‘Obama Believes That the President Must Be a Centrist; This Has Limited the Possibility of Change’

Barack Obama has three years left in the White House, but for cynics, his presidency is already over.

They say Obama won the re-election because his party, the Democrats, was the future. He had the support of women, minorities and young people, but two days before he celebrates the first anniversary of his second term in office, this presumably invincible coalition has not been able to put through a single law so far, and now there is the danger of losing the Senate in the November elections. Why? For Thomas Frank, the answer is summarized in one sentence: because the Democrats ignore their electorate. From this idea, Frank has built his Jiminy Cricket reputation of the American left since his book was published in 2004, which marked the election when George W. Bush was re-elected: “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”

According to Frank, the Democrats ignore the economic problems of the voters and try to avoid being identified by leftist positions. As a result, they use a technocratic language and intend to present themselves as a responsible party facing the extremism of their rivals. Therefore, the debate is limited to social questions and values, two areas where Republicans move like fish in water. Frank says he knows what they are talking about because he grew up in Kansas — one of the key areas of the power of conservatism in the U.S. — and he was an active member of the Republican party.

The success of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” has turned the author into a celebrity in the United States, equally loved and hated by both Democrats and Republicans, perhaps because, although the latter hated it, he believes Republicans were more efficient when winning elections. His popularity was so high that, between 2008 and 2012, he was the “official red” of the conservative opinion section of The Wall Street Journal. Now, with “Pity the Billionaire,” he analyzes the tea party, a movement that proposes abolishing the welfare state, which, ironically, a large number of its voters who come from middle or lower income families benefit from.

Question: Monday will be the one-year anniversary of Obama’s second term, but all the attention is concentrated on November’s elections in Congress and how this will be celebrated. We will only be talking about the 2016 presidential elections. Is Obama’s presidency dead?

Answer: In general, yes, but [it has been] for a while. Barack Obama’s presidency ended when Congress passed health care reform in March 2010. Now, the big question of American politics does not lie with the White House, or with the president’s plans, but with the possibility that Republicans achieve a majority in the Senate in November. This would be catastrophic for Obama.

Q: Could it happen?

A: Yes, and largely because of Obama and the Democrats. Whenever I have spoken to leaders of this party and their electoral strategists, they have given me the same idea — you must win the presidency; Congress does not matter. The Democratic presidents never campaign in favor of their own candidates; Republicans do.

Q: The president sold himself as the man of change. Has he betrayed his voters?

A: No, but in practical terms, it is as though he has. When Obama won, we had hope. I was enthusiastic. I thought that he would be different than the Democrats, and this was not the case. Do not misinterpret me. He has been a good president: He has not had any big scandals; his health care reform is historic; and he has withdrawn us from the stupid wars that his predecessor put us into, but he has not been able to understand his voters.

Q: The second coming of Clinton?

A: Lots of us commit the same mistakes: falling into the so-called triangulation, which is no more than an idea that the president must be a centrist and keep himself above the political battles. This limits the possibility to create change. This does not happen with the Republican presidents. They are conservatives, and they do not apologize for it.

Q: You have always maintained that, in what the U.S. denotes as cultural wars, there are economic motivations. In other words, the ideologies that identify politicians are only a mask of economic interests. Are the cultural wars the actual version of a battle of Marxist classes?

A: It is what the U.S. conservative movement uses to disguise that it defends one class — the rich — but that it needs the support of the other — the poor — to govern. For example, the concept of the “liberal elites,” which is what Republicans constantly resort to, is the pure rhetoric of class struggle.

Q: The U.S. has the highest income inequality for the last 90 years, but it is frowned upon to talk about “classes” and, in particular, the “working class.” As a result, the expression “middle class” is used like a catch-all term, within which people who border on poverty all the way up to those who are millionaires fall. Why?

A: Because the left decided it. In the ’50s, the American trade union movement was proud of its triumphs, as it managed to agree that the working class would be granted the same achievements and aspirations of the middle class. Since then, talking about a “working class” is taboo. The problem is that this is very confusing because it is putting in the same bag the people who earn $15,000 gross per year and those who earn $15 million. Of course, those who run the campaigns and write the speeches know whom they are addressing.

Q: But Republicans also have an economic argument. They say that they know how to run public administration better.

A: What they do is privatize the public administration. Washington has turned into the most expensive city in the U.S. because of the spread of contractors and consultants from private companies who charge the government outrageous fees for doing tasks that, until now, were part of public administration.

Q: Many of these tasks could not be completed by the administrations because they did not have the capability or the flexibility to do so. If the credit-rating agencies or private espionage companies are holding so much power, it is because the financial sector or the Internet is expanding them at an unattainable rate for the government.

A: The problem is that these companies are doing public tasks while motivated by profit. For me, the most serious part of the Snowden case is that the NSA subcontracted his work to a private company, Booz Allen. These people do the same work as spies, but they do it for money, and this scares me, as they handle very sensitive material.

Q: Do not tell me that, electorally, the left does everything bad and the right does everything good.

A: No, because this is not the problem. The problem arises when the left disclaims the economy in favor of technocracy. Therefore, it annuls the possibility of creating social mobilization — without which there can be no reforms. This is something that Republicans know very well. Groups such as the Tea Party Patriots hold the capability of mobilization much more than any other organization.