LaRouche's Role in
Mobilizing the United States
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Here are the spoken remarks of EIR Counterintelligence Editor Jeffrey Steinberg to an EIR-sponsored seminar in Berlin, Germany on the afternoon of June 28, 2005. He also submitted a written text, which was published in the July 25 issue of New Federalist.I've made available here about 35 or 40 copies of a more detailed report I prepared for this conference, reviewing some of the events of the past five months. And I began that paper by briefly quoting from an exchange that occurred, here in this very room on Jan. 12, between Lyndon LaRouche and General Saighal from India, after the General had presented a paper on the issue of discontinuities in politics, and LaRouche had followed it with a discussion about how discontinuities also represent revolutionary opportunities. LaRouche laid out a certain perspective on events that he saw coming in the United States over the period of the next several months. I think when you read LaRouche's comments from Jan. 12, you will be really struck by just how clear a strategic perspective that he had on the opportunities that would be unfolding in the United States, and the key role that he personally intended to play.
What I want to review here are some aspects of the events of the last five months, that I didn't particularly develop in that written document, because, in LaRouche's modesty, this afternoon in discussing the changes in the political landscape of the United States, I think that there were elements that needed to get further emphasis. In particular, his personal role in the transformation of the Democratic Party, that has created a strategic opening that otherwise would have been absolutely impossible to even conceive of.
About six weeks ago, we received word, and subsequently confirmed it through other sources as well, about a very interesting meeting that took place at the White House. The meeting involved a very prominent Republican member of the United States Senate, whose name we know but we've chosen up until this point to keep the name private. He was invited to the White House to have a not-so-friendly chat with Karl Rove and with Vice President Dick Cheney. And the short version of the meeting, was that this Republican Senator was accused of being a secret agent of Lyndon LaRouche inside the United States Senate, and was apparently presented with some evidence from public statements that he had made, and other things that he had done, that Cheney and Rove were convinced could only be explained, by virtue of the fact that he had some secret channel to Mr. LaRouche.
Now, in this particular case, it happened to not be true. So, Rove and Cheney had their facts wrong. Yet, the general conclusions that they had reached were absolutely correct: namely, that the completely unexpected change in the political landscape in Washington, had no alternative explanation than that Lyndon LaRouche had somehow or other, effected a change in political personality of not just individuals but major institutions, inside the U.S. government. It was as if, as LaRouche wrote in his recent Earth's Next Fifty Years, suddenly leading members of the United States Senate and some leading members of the House of Representatives had become infected with the living words of the Founding Fathers; and had abandoned the existing policy which was dominant in the U.S. Senate for a long time, namely, people would "go along to get along," and would make pragmatic compromises with the truth.
Yet, the situation had dramatically changed. And in fact, when Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, at the conclusion of the 2004 Presidential elections, believed that there would be no impediments to them bulldozing through a series of—not just treacherous and treasonous policies—but policies that would have permanently dismantled the Constitutional character of the United States, they had good reason to believe they would succeed. There was no evidence at that moment, that the Democratic Party as an institution, particularly in the Senate, would rise to the challenge of the moment.
In fact, following the 2000 Presidential elections, whose outcome is at best questionable, and in all likelihood was actually won by the Democrats, the response of the Democratic Party at that point was cowardice and disunity. None other than Al Gore himself, who was the contender in the 2000 elections with George Bush for President, had stood before the U.S. Senate, in his capacity as the president of the Senate—he was still Vice President before the new inauguration—and silenced those within the Democratic Party who wanted to challenge the outcome of the election. And it went downhill from there.
When the issue of the Iraq war came up for debate in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives, in October of 2002, the vast majority of Democrats capitulated, and went along with giving President Bush war powers that the vast majority of them knew were illegitimate.
Democratic Pafrty Wakes Up
So therefore, coming out of the 2004 elections, there was no particular reason for either Rove or Cheney to have assumed that there would be any substantial Congressional resistance to policies like the looting through privatization of the Social Security Trust Fund, which was the last bastion of the FDR policies of the New Deal social safety net for all Americans. Yet, beginning almost immediately after the convening of the new Congress, in fact, on the second day after the convening of the new Congress, on Jan. 6, 2005, the Democratic Party was an extremely different political institution, by virtue of challenging the legitimacy of the Bush election in Ohio. Subsequently there were a whole series of other steps, some of which Lyn had forecast here on Jan. 12, in Berlin, including the resistance to the nomination of the Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General of the United States, which was one of the first pitched battles of the new Congressional season, the 109th Congress, and the war that erupted over the issue of Social Security privatization.
