Who's Your President?

I'm witnessing a very disturbing trend--and on MSNBC of all places. It's not enough that Republicans are doing all they can to bring down President Obama, some liberal pundits are pitching in, as well.

David Corn of Politics Daily, and other liberal pundits are quick to compare Obama with President Clinton, and, you guessed it, Obama is coming up short in every category: Obama's not as politically savvy as was Clinton, not the leader he was, and not as politically focused.

Why this sudden need to elevate Clinton at the expense of Obama?

Forgotten is the Clinton sex scandal that rocked the White House; forgotten is Monica Lewinsky and the stained dress that was preserved as proof of Clinton's infidelity. Gone is Clinton's failed attempt to provide health-care reform, and a host of other failures and scandals that marred his presidency. Remember e-mailgate, and few other gates that plagued his administration: Cattlegate, Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewatergate, Troopergate, and Chinagate.

Because of Monicagate Clinton had to face down an impeachment. I'm not saying that Clinton was guilty of any of these political indiscretions, but that they have mostly been forgotten, as the New Clinton takes the stage in his new role of Obama defacer. In the clip below, you can hear a little bit of this, as well as an explanation for why Clinton's reputation is undergoing a rebirth.

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If you don't wish to watch the whole vid-clip, here's a transcript of the part where Obama is compared to Clinton--a comparison that's mostly unwarranted, and unnecessary.

SIMON: I agree with almost all of that, except one small point I would like to make. One reason Bill Clinton is doing so well now is that he's not viewed as a political figure anymore. He's viewed as this philanthropist, this man who's raising hundreds of millions of dollars to, you know, cure AIDS, to solve environmental problems, things that are not especially political. Sure, he's going to go out on the trail for Barack Obama, but I might -- I think, once he does, you might see those figures shift a little.

FINEMAN: Well, I hate to disagree with Roger--boy, we are really disagreeing a lot -- but I haven't seen the poll numbers on that. I can't imagine that there's anybody in the United States who doesn't still regard Bill Clinton as a political figure. Bill Clinton oozes politics out of every pore. And that's what made him infuriating, but what also makes him charming, and also what makes him able to explain in kitchen-table language what Barack Obama can't always seem to do. And it's a fascinating thing. It's a mixed blessing for Obama.

Not only is President Obama's accomplishments--only two years into his presidency--towering over Clinton's presidential years, the challenges facing his administration dwarf those of Bill Clinton's, and Ronald Reagan's administrations combined.

And I think that that is the nub of the problem: Obama's achievements to date, although not as impressive, or as progressive, as many would like for them to be, clearly has him standing out among those in the pantheon of presidential achievers.

First, it was comparing Obama to Woodrow Wilson, and, of late, to Bill Clinton. No matter whether it is on the job-creation front, or handling the Gulf oil spill, or protecting this nation from terrorists, or the handling of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--President Obama finds himself being measured by the shadows cast by his white predecessors.

It's as though the conversation has taken a sudden turn, for both liberal and conservative pundits (We have always known where Republicans stand!): "We can't have a black president eclipsing the white ones of the past. We can't have him achieving more. We can't have him succeeding where others have failed. We can't let him achieve the stature or the greatness that's reserved for those of a much lighter hue."

Perhaps I'm reading this all wrong--that it has nothing to do with Obama's race--but I'm hard pressed to find another motive.

Planned GOPsolescence

The year is 1875 and you're a horsewhip maker, and you're hearing rumors that something is being developed that could put you out of business, or impact it greatly if you didn't adapt. That rumor, if you believed it, could throw you into panic, couldn't it?

Now move ahead several decades, and turn the corner into the twenty-first century, and you have a similar situation, but it's not horsewhip makers panicking, but a political party. It's the year 2004 and you're hearing about this scrawny senator from Chicago, with a funny name, who may have presidential ambitions, and who, as keynote speaker at that year's Democratic National convention, has brought the crowd to its feet admist thunderous applause, and if you're Republican and a presidential hopeful, or just a Republican hoping to replace Bush with another Republican, your heart may flutter a bit.

And then you learn that the speaker is also black. If you're a Republican you may not panic right away, but you sure as hell want to keep a close eye on what could possibly be a dark horse: You may have thought to search for that outdated buggy whip you've been holding onto for such an occasion.

And if you heard any part of that black man's speech that night to the Democratic National Convention, you still may not panic, but a tinge of worry would certainly leave foot prints across the surface of your mind, as he spoke the following:

"Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us--the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America-- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America--there’s the United States of America."

