AN EXTENDED OPEN LETTER TO JOE SCARBOROUGH

Dear Mr. Scarborough:

I saw most of the exchange you had with David Axelrod on your show Morning Joe on October 18, and it showed once again to me how deep your hostility goes toward President Obama, which you attempt to conceal with your low-key and subtle deprecating commentary on him. I don’t watch your show very often, and never in its entirety, and only when I purposely turn to it to see who you have invited to be your guests, and what they are talking about, and specifically, if the topic of conversation is the President.
I have always wondered why you are the host of a political talk show on MSNBC. You are a Republican and for the most part you favor a Republican political/economic/social agenda. Indeed, you once gave a reason as to why you didn’t run for the U.S. Senate, because you thought that you would be able to “have more influence over public policy as the host of Morning Joe, than….as a U.S. Senator.” (Wikipedia). Your book, The Last Best Hope provides a plan to try to help conservatives win a political majority in the U.S. Congress.
Thus, you stand in direct contradiction to the image that MSNBC seeks to project of itself, as being the antithesis to Fox, and the supporter of Democratic Party and progressive politics. You seek to promote a Republican agenda on your show that contradicts the MSNBC ideological “Lean Forward” spots, featuring the network’s progressive lineup, the likes of Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Ed Schultz, and the progressive views and agenda they express. Of course, MSNBC has the right to select its television hosts. But the choice of you for one of its political programs seems rather schizoid. This is also reflected in the fact that when the hosts just mentioned get together to engage in political analysis, you are never a part of the gathering. You are excluded, as advertised by MSNBC, from these individuals and Al Sharpton, who will comprise the team to provide analysis for the 2012 Presidential election.
I saw part of a clip once showing the origins of the program you presently host, Mr. Scarborough. Lawrence O’Donnell was a member of it, and someone else, who I don’t remember. I do, however, remember seeing Laura Ingraham in that clip , and as a member of the early show. I don’t know what she was like back then, but I have seen her on the Fox channel a few times, and she impresses me as being a very hateful person, and she certainly exhibits this kind of hatred toward President Obama.
There are a number of people on Fox, or who appear on it, as guests, who exhibit this kind of venom toward the President: Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Dennis Miller, and Andrew Napolitano, and it used to shoot out of the ears, nostrils and mouth of Glenn Beck. You do not seem to have a hatred of President Obama, Mr. Scarborough, but your strong dislike of him is always discernible, despite your subtle display of your attitude. And your dislike of him strikes me as being of a subtle southern White disparaging quality.
Indeed, that was my very first impression of you, and your attitude toward Obama, when I first saw you on television. It was during the Democratic Presidential nomination campaign in 2008. As I recall, you were substituting for Chris Matthews on that occasion, and you said straight out, without any hesitation, and with that low-key, so self-assured arrogance of yours, that Democrats should get behind Hillary Clinton, because she was the best candidate, and that Senator Barack Obama was inexperienced, unprepared, and lacked the capability to be President.
Since you were a Republican, I wondered to myself at the time, why you were saying to Democrats they should rally behind Hillary Clinton. I could see that your response could have been related to the talk that one heard repeatedly on television that referred to how Republicans, who had such a loathing of Senator Clinton, would be galvanized, organized, and mobilized to vote against her in the Presidential election. But for you to have that kind of motivation did not seem apropos to me, because it did not make any sense.
You had said that Barack Obama was a much weaker Presidential candidate than Senator Clinton. So, logically, you should have been interested in Obama winning the Democratic Presidential nomination. But instead of being logical, you were extremely illogical. That kind of extreme illogical thinking had to be accounted for, and it seemed to me at the time, it could be accounted for by you being unwilling to see- - even incapable of conceiving- - of a Black man in the White House, along with his Black family, and there being a Black “First Lady” at that residence. It would not take a rocket scientist to know that this scenario would be what nightmares were made of for a great number of southern Whites, and I believe that this was a nightmarish thought for you, too.
