As one who happily voted for Barack Obama last fall and who is now perplexed, if not downright disappointed, by his less-than-aggressive advocacy of a truly liberal agenda, I readily admit to being mystified by the negative attacks from the right against the nation’s president.
Depending on the forum and the speaker, Obama has been compared to Hitler and to Stalin (right- and left-wing dictators apparently being indistinguishable to some people) or called, as one of my readers defiantly claimed last week, “the most totalitarian president in history.”
Excuse me? Are we talking about the same guy? This man can’t even control his own party. And as a leader, he is more like Gandhi than Mussolini.
So just what gives? What is behind this broad-ranging attack on the man that over half the country chose to lead it just ten months ago?
The obvious answer would be pure politics, as can be the case when the “outs” have no other way to attack the “ins.” But we aren’t talking about a president who has a perfect batting average, not by a long shot. Whether he can rightfully be blamed or not, the fact is that on his watch unemployment is now precariously close to the dreaded double-digit level, the country continues to be engaged in two seemingly endless and fruitless wars, budget deficits are out of sight (and promise to continue to be so for the foreseeable future), and his most significant legislative initiative, health care reform, may well be headed down the same road the Clintons traveled some sixteen years ago.
No, whatever hope Barack Obama brought with him when he took office last January seems to have been dissipated by a combination of hard cold reality and an ineffective grasp of the office he holds.
I take no joy in this critique of the man. He captured the hearts of many Americans with his rhetoric during the long campaign that ended with his election. But running for office is one thing; performing in office is another.
Where Obama still scores well is in his ability to speak to a vision. He is at his best when he gets out of the weeds of policy details and just reminds his listeners of broad-ranged goals, like affordable health care and peace in the Middle East. These are visions everyone can appreciate and get behind, and Obama is great at giving mouth to them.
He also rates high marks for his efforts to eschew partisanship, but those marks are more than neutralized by his inability to generate bipartisanship in return. In this respect he may be naïve or he may be timid; sometimes the two are hard to distinguish.
In any event, his legislative record to date is not marked by anything close to consensus-building. His big victories so far (the stimulus package being the principal one) have been almost entirely secured on party-line votes.
And yet, with so much to criticize and attack on the record itself, this president’s critics seem far more anxious to engage in ad hominem attacks replete with pictures of a Hitler mustache and claims that he wants to take everyone’s guns.
It’s puzzling, to say the least. Or maybe it isn’t.
In their excellent study of politics in the new millennium, Paul Pierson and Jacob S. Hacker provide at least a hint of what might really be going on.
In “Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy” the authors offer a historically-based perspective on the current political scene. Tracing the roots to the election of Ronald Reagan, with a dramatic escalation during the presidency of George W. Bush, the authors describe the aggressive move to the right that the power brokers of the party have directed.
The strategy has been to sensitize the country to anything remotely left of center by continually pitching themes like tax relief and the war on terrorism as a means to polarize and isolate moderates and liberals.
Thus, what used to be a moderate wing of the Republican Party has now been jettisoned, as witness the recent defection (purely for purposes of political survival) of Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter.
The seeming impossibility of someone like Nelson Rockefeller (the country’s Republican vice-president just 33 years ago) to have any political career in the GOP now makes the point abundantly clear: the Republican Party has become a monolithic union of conservatives and ultra-conservatives, in which the former are tolerated only if the latter have not yet ascended to prominence.
Seen in this light, the demonizing of Obama may be at least remotely comprehensible. To attack him for his failures of leadership does not underline the issue sufficiently for the new “off-center” party of the right. He isn’t held in disdain because of his leadership skills (or lack thereof). He is held in disdain because of what he represents.
And what Obama represents is a return to the pursuit of rational solutions, or put in simplest terms, of “doing what works.” This approach completely obliterates the principal goal of the new Republican Party in that it negates ideology.
Yes, Obama’s policy proposals tend to be on the liberal side of the equation. But he is not an ideologue. He can be criticized for espousing solutions that adopt liberal solutions (universal health care with a “public option,” for example), but he is much more interested in results than he is in his liberal credentials, which is why he has allowed a cadre of moderate and conservative senators (e.g. Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley) to control much of the drafting of the bill he may (with a lot of luck) get to sign later this year.
This kind of guy can’t be attacked from the right for his policy agenda alone. He’s too hard to pin down in that single arena.