And you may not have panicked when Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee claimed huge wins in Iowa, with Obama edging out Hillary Clinton, garnering 38 percent of voters. You may not have panicked, but worry lines would be seen forming across your weary brow, as Huckabee took in a respectable 34 percent of the voters, but was still four percentage points below the Democratic front runner. And you'd note: The press saw Obama's victory as a win for change over experience. And still you'd see no cause to panic.

If you didn't panic when Obama won Iowa, worry lines would certainly began to deepen when he defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton in a heated contest to represent the Democrat Party against rival John McCain, who made a surprise, come-from-behind showing to become the Republican Party nominee.

If you managed to keep your composure up to now, you noticed that GOPers were beginning to show the first signs of panic at McCain-Palin rallies, when cries of "terrorist," and "kill him," in reference to then Democrat candidate Barack Obama punctuated rally speeches. You would also notice: The signs of panic became full-blown terror when posters of Obama flanked by Osama bin Laden, Curious George dolls, and boxes of "Obama Waffles" for sale, and racist e-mails began to surface.

You think: If this scrawny black guy with the funny name (which GOPers abundantly made fun of) actually do the unthinkable, win the presidency, with his laundry list of social programs, then the GOPers had more to worry about than a black man in the White House.

Their very existence was at stake.

If Obama succeeds, then conservatism fails. People would come to see the benefits and advantages of liberalism, especially if that dreaded healthcare reform law, with that "public option" is allowed to pass. If Obama does what he promises, then liberalism will be preferred to conservatism--and where would that leave Republicans. Liberalism had to be stopped at all cost. Its success would spell the death of the Republican party, and conservatism will have met its Waterloo.

Republicans would have to bring out the big guns, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and concerted Republican resistance to any and all things Obama attempts. They all had a stake in destroying Obama, and the party he represented. With liberalism on top, succeeding where conservatism failed, then the Republican Party would be obsolete.

Then you'd know the awful truth: Obama must be stopped. Must be stopped at all cost. And you'd tell fellow GOPers why he must be stopped:

For one, Obama would usher in a post-racial age, narrowing the racial divide. No longer could race be exploited, and white voters be counted on to vote for the white guy in local and national elections. Something had to be done. GOPers's strategy: keep reminding all voters, Democrats as well as Republicans, of Obama's race, of his African-Americaness. Draw him into a debate on race, thinking that would surely alienate white voters. Tell whites that his health-care plan was little more than a black give away, a reparation for blacks. And when everything else failed, attach his blackness to his policies.

Call blacks racists, including the president, himself. Talk secession. Talk "taking the country back." Talk civil war and arming militias.

For two, Obama would usher in liberalism-socialism. Take Obama's message of "change," and distort it. Tell Americans that he's moving to fast, seeking wholesale change, where incremental change is all that's needed. Tell them that he's a socialist, and that socialism is bad, and that capitalism and the free market made America strong (although greed, and a lack of regulatory restraints on financial institutions had plunged the nation into a recession that threatened to become a depression).

For three, an Obama presidency would end the careers of talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh and a number of other Republican and conservative pundits that make a pretty damn good living exploiting every thing from race to religion, from pitting one party against the other to putting loud, and disruptive plants at town hall meetings, to replacing actual turf (grassroots movements) with "AstroTurf" movements paid for by affected corporations and institutions.

For four, it would spell the death of Fox News. Fox has "made its bones" on holding liberals at bay, supporting George Bush's policies, his war in Iraq, attacking Cindy Sheehan on every occasion, and Dr. Tiller, "the baby killer." If liberalism succeeds, if the people are actually shown to benefit, then Fox News would have no natural adversaries, no cause, nothing, and no one to fight, no standard to bear, nothing to do but fold up its tent and steal away into the night, as ratings drop, in a desperate effort to reformat programs, and restructure how it delivers news-propaganda.

You'd remind them: If the GOP becomes obsolete, those who depend on it for their own survival, will also become obselete: Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and a host of conservative poltical strategists and pundits. Their livilihood and fortune depended on Obama failing. They know this, and early on, they announced their intentions to destroy him politically.

You'd remind them: Medicare has been such a success, that any government run program that emulates it, and expands it, must be attacked. The GOP can't give the Democratics this poltical edge, and neither can Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and those of his ilk.

You'd remind them: Survival at all cost. There's still some use for whips, but not as much as before the twentieth century. If President Obama and liberals succeed in reforming health care, actually finding ways to increase competition, and dramatically cutting the cost of healthcare for Americans, the GOP may not be, in this century, as useful as whips.