I was bolstered in this assessment of your disposition toward Obama by something else I heard you say, this time on your show Morning Joe. You criticized then candidate Obama for being unable to communicate effectively with White New York “blue-collar voters,” the so-called “Reagan Democrats,” and win them over. You pointed out how Senator Clinton was able to do so. I recall former mayor of San Francisco, Willie Brown, voicing a different view. He said that Obama should not waste his time trying to win over these voters in New York or anywhere else, because they would never vote for him. Brown knew, what many of us Black people knew, that White “blue-collar” Reagan Democrats, in the main, were racist Democrats. Stanley Greenberg, pollster/researcher and political strategist for the Democratic Leadership Council had drawn that conclusion from his questioning of focus groups, and had told Bill Clinton that when he ran for the White House in 1992, something that Hillary Clinton doubtlessly had learned about, as well.
But with respect to your specific criticism of Senator Obama not being able to reach the “blue-collar” Reagan Democrats, you did not say, as Willie Brown did, that they were racists. You gave no hint of that whatsoever. It could not have been something you didn’t understand. You’re a White southerner, born and raised in Georgia, and you had been a Representative to the U.S. Congress between 1995 and 2001, representing the First District in Florida. You certainly knew of the racism in the South, and how White people treated Black people in that region, and how that treatment was increasingly of a subtle racist nature, as southern Whites had been taught to engage in by Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, and such conservative intellectuals as William F. Buckley, L. Brent Bozell Jr., James J. Kilpatrick, and others.
This subtle racism was embedded in the “new conservative movement” that was inaugurated in the South among southern Whites in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a reaction to Blacks attaining civil and political rights and benefitting from government protection and government social programs. You eventually emerged from this movement as a politician, Mr. Scarborough, which continues to this day, with Tea Partiers being added to it. You turned a blind eye to the racism of the “blue collar” Reagan Democrats of New York, indeed, made it appear that they were not racist at all. You, in turn, blamed Senator Obama for not being able to communicate with them effectively. What you did, therefore, Mr. Scarborough, is what we Black people know so well: you blamed the Black victim, Senator Obama, and exonerated the White racist Reagan Democrats. You did this in a non-aggressive, subtle, but clearly discernible manner.
And I have to believe that you were utterly shocked when Senator Obama beat Hillary Clinton to gain the Democratic Party nomination for President. In your view, he was inexperienced, unprepared, and lacked the capabilities to be President. But he not only defeated Hillary Clinton, whose campaign he ran into a ditch, with her having to spend $10 million of her own money to keep it afloat, he also defeated the Clinton Machine, and the Democratic Party itself that supported Hillary Clinton throughout the nomination process. Then Senator Obama went on to beat a well-known American hero, Senator John McCain, and won ten red states in the process. This certainly sounds like someone who hasn’t got communication, organizing, or leadership skills, doesn’t it? None of this, of course, prepared Barack Obama to be President. But the fact is, no one is prepared to be the President of the United States, unless the person running for this position is a Vice-President who has been given significant opportunity to be a close advisor and active participant in a President’s administration, such as Joe Biden, for instance. You might know that Harry Truman had made a public appeal to John F. Kennedy, who had been in Congress for 14 years in 1959, not to run for President , saying that he was too young, too inexperienced, that he was unprepared, and that he had plenty of time to run for that office. Truman even made an appeal to prominent Democrats to try to dissuade Kennedy from running. Kennedy rejected Truman’s worries, and other appeals made to him. He felt he had the brains, the ability, and the vision to lead the country. So he sought the office, and won it. And he won it at a younger age than Obama.
I want to refer to a clip I recently saw on MSNBC that showed you conducting an interview with Bill Clinton, apparently at his Global Initiative headquarters, and that was an advertisement for your show. Mika Brzezinski was in the clip with the two of you, saying nothing in the portion I saw, but looking at the two of you and seeming to enjoy being part of the setting. You and Clinton were reminiscing about the years he was President between 1994 and 2000, the years you were in the House of Representatives. You had been one of the large contingents that White southerners had sent to Congress, primarily to the House, but some individuals to the Senate, as well, enabling the Republicans to gain a majority in the Congress, with a strong southern White core.
So many of the people who sent you and other White southerners to the Congress, as you know, Mr. Scarborough, had a strong disliking for Bill Clinton, because of his sexual escapades in Arkansas, his pro-choice views, his support for gays and lesbians, and especially his sympathy toward Blacks, and what they thought were his strong New Deal leanings and willingness to use the national government to help them. They, of course, were wrong about that, because Clinton had been informed by Stanley Greenberg, which was also the position of the Democratic Leadership Council, of which Clinton had once been chairman (1990) that the Party needed to back away from the activist government position, and the New Deal orientation, and to line itself more closely to the interest of the corporate elites, their institutions, and Wall Street to get more campaign funding. Clinton’s problem was that he needed the Black vote to win a Presidential election, so he had to show some interest to help them if he got into the White House, which was also a legitimate interest he had.
