Jamie Galbraith on Greece

Jamie Galbraith spells out what the neoliberal meaning of "reform" is in What is Reform? The Strange Case of Greece and Europe 06/12/2015. He also provides an interesting history of the history of "reform" as an economic policy concept.

He gives a great characterization of the current state of the negotiations between Greece and the institutions formerly known as the Troika (EU, ECB, IMF):

So the Greek talks remain at a stalemate. Actually, it is not quite a stalemate, since the Greeks are under extreme pressure. Either they concede to the creditors' positions, or they may find their banks closed and themselves forced out of the euro, with highly disruptive consequences at least in the short run. The creditors know this. So they keep backing the Greeks toward a wall—never changing their own position while complaining that the Greek side isn't working hard enough. And as the Greeks yield ground, inch by inch, the creditors simply press for more. [emphasis in original]

Not unlike the pre-Iraq War position of the Cheney-Bush Administration toward Iraq over inspections for the non-existent "weapons of mass destruction."

In the agonizing standoff between the EU elite (and the EU oligarchs they serve) and the government of Greece - a genuinely "popular" government at the moment, one that represents the workers and the middle class and is willing to confront that corrupt oligarchs - the EU elite lead by German Chancellor Angela Merkel continually demand "reform" from Greece. And who's against "reform"? "Reform" always sounds forward-looking. Unless you look closely at what Merkel and the EU elite really mean by reform. Galbraith, like his former colleague, fellow economist and now Finance Minister of Greece Yanis Varoufakis, is calling on Merkel to exert better leadership at the moment and push for a realistic solution. (See Varoufakis' A Speech of Hope for Greece Project Syndicate 06/04/2015)

Yannis Ioannou (Ο Εντιμος συμβιβασμός και ... {The Upright Compromise and ...} 06/04/2015) depicts the Troika wishing farewell to Greece at the Eurostation, with Germany standing in for the EU as a whole:

"And to our honorable friends ..."

Galbraith has a popular idea of what real reforms of a beneficial kind for Greece actually would be:

Reform in any true sense is a process that requires time, patience, planning, and money. Pension reform and social insurance, modern labor rights, sensible privatizations and effective tax collection are reforms. So are measures relating to public administration, the justice system, tax enforcement, statistical integrity and other matters, which are agreed in principle and which the Greeks would implement readily if the creditors would permit it—but for negotiating reasons they do not. So would be an investment program emphasizing the advanced services Greece is well-suited to provide, including in health care, elder-care, higher education, research, and the arts. It requires recognizing that Greece cannot succeed by being the same as other countries; it must be different—a country with small shops, small hotels, high culture, and open beaches. A debt restructuring that would bring Greece back to the markets (and yes, that could be done, and the Greeks have a proposal to do it) would also be, on any reasonable reckoning, a reform.

But those aren't the kind of "reforms" the Troika is demanding.

Reform in any true sense is a process that requires time, patience, planning, and money. Pension reform and social insurance, modern labor rights, sensible privatizations and effective tax collection are reforms. So are measures relating to public administration, the justice system, tax enforcement, statistical integrity and other matters, which are agreed in principle and which the Greeks would implement readily if the creditors would permit it—but for negotiating reasons they do not. So would be an investment program emphasizing the advanced services Greece is well-suited to provide, including in health care, elder-care, higher education, research, and the arts. It requires recognizing that Greece cannot succeed by being the same as other countries; it must be different—a country with small shops, small hotels, high culture, and open beaches. A debt restructuring that would bring Greece back to the markets (and yes, that could be done, and the Greeks have a proposal to do it) would also be, on any reasonable reckoning, a reform. [my emphasis]

Better tax collection and fighting corruption are two items perennially on the neoliberal "reform" list, including that of the Troika. But oligarchs aren't serious about those reforms, for fairly obvious reasons. These wealthiest are the ones that benefit the most from them at the expense of the common good. If debt service and healthy public budgets were the primary goal of the Troika, better tax collection in particular would obviously serve that goal well.