All of these fights, I can say with absolutely certainty, would either not have taken place at all, or would have been brief, rearguard efforts that would have died very quickly, were it not for the fact that, over a period of time, LaRouche had been intervening to fundamentally alter the character of the Democratic Party.
Now, the United States, like virtually every country around the world, is a nation that operates based on certain kinds of institutions and habits. And Lyn introduced several new, groundbreaking habits into the Democratic Party over the period since the initial election of George W. Bush back in November of 2000—the dubious election, the first of the dubious Bush-Cheney elections. And over a period of the past five years, these institutions, which started out as very limited factors, have emerged as dominant factors within the Democratic Party.
The first of these factors was a series of strategic, emergency webcasts, international presentations that Lyn delivered, often from Washington, occasionally from here in Europe, as was most recent of these webcasts on June 16. And each of those webcasts was characterized by three elements, although in each instance, if you go back and read the content of these webcasts, they were each different in terms of points of emphasis, flanks of intervention, and things like that. But, each of them had three fundamental characteristics:
LaRouche Tells the Truth
In the first place, Lyn played the role of the child in the Hans Christian Andersen story "The Emperor's New Clothes": Namely, coming forward to speak clearly, and frankly, about the truthful nature of the strategic crisis, not mincing any words. And in the most recent of these—probably by now, there have been 20 or so of these webcasts since November of 2000—Lyn placed particular emphasis on the strategic significance of the insanity of President Bush, and the sociopathological-murderer streak of Vice President Dick Cheney. Now, you can turn on the television in the United States, any night of the week, about 11:30 at night, and there'll be three sort of entertainment shows on each of the three big TV networks. And on any given night, there'll be a lot of jokes being made about how Bush is a lunatic—and some of them are pretty funny. But, LaRouche has insisted that Bush's insanity not be blocked on through giddy humor, but be understood as a strategic factor, that can't be ignored in terms of the dangers of the present situation.
So, LaRouche has always put on the table, in the most current and relevant predicated form, the nature of the crisis, the evolving collapse of the entire post-Bretton Woods floating-exchange-rate system, the various war dangers, and the most recent manifestations of Bush's deteriorating psychological condition.
Bush was nuts when he came into the job, and he is now virtually isolated in a padded room called the Oval Office, almost incapable of appearing before the general public without having some kind of a manifestation of a breakdown. And this has forced Dick Cheney, to have to increasingly play the public role of spokesman for the Administration, which doesn't function either: Because he's not exactly a warm, fuzzy, endearing personality.
The second thing that has characterized each of these webcasts, is that LaRouche laid out in very calm and very confident fashion, the readily available solutions, to these profound global crises, just as he's discussed them today, here.
And thirdly, having identified the frightening reality, and having also confidently spelled out the policy options that are clearly available on the table, he posed, very often quite directly, the concluding question, which is, if the situation is starkly clear, if the solutions are fairly obvious, then what is it in the psychological makeup of the leading policymaking circles in the United States and around the world, that prevents them from acting on this reality—when the very survival of the human race is at stake?
Now, through this wonderful institution called the "internet," the leading circles within the Democratic Party, within the Congress, within the party structure, particularly among people who formerly served in the Executive branch in the Clinton Administration, and therefore had a certain sense of what it means to be a part of this Executive branch institution, it was possible for people to sit behind their own desks, at their own private offices, and in a quasi-anonymous fashion, throw questions over the wall at LaRouche. And so, initially, in a very tentative way, but gradually with more and more direct and intensive discussion, leading circles within the Democratic Party began to entertain a very important political dialogue directly with LaRouche.
And I think if you look at the transcript, or follow on the internet, the video-audio stream of the most recent webcast on June 16, you will see that this level of political dialogue with Lyn, has advanced to an extremely significant level, where the first five or six questions at the webcast, came directly from leading members of the United States Senate, in a few cases through their staff, in a few cases directly through the members of the Senate. And this was a very clear, unambiguous signal, of a recognition, that LaRouche has established his position as the commander-in-chief of a transformed Democratic Party.
Now, there are a lot of fairly good field commanders inside the Democratic Party leadership at this point. Some of them have the benefit of being in LaRouche's generation, people like Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), and Sen. John Warner (Va.), who's a Republican, but is in his late seventies, and who played a vital role, along with Senator Byrd, in defeating the Cheney insurrection against the Constitution that LaRouche referenced, that took place on May 23, with the compromise that defeated the so-called "nuclear option."