You said to Clinton, in that clip, Mr. Scarborough: “People say, well, those Tea Partiers, they’re crazy, and I always say, you should have seen us back in ’94 and ’95. We would fight like hell (which sent Clinton into laughter) but at the end of the day, President Clinton and the Republican leadership wanted what was best for America.” Clinton responded by simply saying: “It was very productive.” That was all there was to the clip.
The Clinton years in the White House were productive, and he and the Republican majority in Congress got many things done. Clinton with Republican aid, as well as with some Democrats, was able to balance several budgets, create a large government surplus, was able to create 18,000,000 jobs, many of them high-tech good-paying jobs, did what was called “welfare reform,” signed the NAFTA Treaty, signed the omnibus crime bill, and increased military spending.
But there was something else that occurred during the Clinton years in the White House, and that the Republican majority in the Congress was involved in, Mr. Scarborough. What continues to remain unknown, or ignored, is that the Clinton administration, with Republican Congressional help, was a major contributor to the financial crisis of 2008, the recession and the massive unemployment it produced, from which the country is presently trying to recover.
Clinton came into the White House considerably as an agent of Wall Street. His first Treasury Secretary was Wall Street mogul corporate banker, Robert Rubin. He appointed Alan Greenspan, who was in the pocket of Wall Street, twice as Federal Reserve chief. Another very important connection to Wall Street for the Clinton Administration was Sandy Weill. He got Clinton to endorse the merger between Citicorp and Travelers Insurance, which created the largest corporate financial institution in the world at that time. Weill changed the name to Citigroup, which he headed up. Clinton signed the merger into law in December 2000.
A year earlier Congress had passed the Gramm/Leach/Biley Act, that Clinton signed, bringing an official end to Glass/Steagall, that had been passed in the 1930s, and that functioned for decades to separate commercial banking from investment banking, among other things, to curtail excessive speculation on Wall Street. Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush continuously chipped away at Glass/Steagall and its restrictions, and then Clinton and the Republicans, officially brought Glass/Steagall to an end. This eliminated any serious regulation of the corporate financial institutions. It also facilitated a continued merger of corporate financial institutions, that had begun before Clinton entered the White House, but which greatly accelerated under him, and with the enthusiastic support of Republicans as well as some Democrats in Congress. Economist and political analyst Kevin Phillips wrote in Bad Money: “the 1995-2000 period saw a stunning total of 11,000 bank mergers and the crescendo peaked the next year following the repeal (of Glass/Steagall). Some five hundred new FHCs (financial holding companies) were also created.” (pp. xix-xx).
This vast number of mergers represented a massive growth in the size of individual corporations, a greater concentration of capital and wealth, and a greater centralization of corporate organizations. Clinton and the Republican dominated Congress contributed to these developments in another way, by taking the regulations off telecommunication corporations, with the Telecommunication Act of 1996, which unleashed a wave of corporate mergers in this field. In short, a greater centralization of this kind of corporate activity, and a vast increase of the power of corporate elites and their institutions over television and radio stations that the American people relied upon for news. In his State of the Union Address in 1996, Clinton proclaimed that “the era of big government was over,” while he was helping to foster an “era of big corporations” that are outside of constitutional oversight, that would be able to exercise great power over the American people, with less media and government protection against these institutions.
By ending Glass/Steagall, Clinton and Republicans in Congress (with some Democratic votes, as well) took away the regulation of the “shadow bank” that had grown up in the country. It operated in secret, and had created all kinds of financial devices to conduct business, such as “junk bonds”, hedge funds, credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) or collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), which all promoted aggressive speculation, mergers, and reckless abandon on the stock market.
But Clinton and you Republicans did not stop there, Mr. Scarborough. Congress passed, and he signed the Financial Mobilization Act that severely crippled existing regulatory agencies. He also signed the Commodity Futures Mobilization Act into law, which forbade the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating derivatives and other exotic investments at the national and state level, which the CFTC had wanted to do; and, thus, to regulate the “shadow bank.” The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission of 2011 concluded that this piece of legislation “was a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.” (Lawrence Lessing, Republic Lost, p. 76).