It’s much easier and much more effective to demonize him. And so we have Obama as Hitler, Obama as the evil socialist, Obama as “the most totalitarian president in history.”
Never mind whether it’s true. It’s the new Republican way. Get used to it.
This radical writing is an offense to our great country. Your petty arguements against republicans are offensive and immature. Obama is a tyrant and everything he says threatens the USA with a massive terrrist attack. He should be impeached or killed for being a racist dictator.
Haha. Just kidding.
If you want actual governence from your government, dad, move elsewhere – in time. We are a fundamentalist country and Rupert Murdock is our Ayotolah. Fox news counts its ratings as more valuable than election votes, and apparently they have every right to do so, because they inexplicably control the policy discussions of the US.
As an actual Marxist/radical, I am completely comfortable in calling out every conservative reader here as a fucking asshole. What happened to “We didn’t vote for him, bt we’ll support him, because he’s our president and we’re patriotic.”? Fucking liars. I heard many of you drones say that a year ago. Now it’s all attacks. Obama has no support. Only constant adversity. If you have a boss or a family, your republican party is completely betraying you, and you are a total idiot for supporting the agenda of the ruling corporations.
You let the last guy completely dismantle our government and hand it to the rich elite. Now our guy wants to actually improve the lives of the citizenry. Let the president do his fucking job!
What I wonder is whether the plan was to get all of this hot air out in the summer when no one is paying *real* intellectual attention to the issue (in Washington or among the populace) and then come out of the summer discussing more substantive aspects of the new policy. This might have been a strategy to get all of the huffing and puffing out of the way. However, I might be giving this administration too much credit, as they have not really shown a (any) tendency to be aggressive in promoting significant “liberal” policy.
To quote the Bush Chief of Staff, while beginning the Iraq hysteria in September 2002, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
The vacation’s over! Let’s get to work!
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people make comparisons to Hitler and Nazi Germany. “Damn, that Nazi gave me a parking ticket.” “Look at what Hitler’s done to the price of unleaded!” “I had to wait 20 minutes on the phone for Mengele and those Nazis in customer service to correct my cell phone bill!” “Goering wants to put in speed bumps on my street!” Hyperbolize much?
Now that damn Obama is giving cash for clunkers and trying to provide health insurance for all Americans. Oh, yeah, it’s exactly like sending panzers into Poland, blitzkriegs, and the Holocaust. And, like any true totalitarian dictator, he wants to indoctrinate our children in the fascist notion of completing an education! I’m pretty sure das Fuhrer did the exact same thing.
As you point out, Fox News can’t decide if Obama is a fascist or a socialist. Basically it’s decided that he’s a (whatever-scares-you-the-most-and-increases-our-ratings)ist. I wonder how well FDR would have fared had Murdock’s machine been around in his day.
I, too, have been flummoxed as to why the right hasn’t just attacked Obama on their fundamental, ideological basis, arguing that the country can’t afford his policies or that his administration (and federal government in general) is too ineffectual to make the corrections, or that it ultimately could retard economic growth or something like that. Instead they’ve gone into this crazed conspiracy mode, led by the radio and tv demagogues. They invent issues without basis, like new gun-control measures or the indoctrination of children with “socialist” ideas. The Republicans in congress just roll with it, even repeating ridiculous notions about “death panels” and such.
The sad thing is that too many of those who are hurting right now want someone to blame and so they swallow this stuff.
Hold on a second. Are you telling me that a bunch of zealous, Bible-bangin’, gun toting homophobes don’t know how to string together a rational and coherent argument? But rather choose to hurl insults and vitriol, instead?
Shoooooooocking!
For me, it’s not that they resort to inflammatory statements and illogical conclusions. It’s the energy behind them.
There’s no understanding it. You can’t reason with the unreasonable. It’s like trying to divide by zero. Can’t be done.
These super conservative types (you know the ones) have been repeating their same tired, illogical arguments for so long that it makes me sleepy. People of this ilk don’t want facts or evidence. These are the very people who don’t even believe in the hard sciences!
Instead, we are to believe that a virgin gave birth to a man who was later murdered on a cross but somehow resurrected for the sins of the world (I’m still a little fuzzy on the details).
These same people deny evolution, yet buy that a senior citizen built a giant boat and fit two of every species in order to survive a flood.
Hey, that’s not logical either. Doesn’t seem to stop them from believing it, though.