It's worth noting that after years of Greek governments cooperating with the Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austericide policies demanded by Merkel and the Troika, tax collection and the fight against corruption are, uh, not very impressive. Varoufakis notes (Yanis Varoufakis interview: "We crossed a lot of our red lines" Tagesspiegel 06/09/2015): "We don’t even have tax officers. The salaries for the tax officers were reduced a lot, so a lot of them went into private practice. The first day I was in office I asked: how many tax inspectors do I have access to? You know what the answer was? One hundred. One hundred for whole of Greece."

Varoufakis also notes how adamant the Troika has been against real tax-collection and anti-corruption reforms:

The most frustrating part is that these negotiations are taking up all our energy and time. And moreover: the institutions are telling us, if we legislate before we reached a comprehensive agreement this will be seen as a unilateral action and it will blow up the negotiations. One of the very first things I said to my Eurogroup colleagues was: why don’t we push some of the legislation we agree on – the taxation system, the anti-corruption rules – through parliament and meanwhile continue the negotiations. And I was actually told a number of times if I dare to suggest this again this would constitute reason to settle the negotiations. [my emphasis]

Merkel and the Troika have actually opposed meaningful actions in Greece for better tax collection and against corruption.

Galbraith summarizes what the Troika is really demanding and what it rally means:

What is missing from the creditors' demands is, well, reform. Cuts in pensions and VAT increases are not reform; they add nothing to economic activity or to competitiveness. Fire-sale privatization can lead to predatory private monopolies as anyone living in Latin America or Texas knows. Labor market deregulation is in the nature of an unethical experiment, the imposition of pain as therapy, something the internal records of the IMF as far back as 2010 confirm. No one can suggest that wage cuts can bring Greece into effective competition for jobs in traded goods with either Germany or Asia. Instead, what will happen is that anyone with competitive skills will leave. [emphasis in original]

Galbraith's warning in his last paragraph will probably strike many readers as surprising and drastic: "Either the Greek government will concede too much, lose its support and collapse, in which case whether the end result is another receivership or {a boost in support for the overtly neo-Nazi Greek party} Golden Dawn, democracy is dead in Europe."

What I assume he refers to as the death of democracy in Europe includes several things. But mainly it means that in the European Union ("Europe"), radical neoliberal economic policies will have been decisively prioritized over democratic elections and democratic decision-making and democratic culture. A country like Greece that wants to escape the grim consequences of Hoover/Brüning policies will have to leave "Europe" (the EU) or give up on democracy in deference to the practical rule of an unelected economic oligarchy. It's very notable in this regard that while the Troika has been overriding democracy in Greece in order to impose neoliberal economic policies, the EU has tolerated the authoritarian turn that Hungary has made. (See Katin Marton, Hungary’s Authoritarian Descent New York Times 11/03/2014: "Hungary is a member of both NATO and the European Union — and blatantly defies the core values of both. Having announced that an 'illiberal democracy' is his goal for Hungary, {Hungarian Prime Minister} Mr. {Viktor} Orban defies the European Union, even though it accounts for 95 percent of Hungary’s public investments. So far, European governments’ reaction to Mr. Orban’s policies have been muted.")

If Merkel and the EU elite sink the European Union as a democratic union, it will be a major historical tragedy. To sink it over a petty-minded, oligarchic approach to the Greek depression and debt crisis is entirely unnecessary.

Sometimes even the IMF makes sense ...

Actually, the IMF has economists who do critical-minded work that don't necessarily follow the organization stereotypical neoliberal line.

Paul Taylor reports in MF's 'never again' experience in Greece may get worse Reuters 06/10/2015 that the IMF has been more realistic on some occasions than the EU elite consensus on Greece:

In 2013, the IMF published a critical evaluation of its own role in the first Greek bailout in 2010, arguing that it should have insisted on a "haircut" on Greece's debt to private creditors from the outset. Instead it went along with European governments frightened of a Lehman-style market meltdown and keen to shield their banks from losses.

The report, compiled by Fund staff, said IMF officials had doubts about Greece's ability to repay its loan at the time but agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion from Greece's predicament affecting other European states.

