I have supported Barack Obama in his presidential campaign since I had the opportunity to read both of his published books earlier this year. I agree with the sentiments of Joe Klein, who asked rhetorically whether Dreams from my Father was the greatest autobiography ever written by a politician. Obama's other book, The Audacity of Hope, which sets out his political philosophy, is also a work of remarkable political and philosophical accomplishment. For what it is worth, I have already opined in other posts that Obama has the finest intellect to approach the White House since the Enlightenment.
Given such remarkable developments, it pleases me that the most visited posting on this blog is Barack Obama's early poems published on 8 February this year. Reading these remarkable early poems -- written when Obama was about nineteen -- first alerted me to the suspicion that, as Jonathan Raban has expressed elsewhere, whereas most political candidates are politicians who try their hand at writing, Obama is a writer attempting to be a politician.
A brilliant philosophical and literary intellect doesn't, of course, mean that Obama will make a great president, though I suspect it will be, at the very least, a fascinating and historically important administration. The most interesting question, for me at least, is which of the two strains of left wing tradition will he follow? Will his administration reflect the authoritarian, interventionist philosophy of an administration such as New Labour in the UK? Or might it follow instead an older classical liberal creed like, for example, that of Gladstone, who placed greater emphasis on expanded individual freedoms, civil rights, increasing the range the choices of the individual, and who considered it his sacred duty to bind Leviathan.
Both philosophies are implicit in Obama's written work. He is clearly a supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal, and of what he believes should be a constructive interventionism. But he also demonstrates a formidable understanding of the wider benefits of the free market, a view which he underlines by comparing the historical material advances of America's working classes with the living standards of other states which he has come to know at first hand -- such as Indonesia (where he lived for several years as a child with his mother and stepfather) and Kenya, the land of his father.
In this arena, it will be interesting to see how Obama handles the current crisis in the U.S. motor industry, and the proposed huge loan of $25 billion thought necessary to tide General Motors, Chrysler and Ford over the current crisis. For what it is worth, as an advocate of the Gladstonian tradition, I would not support massive state funds to three failing companies -- companies which were failing even in the recent boom times -- but instead do everything I could to limit the damage to the workers in that industry as it undergoes fundamental restructuring. Such restructuring, which would take place largely under free market pressures as viable elements are sold off and other car production companies took up the slack, would move the motor industry away from a few quasi-monopolistic behemoths to a larger number of smaller, more efficient and profitable units. In the shorter term, that would undoubtedly entail a loss of jobs in the industry, at least until the smaller units could begin to expand again. Those reconstruction pains to workers are what the administration should seek to ameliorate through state help if necessary.
A huge loan to failing companies is more likely to drain away funds from other areas (such as green energy investment) and -- at the most -- put off the evil day. Meanwhile, the chances are that the viability of the three big motor corporations will decrease further, and the "investment" will be lost. After that it will simply become a huge charge on further generations which will have to be recouped through higher tax.
Because I am British, I tend to view politics within a British political frame. It does not seem to me a coincidence that the greatest intellects in the British progressive tradition combined a left wing social agenda (Gladstone, for example, was anti-imperialist and in favour of Irish home rule) with a fierce belief in the wealth-creating and wealth-redistributing capabilities of the free market. In the current political climate, "supply-side" economics is associated with Reagan. But Gladstone was if anything a more formidable and much earlier practitioner of supply side economics during the latter part of the nineteenth century. He believed a smaller tax burden stimulated the economy. In his time as Chancellor, he presided over a reduction in income tax in stages from 8p in the pound to 3p in the pound. At each reduction of one penny in the pound, his revenues increased. He thought income tax (which was first imposed in order to raise extra funds for war) was iniquitous in principle and represented a huge intrusion of state power into the private affairs of citizens. Now that's what I call a real left-winger. Unfortunately, Gladstone never managed to achieve his aim of eliminating income tax completely and basing all tax instead on consumption.
In a modern world in which high consumption is thought to threaten the planet, surely it is time to revisit the notion that income tax (which is responsible for approximately half of raised tax) should be replaced by a "green" scaled purchase tax. Such a tax, absent or minimal on essentials such as food, could be scaled up when it comes to luxury items and increased further when it comes to high carbon items or behaviours such as gas-guzzling four wheel drives. Individuals would have the freedom to purchase what they require, but if they invest in goods with a high carbon imprint the raised tax will more than offset that carbon imprint.
There are a number of other huge advantages to an economy in which income tax had been replaced by a scaled purchase tax. In left wing, civil libertarian terms, abolition of income tax would cut at a stroke the massive intrusion by the state into an individual's private affairs which raising income tax entails, and eliminate a great bureaucratic burden from people's lives. In addition, by paying high amounts of tax on certain luxury or non-essential items, purchase tax would become a largely voluntary tax. Strategic questions such as whether we should now shift to a "green" purchase tax economy are precisely the type of questions which a clear and original thinker such as Obama should be addressing.
In foreign policy, it will be interesting to see whether an intellect as incisive as Obama's will also direct itself at some of the underlying structural anomalies in the more troubled parts of the world. Speaking as an anti-imperialist, I am perhaps overly sensitive to the fact that Iraq is a country created by British imperial bureaucrats, who decided it would be best if three ancient kingdoms or principalities were merged into one. If this is so, why should the current American administration consider it a sine qua non to maintain the integrity of a state created by British imperial views in the early twentieth century? My hope is that a politician like Obama would consider a policy of decentralisation into smaller, more organic states or cultures as a long term means of resolving inherent conflicts. Since the current Iraqi constitution already permits a high degree of federal independence, this would entail a strong and clear shift of emphasis rather than a break with the past. The Kurds, in particular, are well on the way to creating a relatively democratic and surprisingly liberal state.
In Afghanistan, too, perhaps there is virtue in recognising that it is too large a country to be governed from Kabul. Instead of hoping for a strongman to replace Karzai and enforce a brutal unity on a highly diverse population, there are grounds for believing Afghanistan could be reformed in a strongly federal direction, taking into account regional cultures and traditions. If this were combined with a more constructive attitude towards poppy cultivation, still the most profitable crop in many areas for rural peasant cultures, with the administration purchasing the product directly from farmers for international medicinal purposes, a crucial economic link between peasants and terrorists or extremists would be broken.
In more general terms, there is strong evidence that smaller states are more economically viable than larger states, despite the traditional arguments in favour of economies of scale and the supposed advantages of large internal markets -- the later undermined by our increasingly globalised world. At its most direct, the hypothesis that small states are more economically viable is testable. I should like to predict, for example, that if average income per capita is compared with the overall population of states, there will emerge a clear correlation between average income and the smallness of the state in question.
There is plenty of opportunity for a first-rate political intellect to consider such fundamental questions in this crisis-strewn world. America's voters have already made a remarkable decision in choosing a new African-American president of such promise and potency. Like many others, I will be studying the Obama administration with close interest in the months to come.
