The President's Speech: The Shock Doctrine Reversed

Al Giordano over at The Field had an interesting article about The President's speech. He brings up a point that was missed by plenty of the pundits.

About Last Night: The Shock Doctrine Reversed
Posted by Al Giordano - February 25, 2009 at 12:22 pm
By Al Giordano

After offering the soundbite heard ‘round the world - "We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before" - the President proceeded to make the case for three big domestic spending priorities: energy, health care, and education:

"The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. "

Those who liked to complain in recent weeks that the $787 billion dollar Stimulus Package was "not enough" behaved as if it were the only spending that would be proposed ever again from here to eternity. Yet we've already seen, just one day after the signing of the Stimulus, the rollout of $75 billion toward saving family homes during this housing crisis. And we'll look in a moment at what Obama, according to his speech last night, has on the docket for the immediate future.

First, it's important to note what is really going on here: The Obama-Axelrod-Emanuel war room has taken Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine - the observation that those in power use times of crisis to supplant the state with private sector capitalism - and turned it on its head. Instead, they're using the current economic crisis to bring back the New Deal (government stimulation of the economy and firmer regulation of the corporate sector) and the Great Society (domestic and social programs to create a safety net for American workers and the poor).

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