Emperor Obama and Emperor Bonaparte: Something in Common

Barack Obama, the outgoing Democratic president, seems to share the opinion of Napoleon Bonaparte, who believed that speculators are enemies of the state. He blamed speculators for the increase in petrol prices. He blamed Mitt Romney for the purchase and resale of businesses created by the investment fund that Romney formerly directed.

Mr. Obama has been careful, on the other hand, to hire speculators for the recent drop in petrol prices. The same day that his electoral campaign attacked Romney for his former career as an investor, Barack Obama participated in a dinner organized by the president of another investment fund, where the guests each contributed $35,800 to the Democratic electoral fund. The politicians remain carpet salesmen — except that they sell the carpets of the taxpayers, but that is another issue.

From this point of view, Mitt Romney escapes the populism of Napoleon and Obama. Let us not forget, however, that Obama only reprises the populist attacks that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry, defeated Republican presidential candidates, used against Romney. Even in the Republican Party, tirades against speculators are not unknown. We often delude ourselves when we imagine that the Republican Party is radically different from the Democratic Party.

Ron Paul, the only candidate who still contests Mitt Romney’s nomination, does not fall into the trap of the Bonapartes and the Obamas. The libertarian candidate is a defender of speculators and of the spirit of enterprise, much more convincing and coherent than Romney. As Georges Ripert said so well, “speculation is the soul of commerce”: buying low and selling high. But we know that Mr. Paul is almost certain to be defeated, and he announced last week that from now on he would limit his campaign activities alongside the delegates at the Republican convention in August.

When one demands the opinion of the voters on fundamental political questions, America appears, of course, more capitalist than France. A GlobeScan poll revealed last year that 59 percent of Americans believe that the free market constitutes the best system for the future, much higher than the 31 percent of French who believe so, but less than 68 percent of Germans who do. It is necessary, all the same, to distrust these sorts of questions that give rise to interpretation, depending on ambient pessimism or optimism — attributable, for example, to the economic situation — and of which the average voter remains at any rate “rationally ignorant,” as economists say.

The campaign for the Republican nomination, which concludes similarly to the presidential campaign, suggests that populism is not as different on the two sides of the Atlantic as some believe. Emperor Obama and Emperor Bonaparte have some things in common. But the truth is that that resistance to successful anti-capitalist ideas is stronger on the American side.