A 2010 IMF staff position note described default on any debt in advanced economies as "unnecessary, undesirable and unlikely", yet 18 months later the IMF advocated a 70 percent "haircut" on Greek government debt as a condition for continued involvement in lending to Athens.

Now IMF chief Christine Lagarde is hinting that European governments need to give Greece debt relief to make the numbers add up, but since this is politically unacceptable in Germany, she has had to talk in code in public.

"Clearly, if there were to be slippages from those (fiscal) targets, for the whole program to add up, then financing has to be considered," Lagarde told a news conference last week.

Behind closed doors, IMF officials are telling the Europeans that Greece will not survive without a third bailout program, which will require debt restructuring by European governments.

Galbraith on the threat to the US middle class

Jamie Galbraith, always worth listening to. From Muddling Towards the Next Crisis: James Kenneth Galbraith in conversation with The Straddler Winter 2013:

The story that is often told about what’s happened to factory jobs, and what’s happened to wage rates, is not a good way of getting at the threat to that existence. The typical story is that median wages peaked in 1972 and have been stagnant and falling since then. As a result, it must be the case that people who are working now are much worse off than they were ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. That’s not an accurate story - at least not up until the crisis in 2008—because over that period the labor force became younger, more female, more minority, and more immigrant. All of these groups start at relatively low wages, and they all then tend to have upward trajectories. So there’s no reason to believe that life was getting worse for members of the workforce in general. On the contrary, for most members of the workforce it was still getting better. Plus they had the benefit of technical change and improvement in the other conditions of life.

The real threat to the middle class is not there, it’s in the erosion of the programs I just mentioned. That is to say, it’s in the attack on the public schools, it’s in the squeeze on higher education, it’s in the threat to Social Security. When you look at housing, you have a very large unambiguous loss. Millions of people have been displaced, but many, many more have lost the capital value of their homes. They won’t be able to sell and retire on the proceeds.

So I think there is a threat to the middle class, but if I were talking about it in political terms, I wouldn’t be giving an abstract statistical picture of wages. This doesn’t connect to people’s experiences. If I were designing the boilerplate rhetoric of a popular movement, I would take a blue pencil to these statistical formulations. I don’t like the stagnant median wage argument—I think it obscures what actually happened. And I don’t particularly care for the “one percent” argument. I understand it has a certain power, but one can be much more precise about what it is you want to attack, and what it is you want to preserve and to build. I would cut to the chase: we need to tear down the financial sector and rebuild it from scratch in a very different way.

José Pablo Feinmann on Sarmiento and the menaces of and to "civilization"

This is Chapter 6 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 6. Sarmiento en Chile" Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013.

The topic of this talk by Feinmann is Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888), one of the most important historical figures of 19th century Argentine history. He was a partisan of the Unitarians, the centralists, and served as President of Argentina 1868–74. The Federalist ruler of Argentina, Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877), exiled Sarmiento to Chile in 1840, where he wrote a series of articles collected in a book published in 1845 known as the Facundo for short. It's full title in English is Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism.

In the conservative, "Mitrist" history that became dominant in Argentina for decades, Sarmiento tends to appear as a hero of "civilization," which for him and the conservatives was represented by the urban, centralist perspective of the Unitarians. For Sarmiento, Rosas was a representative of Federalist barbarism, the perspective of the uncivilized gauchos and poor farmers of the country.

On the 24th of May this year as part of the week of celebration of national independence, a key ceremony was President Cristina Fernández' presentation of the sword of "the Liberator" José de San Martín (1778-1850) to the Museo Histórico Nacional, saying in her presentation that this “la espada que liberó a medio continente” ("the sword that freed half a continent"). (Alejandra Dandan, La espada que simboliza la soberanía y la independencia Página/12 25.05.2015)

Juan Manuel de Rosas

In her address on May 25 in the Plaza de Mayo, Cristina said:

... pero ayer, cuando difundíamos en las redes y difundía la Televisión Pública, mientras el sable corvo de San Martín recorría la ciudad para ir a su destino, donde había querido que estuviera, en el Museo Histórico, ahí millones de argentinos recién se enteraron que el libertador de medio continente había legado su sable en cláusula de testamento al brigadier Juan Manuel de Rosas, miren lo que nos falta argentinos todavía en materia de educación y cultura.

