President-elect Barack Obama’s first major decision following his election, his selection of Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff, displays a troubling trend in his campaign. The last eight years have been so bad that people now look back to the Clinton administration with awe, completely overlooking the major flaws and errors of what turned out to be 2 terms of an uninspiring presidency.
Barack Obama has been surrounding himself with former Clinton aides – Emanuel was a staffer responsible for ramming NAFTA through Congress – and now seems poised to repeat the same mistakes of his party.
Emanuel was responsible for organizing weekly strategy sessions regarding how best to pressure members of Congress into approving NAFTA during the Clinton administration. In a column for The Wall Street Journal, he demanded that Congress pass the China Free Trade Deal which Economic Policy Institute believes could cost the United States up to 1 million jobs. Emanuel agrees that NAFTA has not lived up to expectations, but he refuses to recant his stance on “free-trade.” He, like almost all politicians, is as much a proponent of job-killing trade liberalization now as he ever was.
One of the key arguments against Barack Obama has always been his inexperience. Barack Obama has relatively little experience in American politics. The President-elect promised to surround himself with capable and experienced leaders – such as Joe Biden. Unfortunately his first cabinet level selection is a politician with a long history of being in the pocket of lobbyists, corporate PACs and Wall Street firms.
Perhaps Emanuel is no longer a hard-line Democrat sympathizer and is willing to work “from the center” as Obama has promised. Perhaps after making his money on Wall Street (to the tune of tens of millions in just a few years) he no longer wishes to prop up his personal fortune. Perhaps Rahm Emanuel is the best man for the job. Or, perhaps Barack Obama simply chose a Democrat with name recognition and a Washington pedigree.
More people voted in the 2008 Presidential Election than in any election in history. The nation voted for change, hope, peace and prosperity. What they may be given is the same regime, under a different name. Appointing Emanuel as the Chief of Staff, a man who advocates outsourcing and the disintegration of America’s manufacturing base through NAFTA, is not the change we were promised. We need strong leadership and an administration that has America’s best interest at mind, instead of leaders pushing their own ideals at the cost of our country’s sovereignty.
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