Look Who it Was Random video

Tariq Ali: Were Obama's Economic Reforms Too Weak?

2,117 views · Published 8 June 2011 · 3:06 · Indexed 28 October 2026

Channel: FORA.tv · 2011 · News & Politics

Watch on YouTube

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2011/03/20/Tariq_Ali_The_Obama_Syndrome

Tariq Ali, author of The Obama Syndrome, critiques the Obama administration's approach to the economic crisis. Ali argues in support of George Soros' views that a much greater commitment to infrastructure spending was needed to stimulate the country out of recession.

-----

In 2008, Obama could do no wrong. To the educated middle class, he was an intelligent and reflective writer who had penned his own insightful memoir. To the conservative elite, he was a Harvard graduate and expert in constitutional law. To the young people who came out in droves to vote for him, he liked the same TV shows, listened to the same music and "got" social networking.

To African Americans, he was the first black man to jangle the keys to the White House and command the empire built on the back of unacknowledged black slave labour. To the downtrodden and disenfranchised, he was a humble former social justice campaigner who had trod the streets of Chicago and drummed up support for local health and education programs.

And then came the crash. The financial crisis saw Obama bail out the grubbers on Wall Street and fail to punish those who had caused millions of ordinary Americans to lose their houses, their jobs and the dream of Obama 'the reformer' charging in to rescue them from poverty and social humiliation.

Could Hillary Clinton have done a better job? No, argues Tariq Ali, Obama is just doing what any politician in his situation would do. He's a "skillful and gifted machine politician." Those despondent former supporters have just suffered what he calls the "Obama Syndrome" -- a kind of mass myopic idealism, a 'syndrome' that can only be treated, if not cured, by a dose of political reality.

This event was held at the 2011 Perth Writers Festival and was hosted by Mark Naglazas, movie editor for "The West Australian". - Austrailian Broadcasting Corporation

Writer, journalist and film-maker Tariq Ali was born in Lahore in 1943. He was educated at Oxford University, where he became involved in student politics, in particular with the movement against the war in Vietnam. On graduating he led the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. He owned his own independent television production company, Bandung, which produced programmes for Channel 4 in the UK during the 1980s. He is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio and contributes articles and journalism to magazines and newspapers including The Guardian and the London Review of Books. He is editorial director of London publishers Verso and is on the board of the New Left Review, for whom he is also an editor.

More from this channel