¿Y saben por qué? Porque la historiografía liberal, la que le contaban a los chicos en los colegios decía que Rosas era un tirano, y si Rosas era un tirano entonces cómo un hombre como San Martín le iba a legar su sable. ¿Y saben por qué se lo legó? Porque nos defendió en la Vuelta de Obligado frente a la invasión extranjera, con valor y coraje que pocos hombres han tenido.

[... but yesterday, when we broadcast on the networks and it was broadcast on Public Television, while the curved saber of San Martín returned to the city to go to its destination, where he would have wanted it to be, in the Museo Histórico, there millions of Argentines recently learned that the Liberator of half a continent had left his saber in a clause of his will to Brigadier Juan Manuel de Rosas, look at what we Argentines are still missing in the material of education and culture.

And do you know why? Because liberal {Mitrist} historiography, the one that is told to children in the schools, says that Rosas was a tyrant, and if Rosas was a tyrant, then why would a man like San Martín have come to give him his saber{?} And do you know why he gave it to him? Because he {Rosas} defended us in the Vuelta de Obligado against the foreign invasion, with bravery and courage that few men have had.]

The Vuelta de Obligado was a battle in November 1845 against a joint Anglo-French invasion attempt.

Another reminder that "civilization" is also defined by politics, class and national perspectives.

20-peso Argentine note commemorating the Vuelta de Obligado

José María Rosa wrote of that battle (Rosas, nuestro contemporáneo; 1974):

El gran talento político de Rosas se revela en esta segunda guerra contra el imperialismo europeo: su labor de estadista y diplomático fue llamada genial por sus enemigos extranjeros... (...) Aunque resistir una agresión de la escuadra anglo-francesa ... parecía una locura, Rosas lo hizo. No pretendía con su fuerza diminuta ... imponerse a la fuerza grande, sino presentar una resistencia para que “no se la llevasen de arriba los gringos”. Artilló la Vuelta de Obligado, y allí les dio a los anglo-franceses una bella lección de coraje criollo el 20 de noviembre de 1845. No ganó, ni pretendió ganar, ni le era posible. Simplemente enseñó – como diría San Martín - que “los argentinos no somos empanadas que sólo se comen con abrir la boca”, al comentar, precisamente, la acción de Obligado.

[The great political talent of Rosas revealed itself in this second war against European imperialism: his work as a statesman and diplomat was called brilliant by his foreign enemies ... Although resisting an aggression of the Anglo-French squadron ... seemed crazy, Rosas did it. He didn't expect his diminutive force ... to impose itself on the large {Anglo-French} force, but rather to present a resistance so that "we don't concede to the gringos." The Vuelta de Obligado tookk place, and there they gave the Anglo-French a beautiful lesson in Creole courage on November 20, 1845. He didn't win, he didn't expect to win, nor was it possible. He simply showed - as San Martín would say - that "the Argentines are not empanadas that someone can just open their mouths and eat," commenting precisely on the action of Obligado.]

Feinmann in this lecture says the following of Rosas. The Argentine word negros here doesn't mean precisely what the English cognate "Negroes" means. Dark skin color is part of it, but it refers more broadly to people considered lower-class by those using the word and to dark skin generally, not only specifically to African ancestry. He refers to a novel of that period, Amalia (1851/1855) by José Mármol (1817-1871):

Amalia es una novela que muestra el enfrentamiento entre las clases altas y la persecución a que Rosas somete a estas clases privilegiadas. ¿Cómo los somete Rosas?