“The new Republicans” wax on about the sanctity of life, but think that every kindergartner has a second amendment right to carry a glock to school.
If you even suggest that some reasonable gun control measures should be enforced, you are the fascist who doesn’t like rights or freedom.
Suggesting that, perhaps, more thorough background checks are in order to prevent the violent and psychologically unstable from purchasing handguns, somehow makes you the irrational one.
The new Republican is obsessed with overturning Roe v. Wade and striking down the morning-after pill, yet support the death penalty.
They have no interest in what happens to their precious fetuses 30 years down the line.
They say they want to decrease the number of abortions performed. Fine. I say that proper sex education, access to birth control (including the morning after pill) would decrease the demand for abortions. I am then told that they aren’t for that either.
When I ask why, I’m told that the morning after pill is an abortion pill (this is false, they’re confusing Plan B with RU-486). When I explain how this medicine works, I get the thousand yard stare. Instead, I’m told that abstinence only programs are the way to go.
Because just telling teenagers to stop having sex is an effective form of birth control. After all, it has been proven effective everywhere it has been implemented, oh wait no. . . actually, it was the opposite that was found to be true.
Neo-cons get worked up over a fetus, but don’t give a shit about that “life” once he or she is born.
Here’s another one I still have trouble understanding. Just recently, some woman insisted that “same-sex marriage is immoral, against the Bible, and it’s our duty to protect the sanctity of marriage.”
Okay, Christian soldiers. . .
What sanctity of marriage? Both Erik and Lyle Menendez have wives. The notorious Menendez boys shot their parents to death while they were in bed eating ice cream. Where were these people back then?
So let me see if I have this straight. Violent felons can get married, but two loving, committed, consenting adults of the same sex can’t? Is this logical?
And it always comes back to religion with these idiots. They say, “homosexuality is wrong because the Bible tells me so.”
And when I ask about the rights of those of us who don’t believe in 2009 year old fairy tales, I get the Stink Eye. Or I harangued and told I’m going to hell (of course as an atheist, I don’t really believe in hell, I’ll probably just rot in the ground for a while).
In any event, I only bring these simple examples to demonstrate that the people referenced in this column are not interested in the truth. They don’t sweat the details.
None of this makes any sense to a thinking person.
So it’s not a big stretch that these same people are now opining that the guy they didn’t vote for is a “Nazi” and comparing him to an evil dictator who was responsible for the extermination of some 6 million people.
I just have one question for these new Republicans, “Stupid or lying?”
Boy, that bunch above are the pinnacle of joy and sound reasoning. Is Keith your kid (he said “dad”)? You should have used Dr. Spock to beat the hell out of his bloomin’ bratty ass. You could still use my invention: S.C.O.R.E. – Select Condom Retrofit. It’s not too late.
With all the lies and insults thrown at the semi-one-worlder Bush for 8 years and going, complaints against Obama are mild to say the least. Obama’s czars are earning vituperation by making a mess of his administration with a lot of help from Pelosi, Reid and the state-controlled media.
During the campaign, the President said we should judge him by the people he surrounds himself with. When he included Paul Volcker, i knew we were in trouble. I had no idea he would surround himself with 34 or so (self proclaimed, recorded on video and audio archives) radicals arriving with already prepared programs to throw the country off balance ala Saul Alinsky.
Building a “civilian defense force larger than and as well funded as the military” shouldn’t scare Keith. I’d assume he visualizes himself at the head of the cadre in his area.
Nice combination and the perfect way to shit-can the Constitution with a bunch of ACORN and SEIU goons. Remember professor, it’s the likes of you intelligentsia that totalitarians like Pol Pot and Stalin neutralized first. If your Islamic friends win the argument for a “new America,” they’ll make it a bit hard on our gay friends while absolutely ruining the clothing business, if not the porn industry.
A mother who kept her kid home from the school speech – which i thought was pretty good – she said she doesn’t trust him because of the people he’s surrounded himself with. Look at Cass Sunsteen who thinks the Bill of Rights is a negative document that will be overshadowed by what government CAN do. Van Jones spoke for himself – and though he’s off the White House payroll, he’s probably more dangerous out of sight.
Wonder why we can’t rent “Sound of Music”, “Fiddler on the Roof’ and “Dr. Zhivago” lately? They’re sold out at our Blockbuster. Hmmm? Does the body politic smell a rat and is looking for hope and solace?