But another key point was Clinton encouraging Americans to buy stock (especially technological stocks), which no President had ever done before. That resulted in many people borrowing against their mortgages, or from other sources, going heavily into debt to be able to buy stock. Clinton also knew that the corporate credit card institutions were gauging their customers that he and you Republicans in Congress had made possible by ending or watering down regulation of such institutions. Clinton, as well as Republicans, including you, Mr. Scarborough, seemed to have no qualms about this. So are you still willing to talk so confidently, and arrogantly, that you along with Clinton and Republican leadership in Congress, wanted “what was best for America?”
In your October 18 interview with David Axelrod, Clinton’s name came up. Axelrod said that he had enjoyed the interview you had had with Clinton, of which I only saw a portion as an advertising clip. He graciously complemented Clinton, saying that he “was his usual brilliant self,” to which you concurred, repeating that phrase. But Axelrod also said to you that as he thought about it, how cozy and amiable the two of you were together in the interview, that he “snapped-back” as he remembered that you had voted to impeach Clinton; thus, showing that he was not buying this “mushy scene.”
This was when you referred to the Tea Partiers and how they were alleged to be crazy, and how Clinton and the Republican leadership fought each other. You slighted the Tea Party reality in the comment that you made, and implied that the fight that President Obama had with them was nothing compared to Clinton’s fight with the Republican leadership. This, of course, was absurd, and Axelrod knew it, fully aware of how extreme, obtuse, and racist Tea Partiers were who were elected to the House, and whom the Republican leadership couldn’t control. You even engaged in a subtle deprecation of the character, communication skills, and the leadership of President Obama. You said to David Axelrod, in a matter of fact way, and as if what you were saying was so clearly the truth: “You guys owned Washington for two years, the Democrats. Do you think he (Obama) has learned how to work at least inside of his own party in Washington better over the last two years?”
David Axelrod took exception to the comment. He said: “Joe, I have heard you say this, as well. You said he had a majority his first two years. The fact is he passed more- - you can’t have it both ways. He was attacked for doing too much: shouldn’t have done health care reform, shouldn’t have done financial reform, shouldn’t have done this and that.” You abruptly countered Axelrod, saying: “I didn’t attack him for doing too much. I attacked him for doing the wrong thing.” Axelrod came back with “Well, that’s fine. But he did them. So don’t say that he couldn’t get things done. You may disagree with what he did, but he certainly got things done.”
You first criticized President Obama, by implication in your first remark that he had not been successful as President because, as was inferred by you, he had not been able to communicate effectively with Republicans in Congress and bring them along in a bipartisan manner to help him achieve things. You were back- - or continuing in your mold- - of blaming the Black victim and exonerating the White perpetrators. There would be no way for you not to know, Mr. Scarborough, that the Republicans in Congress had consciously and deliberately dedicated themselves to making certain that Obama failed as President. This meant that they, as part of their strategy in Congress, were not going to be receptive to his communications, his overtures to be cooperative, or his efforts to promote bipartisanship to achieve things for the American people. Your great dislike of President Obama was showing, forcing you to ignore an obvious reality, or you were trying to cover it up.
Your dislike of the President also presented itself in the way you tried to show that Obama could not communicate effectively with the Democratic Party, and that he was ineffectual in leading it. Axelrod rejected that notion out of hand, indicating how much he had gotten done, which implied that he communicated with and led his party well. Checked by Axelrod, you then said he did the “wrong thing” during his first two years in office. One of these wrong things, apparently, was to put some regulations on the corporate financial institutions that you, Clinton, and Republicans had taken off, that had helped to produce a financial and economic disaster. Another thing that was wrong, apparently, was establishing a national credit bureau to protect American credit card holders from corporate financial institutions that you, Clinton, and Republicans permitted to gauge, especially with arbitrary and exorbitant fees.
Apparently, the following things were also the wrong things for the President to have done in his first two years in office- -according to your blanket statement: The Lily Ledbetter Fair Play Act to help women achieve equal pay. Putting two women on the U.S. Supreme Court. Signing a new G.I. Bill into law to aid returning war veterans. Increasing technology to be put in public schools. Making more college student loans available. Authorizing the FDA to regulate tobacco to protect the nation’s youth. Giving the middle class the largest tax cut in its history. And signing a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, thereby winning the Nobel Peace Prize that he was given on the promise that he would do something significant for world peace, along with Dmitry Medvedev.