So, you have this generation of leading elements in the Senate, who because the events have required their unique experience in leadership, have come to the fore. Other people, like Sen. Harry Reid (Nev.), who is the new ranking Democrat in the Senate, again, from a somewhat older generation, older than the Boomer generation, has also come to the fore—as have some leading younger members of the Senate.
But I can tell you, had LaRouche not thrown down the gauntlet against the Bush Administration of the Democratic Party from a party that was principally oriented, particularly under Al Gore's Presidential campaign of 2000, to suburban soccer moms and SUV dads, who are, in fact, part of the worst social fascist base of the Republican Party, none of this would have happened.
Role of LaRouche Youth Movement
The second key element in the transformation of the Democratic Party has been the unleashing of the LaRouche Youth Movement, both around the United States, into the pores of the Democratic Party at the grassroots level—but particularly, the role of the LaRouche Youth Movement inside the U.S. Congress. Every week that the Congress is in session—and very often even when the Congress is not in session, when there are hundreds and hundreds of young Congressional aides around without their bosses breathing down their necks—scores of members of the Youth Movement spend several days a week up on Capitol Hill, organizing young staffers, distributing large amounts of literature, and creating a certain political environment, which has come to dominate the intellectual debate within the U.S. Congress.
Now, the Youth Movement has posed a very important paradox, to the leadership of the Democratic Party: It's challenged them to have to face up to the fact, that they are incapable of organizing a youth movement. They just simply don't have the intellectual tools to do it. They're fascinated about the idea, that there's an emerging group of young people who are taking an active role inside the Democratic Party, but they're not quite sure what to make of the methodological approach that LaRouche has taken to doing this. I can assure you, that there is not a member of the House or the Senate, even among the elder statesmen, who would feel comfortable either teaching a class in Gauss, or in even leading a chorus of Jesu, meine Freude or Ave Verum Corpus.
So, there's a fundamental paradox: Empirically, people see that something is working, and it's something that they've attempted, but systematically failed to do, yet it's forcing them to fundamentally reconsider their entire approach to politics.
White House Reaction
So, I think all of these events have created the circumstances where there is a state of absolute hysteria at the White House, reflected in this incident that I described. But there are many more incidents that have taken place subsequently, that reflect the fact that Rove and Company suddenly find themselves in uncharted political waters. They did not expect Democratic resistance to the Social Security privatization, or to the next menu of war du jour that they had planned out after the inauguration in January 2005.
They are destabilized. Their game plan has been disrupted. They're dangerous, but yet, they've been gravely weakened, they've been gravely wounded, to the point that in the last weeks, the general tenor of the discussion in the traditional conservative and liberal establishment media in the United States has been to characterize the Bush Administration as political lame ducks. And if there's going to be one achievement that Bush can undoubtedly claim to be the unique character of his Presidency, it's that he will have rendered himself a lame duck faster than any re-elected President in American history.
So, we're at a critical conjuncture right now. As a result of this transformation of the Democratic Party, in the recent weeks, particularly because of the crisis around General Motors and Ford, and the issues that have been forced onto the table among both Democrats and Republicans in Congress—because they see before them the prospect of the collapse of the last bastion of high-technology, non-defense-related industry in the United States—the issues that LaRouche has put on the table, particularly with a series of policy memos to the U.S. Senate in April and May of this year, are on the agenda.
We've reached the point, where we're on the brink of actually bringing down the Bush-Cheney Administration. We've created a bipartisan combination in the United States Senate, increasingly looking to LaRouche for policy guidance on exactly what kinds of legislative initiatives to take to deal with things like the bankrupting of the entire private sector pension funds; the imminent bankruptcy of General Motors and Ford, and other issues along these lines, such as: the possible blow-out of the entire real estate market; the potential meltdown of the entire global financial system, through a series of bankruptcies of hedge funds. We've got political leadership in the United States, high qualified field commanders, colonels, and similar semi-flag grade officers, prepared to respond.
And therefore, I conclude my remarks today, as I did in my written paper, by saying, that there is far greater cause for optimism today, than there was when we last gathered in Berlin in January, because of the rapid transformation of the political situation in the United States, which poises the United States to potentially again re-emerge as a nation, in which the founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, have become again the living word of our current legislators.