Los somete por medio de darles importancia a clases como los gauchos, los negros e incluso los indios –pese a que Rosas hizo una excursión punitiva contra los indios–. Pero lo que no toleran las clases altas es la importancia que los negros cobran dentro del esquema político rosista. Y los negros eran los sirvientes, sirvientes, así sin vueltas, los sirvientes que estaban en las casas de las familias adineradas. Y estos sirvientes eran delatores, eran delatores. Entonces las clases adineradas, las clases altas, les tenían miedo a estos negros porque eran los negros del Restaurador de las Leyes y fácilmente delataban a las familias bien, a las familias de alcurnia, a las familias patricias, a las familias que representaban el avance de la civilización en la Argentina.

Pero Rosas, Rosas para esta gente era un populista, un populista. Ustedes saben que las clases altas odian a los populistas. Porque, claro, odian al pueblo y lo que hacen los populistas es mezclarse con el pueblo.

[Amalia is a novel that shows the confrontation among the upper classes and the persecution to which Rosas submitted these privileged classes.

He submitted them to it to give importance to classes like the gauchos, the negros and including the Indians even though Rosas made a punitive expedition against the Indians. But what the upper classes don't tolerate is the importance that the negros achieve within the rosista political scheme. And the negros were the servants, servants, that is without recourse, the servants who were in the houses of the wealthy families. And these servants were informers, were informers. So the wealthy classes, the upper classes, were afraid of these negros because they were negros of the Restorer of the Laws {Rosas} and easily informed on the good families, the families of good breeding, the patrician families, the families who represented the advance of civilization in Argentina.

But Rosas, Rosas for these people was a populist, a populist. You know that the upper classes hate populists. Because, obviously, they hate the people and what populists do is mix with the people.]

The American oligarchy and the 2008 crisis

This jeremiad from Simon Johnson in 2009 is still relevant and impressive, The Quiet Coup The Atlantic May 2009.

Describing financial crises in emerging market nations, he writes:

The downward spiral that follows is remarkably steep. Enormous companies teeter on the brink of default, and the local banks that have lent to them collapse. Yesterday’s “public-private partnerships” are relabeled “crony capitalism.” With credit unavailable, economic paralysis ensues, and conditions just get worse and worse. The government is forced to draw down its foreign-currency reserves to pay for imports, service debt, and cover private losses. But these reserves will eventually run out. If the country cannot right itself before that happens, it will default on its sovereign debt and become an economic pariah. The government, in its race to stop the bleeding, will typically need to wipe out some of the national champions — now hemorrhaging cash — and usually restructure a banking system that’s gone badly out of balance. It will, in other words, need to squeeze at least some of its oligarchs.

Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or—here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique—the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk—at least until the riots grow too large. [my emphasis in bold]

And he has some intriguing things to say about the US oligarchy in the 2008 crisis: "Of course, the U.S. is unique. And just as we have the world’s most advanced economy, military, and technology, we also have its most advanced oligarchy."

He discusses the ways that the US oligarchy achieved such cultural hegemony (as the literary critics like to say) before the 2008 crisis:

Wall Street is a very seductive place, imbued with an air of power. Its executives truly believe that they control the levers that make the world go round. A civil servant from Washington invited into their conference rooms, even if just for a meeting, could be forgiven for falling under their sway. Throughout my time at the IMF, I was struck by the easy access of leading financiers to the highest U.S. government officials, and the interweaving of the two career tracks. I vividly remember a meeting in early 2008—attended by top policy makers from a handful of rich countries—at which the chair casually proclaimed, to the room’s general approval, that the best preparation for becoming a central-bank governor was to work first as an investment banker.

A whole generation of policy makers has been mesmerized by Wall Street, always and utterly convinced that whatever the banks said was true. Alan Greenspan’s pronouncements in favor of unregulated financial markets are well known. Yet Greenspan was hardly alone. This is what Ben Bernanke, the man who succeeded him, said in 2006: “The management of market risk and credit risk has become increasingly sophisticated. … Banking organizations of all sizes have made substantial strides over the past two decades in their ability to measure and manage risks.”

