers in the Obama administration, as of now, are Joe Biden and Susan Rice, favorites of the left," wrote Fred Barnes on the website of The Weekly Standard. "Biden's role in foreign policy is likely to be minimal with Clinton at the State Department. She'll squash him if he sticks his head up. Rice, an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and an Obama campaign adviser, may wind up as United Nations ambassador, a highly visible but inconsequential post. She'll have little influence." In fact, Rice did get that post.

But Rice is one of Obama's closest advisers, and along with Anthony Lake ran his foreign policy operation during the campaign. She is a true window into Obama's real thinking on foreign policy issues because she has been so close to him for so long. Like Obama, she is a big booster of the U.N. and its causes. And he has made her position into one of cabinet rank. This was a big reward for her dedicated work on his behalf.

The Barnes claim that Biden will suffer because of Hillary doesn't hold up and doesn't even make any sense. They share the same globalist philosophy. Both, for example, favor ratification of various U.N. treaties, including the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which turns over critical oil, gas and mineral resources in the oceans to the U.N.

Hillary has a long association with the World Federalists and Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, a world government advocate who served in her husband's administration, while Biden's pro-U.N. credentials are just as strong. This year, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, he held stacked hearings in favor of the Law of the Sea Treaty and passed it out of committee, with the support of the ranking Republican member, Senator Richard Lugar, and the Bush Administration.

"As for Hillary," wrote Mona Charen, "well, she is no Jeane Kirkpatrick." But on the other hand, Charen maintained, "she is not Carl Levin or Dennis Kucinich or Anthony Lake or Samantha Power."

In fact, Samantha Power, who left the Obama campaign for a while after bad-mouthing Hillary Clinton as a "monster," is back on the Obama transition team handling State Department issues. In any case, the views of Mrs. Clinton are virtually indistinguishable from those of Anthony Lake and Samantha Power in the area of expanding U.N. power in world affairs.

On the surface, some picks do look good. Consider, for example, General James Jones, Obama's choice for national security adviser, who is a four-star Marine general. But a military figure of this stature in the administration will be absolutely necessary if Obama has any hope of pushing through the Law of the Sea Treaty, as he has vowed to do. Indeed, the Bush Administration ordered Navy Admirals to go to Capitol Hill to sell that same treaty earlier this year.

The Republican Targets

In terms of propaganda value, if Republican Senators are convinced by people like Barnes and Charen that Obama is really a moderate or centrist on foreign policy, they may be more inclined to vote to ratify the treaties he sends to the Senate. Keep in mind that the Democrats will need 67 votes to pass treaties. And that means some Republicans will have to be convinced to go along with the program. What better way to get those votes than to create the public perception that Obama is a moderate?

Whether Lake or Power ultimately gets a high-level job is really beside the point. They have already been very influential behind-the-scenes. And there is no reason to believe they disagree with any of Obama's picks.

In the end, as Obama has emphasized, he is responsible for the "vision" and he expects his team to carry that out. Obama will give the orders and even a four-star General will have to obey.