Black No More

Ralph Ellison wrote an award-winning novel [1] a few years before the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement titled, Invisible Man. His protagonist, nameless throughout the book, immersed himself in light, even stealing it to satisfy his immense, but unfulfilled craving for it.

More than anything, he wished to be seen, to be acknowledged. But alas, the whites he encountered as he went about his day-to-day existence couldn't, because of his invisibility, see him. Even if they bumped into him, they hardly noticed. He was a nonentity, not worthy of their attention.

Because whites ignored him, the protagonist, on several occasions, came pretty damn close to killing some--all because they ignored his humanity, his value, and his struggle to be seen.

I watched a YouTube video on another blog that got me thinking about our invisibility as a people. The blogger, Btx3, offered up a fairly detailed description of black conservatives, dividing them into four groups. It's a rather long piece, but well worth the read.

In one of the videos (Scroll down to see videos.), Larry Elder discussed his newly released book, Stupid Black Men: How to Play the Race Card -- and Lose, with Wolf Blitzer of CNN. The title tells you all you need to know about the book, setting up a strong temptation, if you were inclined to read it, to read the front cover, and the blurbs on the back cover--skipping altogether the redundancy of hundreds of pages constituting the body of the book.

The book's point, as Elder states it: "White racism is no longer a major problem in America anymore." He further states--if there's a "commotion" over the book's title, it's because it offers clear proof: "people recoil[ing] by the title shows you they're reluctant to be perceived as racists." Racism, he claims, has been reduced to "incidents," and are not "frequent anymore." And to Wolf Blitzer, who conducts the interview, he states: "This country has evolved. This is not your grandfather's America."

Unwittingly, Elder reveals for whom the book was written, and it's not a book for "stupid black men," or any black men (Black men would rightly be offended by the title, if nothing else.), but for those whites that can point to his racial opus and declare: "Larry Elder is black and he's saying that racism is not a 'major problem in America anymore,' and those with the audacity to play the 'race card' [after the publication of the book] can be ignored." What comfort such a book gives racists, who can continue their racial bigotry, and do it with the impunity of an excuse.

I'm sure it wasn't whites "recoiling" over the title, but blacks; yet his statement suggests that it's whites who're raising the "commotion."

Larry's premise (white racism is not a major American problem), if taken to the extreme, suggests that blacks are finally being seen. They're not invisible anymore, as Ralph Ellison's book posited once. And if they're being seen, they're not black anymore. Our struggle to be seen, to be valued, and to join the ranks of humanity, has been realized, if not fully (there're still those occasional, nagging "incidents"), fully enough to declare, all at once now, "We're black no more!"

And just as Larry Elder pointed to Barack Obama's success in states that are largely non-black as evidence that we've overcome (since, ironically, there's no one comparable to Barack Obama in the Republican party to point to), we can finally put the concerns of race behind us, and forge a future of togetherness, unity, and visibility for all.

Just think. No more color arousal. No more racial profiling. No more living, eating, driving, flying, and breaking into our own homes, while black.

But Wolf conducted his interview with Larry months before Barack Obama became President Obama, before birthers and deathers, before ever-increasing threats against Obama's life and those of his family, before gun-toting protesters stood boldly and calmly outside of town hall meetings, and loud, angry, disruptive, give me "back my country" protesters clamored inside, before the burgeoning numbers of white militias, and the call for secession, and talking heads raising the specter of civil war in this country, before the party of "No," and Rush Limbaugh, in particular, calling for Obama's failure, and the eradication of liberalism from every corner of our great country, before photoshopped images of President Obama as Hitler, and an African Witchdoctor, before Obama was labeled a racist, a communist, a Marxist, a socialist, a foreign interloper who will destroy the economic fabric, and cultural values of this country unless he's stopped.

I have to give it to Elder though. Shortly after Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton and became the Democrat Party's nominee to go up against John McCain, and before he defeated McCain, and before the dark clouds of a recession gathered on our nation's horizon, and before then president George Bush turned down the Obamas' request to live temporarily in Blair House before moving into the White House, to prepare his kids to attend school, Larry Elder called it:

"At the end of the day: Americans don't want to lose wars. Americans don't want their taxes raised. Americans don't want the government to take over the rest of health care that they don't already have."

Had he said, "Republicans" instead of "Americans," he would have been prescient. Yet, I'll have to subtract several points from his prescience for his clear belief, stated this way: "I think Americans won't take that," that being--losing the war, raising taxes, and taking over health care.

So much for his knowledge of what Americans will or will not do!

[1] Ralph Ellison won the National Book Award for his first novel Invisible Man (1952).