All of these things, and much more, the President was able to achieve with the help of the Democratic Party, which were elements of the Democratic Party agenda. And here you were, Mr.Scarborough, a Republican, hosting a political talk show on MSNBC, the channel that supports Democrats and progressive thinking and programs, denouncing, by implication, the President, the Democratic Party, and its legislation. This situation is totally incongruous. This is the kind of massive denunciation that one would expect from the Fox channel, and its cast of characters, as well as from conservative radio talk shows. But coming from MSNBC makes this something to be described as incongruous, at a minimum, a bit schizoid when fully contemplated.
But there is much more to your implying that Obama had not been successful legislatively as President, and your inability to give him credit for what he has done, and the subtle way you persistently seek to make him appear less than. This kind of behavior can be traced back to the long history of White racism in this country, and particularly, its implementation in the South. For centuries White racists claimed that Blacks were nonhumans or subhuman, that they were innately, cerebrally, morally, and psychologically inferior, that they had no rights, knowledge, or ideas that Whites had to respect, that they could publicly be mocked and ridiculed, that they could be called any name Whites wished to call them, that they were never to be praised, honored, or respected, that they could be subjected to verbal and criminal violence, without public criticism or criminal prosecution, that they could be blamed for anything that Whites wanted to blame them for, ( recently, Susan Smith in South Carolina drowning her two children, and Charles Stuart, killing his pregnant wife in Boston), and that they were a social and criminal danger to the country, and had to be kept in “their place.”
This White racist thinking and social/political reaction to Black people was deeply rooted in American history, and particularly in the history, culture, and social life of the South, as well as in the psychology of Whites in that region. These racist features were deeply imbedded in the Democratic Party that dominated the South for decades and that only White people could participate in until the Democratic “White primary” was outlawed in the 1940s. When southern Whites shifted out of the Democratic Party, and into the Republican Party between the 1960s and the 1990s, they embedded this racist history and the racist deprecation of Blacks in their new party, and also in the so-called “new conservative movement” (that calls to mind the term “New South” in the latter 19th century, the era of “Jim Crow” and disfranchisement) in both instances, in a necessary and unavoidable, subtle manner. The “new conservatives” are found mainly in the states of the former Southern Confederacy, and they are the base of the Republican Party.
The new conservatives had to learn how to use language so that their words did not evidence any obvious racist thought, sentiment, or feeling. The language had to appear as if it were genuine conservative language, reflecting genuine conservative principles, or a genuine conservative philosophy. Words and phrases popped up that were ostensibly devoid of racism and that were projected as things that conservatives were critical of and philosophically rejected, such as “big government,” “government spending,” “welfare,” “dependency,“ government infringement upon states,” “taking power from the states,” “government suppression of individual freedom,” and “government violation of the Constitution.” All of these words and phrases coming from the new conservatives who are the base of the Republican Party are related to the desire to keep a White over Black hierarchical social relationship in the South that Whites have seen the U.S. government continuing to destroy legally, and with its political actions and social programs that benefit Blacks; thus, making the words and phrases attacking “big government,” “big spending,” etc., euphemistic expressions, subtle racist expressions to promote racist objectives.
The subtle racism of the Republican Party and the new conservative movement has been on public display since Barack Obama decided to run for President, and has been strong all the years he has been President, even if expressed in a subtle manner, although he has also been victim of blatant racist attacks. We have seen the President’s human status and humanity deprecated, his American birth denied, his American citizenship denied. He is faulted for about anything he says or does. He has been called all kinds of names, not only blatant racist ones, such as “tar baby,” but also names such as socialist, communist, fascist, Jihadist, anti-Christian, and terrorist, which are names he’s called by people who would like to be able publicly to call him other names of a traditional racist type.
And, as to calling the President a “socialist,” what do you think the southern and western Republicans/new conservatives would do, Mr. Scarborough, if they learned that the Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892, and that their children recite every day in public schools, was written by a socialist, Reverend Francis Bellamy, who was a member of the Christian Social Gospel Movement, and who argued that Jesus was a socialist? Is this something you can see yourself disclosing on your show to educate your viewers?
