Robert L. Terrell

Everyone paying close attention to the campaigns for the presidency being waged by Barack Obama and John McCain is aware that they are studiously avoiding all references to endemic poverty and homelessness.  On a daily basis, the two of them, and their legions of on-message surrogates, assail us with words intended to convey the intensity of their commitment to improving the lives of middle-class Americans.

 Nonetheless, neither candidate ever wanders off-message and talks candidly about what he intends to do if elected to assist the hundreds of thousands of homeless Americans, who obviously need more assistance than members of the middle-class.  I assume they are consciously avoiding the subject because anyone who spends as much time on the streets of this nation’s cities, large and small, as the two of them is aware that an ominously large number of U.S. citizens are homeless and destitute.  Given the current rate of home foreclosures, this does not bode well for the future.

I am not surprised by John McCain’s failure to address the nation’s disturbingly large and growing homeless crisis.  Most Republicans strive to present an idealized version of life here in the U.S., which requires constant, Soviet-style editing of the brutish, unpleasant aspects of life among the millions of so-called “losers” at the bottom of the social order.   Moreover, the prosperous crowd that constitutes McCain’s primary reference group is addicted to modes of greed and denial which more or less ensure that subjects such as poverty and homelessness do not intrude on their delusional chit chat about alleged terrorists and anti-intellectual, white, working-class heroes.  Among members of this hard-hearted crew, homeless people are generally considered to be genetically inferior “proles” responsible for their own wretched plight

The disdain McCain invariably exudes whenever he mentions Obama’s proposed tax cuts for people who earn less than $250,000 per year is indicative of his overall hostility toward those at the very bottom of the domestic social order.  He obviously believes that liberal efforts to “spread the wealth” are misbegotten forms of creeping Socialism—if the wealth spreading is intended to help poor people.  Nonetheless, he is obviously committed to helping the wealthy when and wherever he can. 

What I find endlessly fascinating is the clever, and frequently unprincipled, tactics he and other Republicans commonly use in order to get working-class people, whites in particular, to vote against their best economic interests.  But that’s the subject of a forthcoming post. Right now I want to focus on the subject of homelessness, and the manner in which it is being disappeared by both candidates.

Barack Obama is, of course, taking a different philosophical approach than John McCain in his effort to acquire victory in his campaign to become President.   He is indeed the most Liberal person to get this close to being elected President in living memory.  Moreover, he is clearly committed to egalitarian principles and priorities that will provide support for more average U.S. citizens than have been served in any good manner during the currently vilified Bush era.

But like McCain, Obama repeatedly indicates that he intends to do his very best if elected to assist members of the middle-class.  I am not opposed to this.  Members of the middle-class obviously need assistance on several fronts.  These include help with mortgages, health care and education, not to mention the many ways in which better, more enlightened energy and social policies will elevate their overall quality of life. 

Nonetheless, Obama’s avoidance of any substantive discussion of homelessness, and other manifestations of soul and body destroying endemic poverty, is probably indicative of the fact that the Liberal philosophy he professes is in some ways just as inadequate as the dated, morally corrupt, protect-the-wealthy, Conservative nostrums being spewed on a daily basis by McCain, and the expensively attired, cunning, but largely clueless, Sarah Palin.

As far as John McCain is concerned, win or lose on November 4, his current trajectory ensures that he will end his political career on the wrong side of history, fighting for tradition, empire and privilege at a time when the so-called “Winds of Change” are blowing in a fundamentally different direction.  In other words, he is as delusional and misguided during this, the winter of his long career of shallow strutting and fretting on the stage of public affairs as he was at its beginning, the period during which he was cruising through Vietnamese airspace in search of people on the ground who could more of less be easily murdered.  Where the moral case for improving the character and quality of life in the U.S. is concerned, John McCain is essentially a lost cause, and probably always has been.

Given his youth, intellect, and current prospects for success on November 4, it seems reasonable to hold out more hope for Barack Obama.  Nonetheless, he is clearly a work in progress.  And there are many good reasons to be deeply concerned about the manner in which he will exercise influence and authority if he is elected.

For example, he seems intent on maintaining the U.S. military empire, which is a major, unacknowledged source of the nation’s current economic meltdown, not to mention widespread criminal activities such as torture and worse that may well result in some current U.S. leaders at the highest levels of government being prosecuted in international tribunals for engaging in crimes against humanity.   

Moreover, Obama’s bellicose comments regarding the manner in which he intends to expand U.S. military operations in Pakistan/Afghanistan if he is elected do not engender a great deal of confidence in his strategic vision.  If he is not extremely careful, President Obama could very well end up permitting the war currently being waged in Pakistan/Afghanistan to become for his administration a cancer of the sort metastasizing via the criminal assault the Bush administration is currently waging in Iraq.

Barack Obama needs to think long and hard about the reasons why he, along with John McCain, supported the $700 billion Wall Street bailout hastily cobbled together by Congress and the Bush administration.  If he does so, he may come to understand that the mainstream liberalism he espouses contains many reactionary elements of despicable Social Darwinism that preclude the possibility of his adequately addressing the needs of this society’s most unfortunate citizens, a criminally large percentage of whom are homeless.

In other words, the actual change we desperately need requires the development and implementation of a new, Social Contract representative of the unprecedented domestic and geopolitical realities shaping the economic, political and cultural parameters of this new century.  Thus, Barack Obama’s long term success or failure, should he be elected on November 4, will be largely determined on the basis of whether he changes his current conventional course and adopts a newer, more humane and politically audacious, agenda.  At the very least, he will need a domestic agenda that fundamentally alters the manner in which homelessness is currently mishandled, lied about and denied in this critically unbalanced, and criminally neglectful, society.