Of course, this was mostly an illusion. Regulators, legislators, and academics almost all assumed that the managers of these banks knew what they were doing. In retrospect, they didn’t. AIG’s Financial Products division, for instance, made $2.5 billion in pretax profits in 2005, largely by selling underpriced insurance on complex, poorly understood securities. Often described as “picking up nickels in front of a steamroller,” this strategy is profitable in ordinary years, and catastrophic in bad ones. As of last fall, AIG had outstanding insurance on more than $400 billion in securities. To date, the U.S. government, in an effort to rescue the company, has committed about $180 billion in investments and loans to cover losses that AIG’s sophisticated risk modeling had said were virtually impossible. [my emphasis]

Snowden, Democrats and the corporate press

"[Edward] Snowden's whistleblowing has led to many extraordinary revelations. None is more significant or more revealing than what it highlighted about the function many American journalists actually perform, and how far away that is – universes away – from the way they market their function." - Glenn Greenwald, Media Lessons From Snowden Reporting: LA Times Editors Advocate Prosecution of Sources The Intercept 06/07/2015

One of the particular features of the wave of protest and reform movements that we still remember as The Sixties is that in some ways, the corporate media were not primary targets of the protests.

Generalizations are tricky because they're, well, generalizations.

The "alternative" or "underground" press was a feature of the US in the 1960s. Radical America, Ramparts, Socialist Revolution (later renamed Socialist Review) and The Great Speckled Bird were some of the better known and more influential samples of that phenomenon in the United States. And various political groups like the Black Panthers had their own papers and magazines. (Radical America's first issues billed themselves as a journal of the Students for a Democratic Society.)

And the left/populist/socialist press since the 19th century has made criticisms of the established press. So such criticism from the left is scarcely unknown in the pre-blogosphere days in the US.

But the big protests of the 1960s were directed against the corporate press in the way that, for example, the conservative Springer press (Bild, Die Welt) was a target of militant left protests in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Latin American popular movements like Peronism in Argentina have targeted the misconduct of the oligarchic press for a long time.

In mainstream politics in the US, it's the Republican Party that has made "the liberal press" a major target of criticism for decades now. The current form of such criticism owes much to Southern segregationist attacks on the "Northern" and "liberal" press during the fight in the 1950s and 1960s to preserve the Segregation 1.0 system. The Nixon Administration, especially Vice President Spiro Agnew before he resigned in disgrace, railed against the Liberal Press - largely a fantasy image even then - and its criticism of Nixon's Vietnam War policies.

The civil rights movement certainly had occasion to challenge the role of the press. Any decent history of the civil rights movement in Mississippi, for instance, would have occasion to mention the role of "the Hederman press." (See: Kathy Lally, A journey from racism to reason Newspaper: The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., was once the most racist paper in the United States, until an offspring of the publishing family decided to make the paper -- and his family name -- respectable. Baltimore Sun 01/05/1999.)

Dennis Mitchell in A New History of Mississippi (2014) writes about the press in Mississippi during the 1950s and 1960s:

Deprived of leadership from the state's spiritual leaders and intellectuals, Mississippians looked to newspapers and television for their news and ideas. Unfortunately, as a whole, Mississippi's newspapers proved to be the weakest in the nation in their coverage of the civil rights movement, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. The arch segregationist Hederman family owned the papers with the highest circulation in Jackson and Hattiesburg. Their headlines and locally written news stories dehumanized the "mixers;' as they called integrationists, referring to them as human freaks and abnormal mammals. Readers who got past the headlines into the text of wire service reports got more balanced information because the editors did not rewrite wire reports. [my emphasis in bold] (p. 422)

The major media in the US did play a significant role in challenging the official narrative of the Vietnam War. Daniel Ellsberg's leak of the Pentagon Papers which were printed by various major papers starting with the New York Times was a prime example of this. And with Nixon and Agnew trying to browbeat the press into conformity on Vietnam, liberals and Democrats were understandably inclined to defend the press in that situation.

And the major role papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times played in exposed the Watergate scandals which led to Nixon's resignation further reinforced the image for liberals of the major media as effectively playing the role of an independent Fifth Estate.

Glenn Greenwald quotes an op-ed by Daniel Ellsberg (NSA leaker Snowden made the right call Washington Post 07/07/2013) in which Ellsberg defends Edward Snowden's decision to leave the US to avoid prosecution over his leaks: "Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago."