We always hear that the Republican attack against Obama, inside the Congress and without, is not a racist one, that Senator Mitch McConnell did not launch a racist attack in Congress, when he declared that the number one priority of Republicans in that body would be to see that Obama was a one-term President. The argument made was that this was just normal political behavior, namely, the opposing Party wanting one of their own in the White House. Of course, Republicans would like to have one of their own there. That’s expected, but the effort to get someone in the White House does not require engaging in racist behavior to deprecate the human status and humanity of an opponent- - Barack Obama. Southern Whites did not say or imply that Bill Clinton was not a human being, or was not an American, or that he was not a citizen of the country, that there was nothing he said or did that they had to respect. The Republicans in Congress did not relate to him in these ways. Indeed, as much as they might have disliked him, this did not keep them from trying to cooperate with him, and to work with him to get things done between 1994 and 2000. This is what you said in so many words, Mr. Scarborough.
With Mitch McConnell leading the way Republicans in Congress subjected President Obama to a political lynching that has gone on for three years, doing whatever they could to make him fail- - to make a Black President fail! They used the filibuster an unprecedented number of times. They refused or held up his administrative appointments, to weaken his administration. They refused or held up his federal judicial appointments. They delayed passage of legislation he sought in a kind of brinkmanship way, before they passed it. They sought to discredit everything he proposed, or find fault with it, even going so far to the irrational point of opposing things they themselves favored, but turned against, when the President favored or suggested them. For three years they tried diligently to keep him from governing, or to make it hard for him to do so, and are continuing with this behavior.
There has always been a White racist fear of a Black person succeeding at something that has always been the prerogative of Whites to have, to pursue, or to do. Such success not only destroys the racist myth about Black innate incapacities. There is also the deep trembling fear “that if you let one in, they all want to come in;” in short, fear of integration or the displacement of Whites. If a Black President succeeded then there will be other Blacks seeking to be President in the future.
This is a racist fear that can be traced far back in American history. Thomas Jefferson for instance, publicly denounced the poetry of the Black slave Phillis Wheatley (which was praised by some in England), because he believed that Blacks did not have the cerebral capacity or the sensitivity to write poetry, and he sought to discourage Blacks from attempting to do so, arguing that only Whites could write poetry. William Lloyd Garrison tried to ban Frederick Douglass from speaking at abolition rallies, afraid that this would encourage other Blacks to speak at them and possibly pushing out Whites or diminishing their presence at such rallies.
White boxing promoters refused to let Jack Johnson fight White heavyweight champions, not only afraid of him beating them, but that any victory he had would encourage other Blacks to want a shot at that title. And there were the major league baseball players, sports writers, and fans who tried their hardest to make Jackie Robinson fail, to keep major league baseball a “White man’s game,” but they did not succeed. Robinson opened the door to other Blacks. And now the determined and concerted effort to make Obama fail as President. His failure would demonstrate that a Black person can’t handle this job. Being President of the United States represented the last “White only” job in America. Obama has brought that to an end. That alone stimulates hatred toward him. He has taken from Whites the one last thing they could say was theirs and theirs only in America, and they desperately want it back.
You displayed your continuing subtle southern White disparagement of Obama rather recently, along with Pat Buchanan. I happened to catch the tail end of what seemed to be the two of you engaging in an attack on President Obama for not having been more aggressive and stronger against the Tea Party elements in the debt ceiling crisis. The suggestion was made that had he been stronger, the crisis that was occurring could probably have been avoided. Both of you were blaming the Black victim and exonerating the White perpetrators.
You and Buchanan, Mr. Scarborough, ignored the racism of the Tea Partiers, and in doing so, denied that it existed. So many of these people came to Washington with the purpose of joining with other Republicans to make Obama fail as President- - to make a Black President fail! A study was published about the Tea Partiers, which showed that they were not new to American politics, that they were overwhelmingly White, from the South and West, that they were overwhelmingly issue-oriented, anti-government, and had a strong dislike of Black people. I guess you and Pat Buchanan did not hear about the study, which had substantial media attention. White Tea Partiers were giving every indication that they were willing to destroy the faith and credit of the United States, and were even willing to send the economy back into deep recession, even depression, if that was what it would take to make this Black President fail.
You and Pat Buchanan, Mr. Scarborough, were not willing to deal with the reality, or the obtuseness and racist irrationality of the White Tea Partiers. And neither of you showed any knowledge of the danger of a wound up irrational psychology. Such people listen only to their own drummer. Trying to be tough and dominating with them, when you know that they hate you, don’t respect you, and want to do you harm, could easily drive them to doing exactly what you don’t want them to do, and what they say they will do- - because they are determined to best you and don’t mind the consequences of their actions!
