POWER vs. Obama

The founders of the USA had reason to fear governmental power; the precaution they took to avoid tyranny was to divide power among six groups: the voters, the states, the presidency, the senate, the house and the supreme court. In time the presidency became the most powerful segment. That's why we used to capitalize the name. Under George W. Bush the president seemed able to do almost anything he wanted, even defy the voters. Why hasn't Obama been able to enact health care?

It might be Bush's nearly totalitarian power was an illusion. He (and the house, senate and supreme court) looked powerful because each worked for the same entity, the tireless Corporate Lobby. An elected official who works for the Corporate Lobby will look effective. His bills will pass. An official who bucks the Lobby will look ineffectual and weak. His bills will fail.

In other words, our current system is nothing like the system the nation's founders envisioned. It did not occur to them that a Corporation was a person, and what a giant person. . . . Imagine a giant with enough money to fund every election campaign in the country, enough money to buy the major news and entertainment outlets, a giant with enough lawyers to write our laws (and then hand them over to elected officials to enact).

That's power.

American politics tends to be fought over issues the Corporate Lobby ignores: the Lobby doesn't care about choice or don't ask/don't tell. The Lobby doesn't care if Christmas trees are erected in town squares or not. From the point of view of the Lobby, those are issues to distract the rubes who don't understand that the point of life is to amass personal wealth. Keeping divisive issues alive is good politics for the Lobby, of course. The Lobby wants the voters looking in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, the Lobby will write our financial laws and send them to congressional committees to pass.

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Once I understood that Obama, Pelosi and Reid were not the most powerful people in Washington, I had a sense of why Obama had attempted to attract Corporate Lobby support for a health bill. When you lack power, you try to get the real center of power to work with you. If you don't win the backing of the Lobby, you will, in most cases, fail.

The Corporate Lobby rules us in the areas it finds useful. It has made discussion of this fact more or less taboo. But perhaps we are beginning to notice the Lobby--and like a vampire it will burn when exposed to sunlight.

If you need a reference point, consider what happened when a Corporation decided it wanted to build a resort in the Saggio Hills.

Gary Goss