And a large part of that difference is a drastic shift toward conformity and lack of critical reporting on the part of major media.

Democrats and progressives have been forced - at a speed that seems all too painfully slow - to recognize the ways in which the national press as a larger institutions and so many of the individual institutions that make it up are often much more of a barrier to progress than a facilitator. The Clinton pseudoscandals were a big factor, the stolen election of 2000 another, and the Iraq War even more so. At least now there is a strong progressive narrative associated with the netroots and the Democratic base that views the national media with a strongly critical eye. The Young Turks online network of sites and online programs is a notable positive element in that regard.

Digby Parton is oe of the most perceptive observers of this issue. As she point out in Hillary Clinton’s toughest adversary: The world-historic narcissism of the political press Salon 06/02/2015, Democratic politicians are much behind the Democratic base on this.

James Vega in Democrats: the mainstream media gang is whining with operatic self-pity ... Democratic Strategist 05/27/2015 points to the reality that, particularly with Hillary Clinton as the leading Presidential candidate, the pro-Republican bias of the "mainstream" media is more pronounced than ever. And he warns that Democrats need to be fully cognizant of that situation:

In the first place, it means that Hillary is entirely right in refusing to play by the traditional rules. The mainstream political press has itself rendered these rules obsolete by failing to report on the most important political story of recent years - the extremist conquest of the GOP. Reporters and commentators who refuse to report this reality as an objective fact about modern American politics cannot possibly also play the role of impartial arbitrators or objective journalists when covering a Democratic political candidate.

Second, Hillary's decision to act in accordance with this insight presents a profound challenge and threat to the GOP crypto-partisans among the press corps, one which will inevitably engender a deep and profound hostility and desire to cut her down to size. ...

As a result, Democrats should prepare themselves for the uncomfortable fact that in the coming months the mainstream press will become increasingly and stridently anti-Clinton. So long as she does not play by their rules they will describe her as "remote," "fake," "robotic", "inauthentic" "scripted", "cynical" "manipulative", "dishonest" and "insincere". Her Republican opponent, whether it is Bush, Walker, Rubio, or any of the other contenders will then be described in contrast as much more "real" "down to earth" "authentic" "open" "honest" and "sincere." Fueled by their wounded vanity and the very real threat to their influence, the mainstream commentators will create a narrative that continually frames the 2016 election in precisely this way.

Democrats must be prepared to fight back. The necessary rebuttal must be to insist that - although the press may genuinely be in denial about their own motives - their failure to tell the truth about GOP extremism makes it impossible for honest Americans to treat them as objective or honest. The Democratic response must be the following:

Until you are willing to tell your readers the truth about GOP extremism, for all practical purposes you are promoting an ideologically partisan, pro-Republican point of view. As a result you cannot simultaneously claim to also be neutral or objective or that you are acting as the unbiased representatives of the public or as guardians of American democracy. Either tell your readers the truth about GOP extremism or accept the fact that honest Americans have the right to view you as partisan advocates for the GOP.

This is important because the Washington press has always been entirely untroubled by criticisms that they are sensationalistic, superficial or cynical. Part of their vanity, in fact, is based on their self-image as the grizzled veterans who have "seen it all." What does get under their skin, on the other hand, is the accusation that behind their protestations of independence they are basically carrying water for the GOP. It gets under their skin because, deep down, they know that it's true. [my emphasis in bold]

JFK and withdrawing from Vietnam, again

Godfrey Hodgson revisits one of the perennial what-if questions of US history in The ’60s great what-if: What would John F. Kennedy have done about Vietnam? Salon 06/07/2015.

Hodgson takes a skeptical position on whether JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam.

But he had ordered a reduction in the number of US troops there. And I think the evidence leans toward the conclusion that he intended to continue to pull back from that war.

Jaime Galbraith did an article several years ago making that case. He based it not only on Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's memoirs but also on John Newman's JFK and Vietnam (1992) and Howard Jones' Death of a Generation (2003). Both of which are good reads as well as good history.

