Manager-in-Chief

Manager-in-Chief

By Paul McLean

How did Barack Obama win re-election? The philosopher Jean-Claude Milner recently proposed the notion of the "stabilising class": not the old ruling class, but all who are committed to the stability and continuity of the existing social, economic and political order – the class of those who, even when they call for a change, do so to ensure that nothing really will change. The key to electoral success in today's developed states is winning over this class.  - Slavoj Žižek, “Why Obama is more than Bush with a human face”

Liberals, by voting for Barack Obama, betrayed the core values they use to define themselves—the rule of law, the safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars. – Chris Hedges, “The Presidential Election Exposed, Again, the Death of the Liberal Class”

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.

- Wilfred Owens, “Strange Meeting”

Tom, you know you surprise me. If anything in this life is certain - if history has taught us anything - it's that you can kill anyone.  – Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part II

War - Nations do have to go to war sometimes, but that Iraq thing was pretty bad, to put it mildly. Somebody should have been, I dunno – FIRED for bad performance. Aren’t you the party of good corporate managers or something? This topic could get 10,000 words on its own. Let’s just leave it at: You guys suck at running wars. -  Eric Garland, “Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people”

In the 2012 election, we have a winner. Management won.

Slavoj Žižek is almost right to cite Milner in his analysis. He would have been more correct to point to Peter Drucker, whom George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002. Drucker wrote the book on Management, literally. The culture of management won the culture war this time. No one seems to have noticed management was a combatant. So, no one seems able to figure out the margin of victory, or explain the results, and consequences.

Chris Hedges is right, too, about what the election was not about, but should have been. Hedges, too, is almost right to slam the liberal class for its passivity with respect to Obama’s “betrayal” of liberal “core values” in his first term. He would have been more correct to consider the values (or lack thereof) of the management class, because that is the key to electoral victory in the United States currently, not the performance of the “Other” voter classes that the professional political punditry claim pushed Obama’s campaign over the electoral finish line ahead of Romney.

Really, the non-drama of 2012 is how boring, banal and mediocre political realities are in the United States. From a management perspective, the Obama victory is the safer bet.

My theory is that the outcome of the election is in fact a story about behavior and demography, but not the story we’re being told via corporate monopoly media, or by the “alternative” media. Voters who swung the election to Obama chose him, because they realized the Republican candidate was a corporate raider whose fortune derived from purging middle-management and labor, outsourcing jobs or destroying them, wiping out pensions, “streamlining” benefits and the social safety net, increasing cost burdens on all but management and owner classes, and prioritizing the owner’s or corporation’s or organization’s bottom line over all else.

Romney is dedicated to making everything from the Olympics to America run more like a business. The problem the voters discovered by reading between the lines or watching Obama’s attack ads is that Romney’s business was Bain Capital.

Plus, Romney is a 1%-loving, 47%-hating superrich asshole.

∞

Click to read more ...