Escape Artists?
P. Schultz
March 4, 2012
This is a link to a review of a book entitled The Escape Artists, which claims to be a
book explaining how the Obama administration “repeatedly failed” during the recovery from the great recession. Well, I guess
this might work but what if the Obama administration did not fail at all in its
approach to the recovery? That is, suppose, just for laughs perhaps, that what
this author takes to be “failure” the Obama administration takes to be
“success.” What is lacking, my addled brain tells me, in the accounts of the
Obama administration is any kind of political
analysis. That is, there is no analysis that factors in what might be
called “political variables,” or how the Obama administration approached the
recovery in a way that preserved the power of those elites, those groups who
had power before the great recession. It is as if our analysts think of
political people as “problem solvers,” as those who sought and use power to
solve problems rather than as political people who want to rule.
When Aristotle looked at human beings, he noticed that it
was rule or ruling that defined human beings. That is, he distinguished between
“democrats” and “oligarchs,” for example, both of whom wanted to rule and to
rule to achieve certain ends. Democrats wanted equality and oligarchs wanted
inequality. Hence, democrats wanted the many not wealthy to rule and oligarchs
wanted the few wealthy to rule. But whatever the details, the desire to rule is
what motivates human beings as Aristotle understood us. This is surely part of
what Aristotle meant when he wrote that human beings are political animals:
human beings desire to rule and this desire is at least as basic as our sex
drive or the desire for self-preservation.
But you would never know this from almost any political
analysis today. As noted above, if one views Obama’s measures as meant to
facilitate a recovery, then one can say he and his administration “failed.” However,
if one views Obama’s measures as political, that is, as measures that would
allow Obama and his ilk to rule, then one should not, at least not yet, label
them “failures.” What looks like “failure” from what is called “an economic
point of view” need not look like failure from “a political point of view.”
Hey, this is probably crazy but then “it just might be a
lunatic you’re looking for.”
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