I blogged about this in my first few months of blogging, JFK and Withdrawing from Vietnam 11/24/2003.

Galbraith's articles and related material from that time on this topic include:

Kennedy, Vietnam and Iraq Salon.com 11/22/2003

Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam Boston Review 09/01/2003

In a letter to Boston Review, Noam Chomsky challenged Galbraith's position, Letters from Chomsky and Galbraith on JFK and Vietnam 12/01/2003.

Galbraith said in his response:

In October 1963 there were 17,000 U.S. military “advisers” in Vietnam. They were doing some fighting, and taking some losses, but in the main their mission was to train and assist the South Vietnamese army, which was more than 10 times larger. They faced an insurgency involving as yet few North Vietnamese forces. U.S. withdrawal at that time would not have meant the early collapse of South Vietnam. It would not have ended the war—except from the point of view of direct involvement of U.S. soldiers.

It is therefore reasonable that, into the early fall of 1963 when official military forecasts were still fairly optimistic, the administration should simultaneously plan to “intensify the war effort” and plan for withdrawal of our soldiers. Three key facts that have since emerged are these. First, the official optimism was disbelieved at the very top of the Kennedy administration, notably by McNamara. Second, Kennedy set a course for a decision to withdraw, from which he was not deterred by what then became a deteriorating official military prospect. This explains Kennedy’s concern, evident on the tapes, that the withdrawal be implemented in low key and not be tied to the perception of military progress. Third, the decision to withdraw was taken and then carefully, but not altogether completely, edited out of the record available to historians until the late 1990s. [my emphasis]

Galbraith also notes:

Kennedy’s October 1963 decision to withdraw happened. But Kennedy was nevertheless prepared to leave U.S. soldiers in harm’s way for two more years, mainly (I believe) to reduce the political consequences of pulling them out before the 1964 election. This should have, as my essay states, an ambiguous effect on his reputation.

George Herring in his Ameria's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 (2nd edition 1986) wrote:

Sometime in the early summer of 1963, [South Vietnamese leaders Ngo Dinh] Diem and
[Ngo Dinh] Nhu began to explore the possibility of a settlement with Hanoi which would result in an American withdrawal from Vietnam.
Kennedy appears to have been thinking along the same lines. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had initiated long-range planning on troop levels in 1962 to ensure a balance between the Vietnam commitment and America's other global requirements, and in 1963 had produced a plan calling for a phased withdrawal of American advisers to begin later in the year and to end in 1965. The plan seems to have reflected the Pentagon's persisting optimism about progress in containing the insurgency. Some members of Kennedy's staff have since argued, however, that the President's approval of it indicated his determination to avoid an open-ended commitment. Indeed, Hilsman and White House staff member Kenneth O'Donnell claim that by the summer of 1963 Kennedy had recognized the futility of American involvement and was prepared to liquidate it as soon as he had been reelected. "If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam," he reportedly explained to Mansfield, "we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands." The extent to which Kennedy had committed himself remains unclear, but the plan for a phased withdrawal does seem to reflect his growing concern about Vietnam and the increasingly strained relationship with Diem. (pp. 94-5)

In the end, though, whether Kennedy would have withdrawn all troops from Vietnam is by definition a matter of speculation. John Prados in Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (2009) is cautious on the question, arguing that "concrete evidence for the Kennedy withdrawal is sparse and subject to interpretation." He then notes, "There is, however, hard proof for a McNamara withdrawal." (p. 78) Prados notes that Kennedy authorized escalation of CIA operations in Laos in 1963 and his public statements in the weeks before his death, Kennedy was explicitly saying withdrawal would be "a great mistake" and reaffirming his support for the infamous and always badly mistaken "domino theory."

As I said, it seems to me that the bulk of the evidence argues that Kennedy in late 1963 had the intention to withdrawn US troops from Vietnam. But it was a very fluid situation and the Cold War consensus in both parties heavily favored supporting the Southern Vietnamese government in that conflict. And, obviously, Kennedy could have changed his mind as time progressed and conditions changed.