It’s in the book

Which apparently, despite an almost obsessive compulsive effort to hawk his own book, David Sirota seems to think Barack Obama hasn’t really made clear his position on structural globalization issues even though, it’s in the Audacity of Hope as two quotes I picked out below address.

Sirota said this yesterday:

“But it is downright destructive to peddle the idea that paying teachers
more or better funding the No Child Left Behind Act will be th
majore key to solving the problems inherent in a globalization
policy that incentivizes slave labor, sweatshops, union busting
and environmental degradation.”

====================

As I wrote in my profile of Obama in The Nation, when it comes to these structural issues, he is a man who seems caught between his background as a community organizer in touch with real people, and his current existence surrounded by Washington insiders and consultants who, by profession, push politicians to avoid challenging power. Peddling the Great Education Myth is the ultimate way to avoid challenging power. If this is just a fleeting tactic and Obama goes on to get serious about the real heart of our economic challenges, then he may be the great presidential candidate Democrats need. But if this aversion to confronting power previews the rest of his campaign, there will indeed be a major opening for a real populist candidate to win the nomination and the presidency.

Here are the quotes from Obama in The Audacity of Hope:

On page 174:

“And while upgrading the education levels of American workers will
improve their ability to adapt to the global economy, a better education
alone won’t necessarily protect them from growing competition…In other
words, free trade may well grow the world-wide economic pie — but
there’s no law that says workers in the United States will continue to
get a bigger and bigger slice.”

Obama continues on Page 176

“This doesn’t mean however that we should just throw up our hands and
tell workers to fend for themselves…I am optimistic about the
long-term prospects for the U.S. economy, and the ability of U.S.
workers to compete in a free trade environment — but only if we
distribute the costs and benefits of globalization more fairly across
the population.”

Immediately after that passage Obama talks about how workers need a need social safety net, and spends about 10 pages talking how workers need better unemployment and trade adjustment assistance, and introduces the concept of wage insurance, expanding EITC, better bargaining power for unions, portable pensions, health care, bankruptcy reform to fix the garbage that was passed, etc.

I get the skepticism of the media frenzy. It’s kind of funny to watch and all, but one thing the blogosphere is around to do is to put a check on the press’ coverage, not simply take it at face value. Because Obama didn’t give a long policy based speech in the one that was aired, does not mean that Obama hasn’t taken positions or doesn’t have them. Having watched him in 2004, he was the policy wonk out of a very talented Democratic field. In this field the policy wonkishness goes up to a different plane, but he’s still well documented.

Well documented if you take what Obama says in things like books that he writes and not just one speech on C-SPAN.