I have some hope for Obama growing into manhood as he gets his nose rubbed into the realities of governing a Constitutional Republic that he thinks is a democracy. I fear he would put his life in danger if he became a radical constructionist like Saul who became St. Paul.
BTW: For a sample of what joy ACORN brings, check the new website http://www.BigGovernment.com
Learn the principle of subsidiarity and realize that government has no competence in Health, Education and Welfare. Keith and Ashley, please come up with a cogent idea in between your failed attempts to judge others and your hate for discernment.
Were any of you alive when President Ronald Reagan was routinely villified by liberals? He also was called a fascist, a Nazi, a totalitarian, and, if I may borrow from the eloquence of Keith above, a “fucking asshole.” To Ed, I say it is easy to set up straw Republicans and demolish them for incivility, and so avoid the challenge of responding to criticisms of President Obama’s policies that might actually have merit. To Keith, I say it is easy to dismiss all conservative readers as “fucking assholes,” and so minimize the possibility that one of this blog’s very few conservative readers might bother to attempt a thoughtful repsonse to any comment that is written here. To all of you, I say you need to get out more. If you actually were acquainted with Republicans, Libertarians, fiscal conservatives, or middle-income-middle-of-the-road-non-academics (including even those with religious faith), you might not be as prone to spend so much effort constructing diatribes against stereotypes. Occasionally, you might even concede they have a point.
Joel – With all due respect, I challenge you to provide any quotes from the Reagan presidency that vilified him as you have described. Quite to the contrary, Reagan was accepted as the duly elected president. His policies were opposed, but he was never subjected to the kind of vitriol Obama has experienced.
And if you have read my blog for any period of time, you know that I was a registered Republican in my youth and did not become a Democrat until Reagan’s second term.
And, with respect to Obama’s policies, I am thoroughly prepared to defend those I agree with, and have done so many times on my blog.
Finally, let me assure you that I have many conservative readers. Most of them read my posts because they find them literate and thought-provoking. I don’t really need to defend myself, but I do think your hostility suggests a bias that may cloud your perception.
All that said, thanks for your post. Keep reading and thinking.
Mr. Cornwell,
Hi, former Republican here. I was a registered Republican since I was 18. I’ve worked on several campaigns for Republican candidates (and have been asked to do so again for someone who I really respect). I voted for George W. Bush. Twice. I was right there drinking the Kool-Aid at the 2000 Republican Convention. My family are all a bunch of pearl-clutching, church-going, conservative Republicans.
So I am quite familiar with real Republicans, thank you. I’ve known plenty.
So I appreciate where you are coming from. And I get the need to stick up for my party. But at a certain point, I became disillusioned with the Republicans. I couldn’t find the ideals that initially drew me to the party to begin with. I got sick of the shameless and blatant hypocrisy and it became increasingly difficult to defend them. I just couldn’t hang anymore.
But what we are talking about here is the recent phenomenon with Obama. And I don’t remember Reagan ever being depicted in the manner as Obama. Ever. Then again, I was a child of the 80’s so who knows. Past presidents have all been subject to criticism and satire. But this thing with Obama has quite a different tenor to it.
So we’re speaking categorically here. But, aren’t you assuming a little too much right now? And while I admit some of my comments were over the top (mainly for effect), I stand by them.
How say you, Keith?
Although I’m about as liberal as they come, I feel that I must refocus some of the… let’s just say angry… comments on this post. I think that many of these references to Republicans are misdirected. I do not believe that these crazies on Fox News/Faux News (using the word “news” quite loosely) accurately refelect what conservatives or even Republicans on the whole actually believe. All of the conservatives and libertarians that I have debated lately have (1) actually been civil and (2) have logically debated Obama’s policies. Of course, we have disagreed on what method or outcome would be better, but they were not the villians described above.
… unless we’re talking about those propogating racism, xenophobia, hate, and/or mistruths for ratings, votes, and/or money. For a description of those people, Keith said it best.
Americans are angry. The economy, unemployment, ongoing wars, crime, illegal immigrants situation.
Who do we blame? Obama.
Reminds me of the angry husband/wife who comes home, kicks the dog, shouts at the kids. Obama has become the scapegoat for all ills in our society, past and present. Personally speaking, I find it an insult to those who suffered under Hitler to compare them as the same.
Redirect this anger. Have patience. Stay calm. It’s time Americans united under one flag instead of party lines.