Obama understood this situation a lot better than you and Pat Buchanan did, Mr. Scarborough. He saw these Tea Party elements posing a serious threat to America’s credit rating, and to the economy, and he had to take the risk they posed into account, which you and Buchanan did not take into account, from the way you both were talking and condemning the President for his alleged ineptitude.
I can give you an example of a situation that can throw some light on what Obama was up against having to deal with the Tea Partiers that the Republican leadership couldn’t deal effectively with, which was also something he had to consider. The example involves FDR. There were Black leaders who wanted to push an anti-lynching bill through the Congress. Walter White, Executive Director of the NAACP went to Washington to pressure the President to push for the legislation, but he refused to do so, giving White his reasons, which the latter recorded in his autobiography, A Man Called White: “I did not choose the tools with which I must work,” he told me. “Had I been permitted to choose them I would have selected different ones. But I’ve got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The Southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I came out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.” (pp. 169-170).
Neither you, Mr. Scarborough nor Pat Buchanan, would likely say that Roosevelt was not strong of character, was not an effective communicator, and was not a strong Presidential leader. But Roosevelt did not pounce on the Southern Democrats in Congress and try to dominate or brow-beat them about the anti-lynching bill. He did not want to provoke their racism, and its irrationality, as he had no doubt that they would block all of his legislation and seek to keep him from saving the country, if it meant that they would lose what they regarded as their right to lynch Black people, or to do with them as they wished. As Roosevelt so well knew, these were the descendants of those White southerners who were willing to destroy the United States, and indeed, tried to, because they were being prevented from expanding their Black chattel slavery westward and continuing to have this kind of domination over Black people.
Obama had been dealing with the irrationality of Republicans in Congress, their political lynching of him that involved thwarting his ability to help millions of Americans in great need; their willingness to see these Americans suffer. He also had the experience of dealing with the southerners in the Senate who opposed his effort to give government loans to save Chrysler and General Motors, and the American auto industry. This was wholly un-patriotic, and also incredibly irrational, because those who strongly opposed this effort, Mitch McConnell, Jim DeMint, Lamar Alexander, and Richard Shelby, lived in states that were subsidizing foreign automakers. So the President had the full understanding that these southerners and others in the Senate, whom these people got to follow them, were willing to see Chrysler and General Motors, and the American auto industry go down, and even more than that: were willing to throw people, their jobs, their personal wealth, and an important part of the Midwestern economy under the bus, rather than see Obama have this victory.
And now the Tea Partiers, in the same way, were threatening the country’s credit rating, and the American economy, and willing to maintain the hurt of millions of Americans, and to put millions more in pain- - to make Obama fail, to bring a Black President down! The President chose not to take the risk, and he made the concession of cuts in the national debt, without getting tax revenues as part of the deal, and to put the national debt problem in the hands of the Deficit Reduction Commission.
And speaking about not getting tax revenues to lower the debt, let’s bring in Grover Norquist and his Pledge. I don’t know if you have talked about him and his Pledge on your show, although I should think this has come up. But I doubt seriously, that you have talked about it, in the way I would talk about it and have in op-ed pieces. This Pledge says that Republicans will not raise taxes under any circumstances, while they are in office. Almost all Republicans in Congress have signed that Pledge, including the six who are sitting on the Deficit Reduction Commission. That means that all of these Republicans are in violation of their oath of office and the Constitution in two serious ways, as will be shown.
Article I, SECTION 8 of the Constitution reads: “The Congress shall have the power 1. To lay and collect taxes.” This was something that the Continental Congress in the previous Confederation government could not do. The second group of Founding Fathers, who drew up what is known as the Constitution, made the laying and collection of taxes the very first responsibility or duty of the Congress. To say that members of Congress are not to raise taxes under any circumstances is a violation of Article I SECTION 8, 1. of the Constitution, and those members of Congress who violate it are violating their oath of office, which is to uphold and protect the Constitution. They also violate the Constitution in another way.
When members of Congress are forbidden to levy taxes this, in effect, is amending the Constitution, without going through the proper procedure, as outlined in Article V, that says 2/3 of both houses have to pass an amendment that ¾ of the states have to ratify; or the method of 2/3 of the states convening a convention to propose amendments that would require the ratification of ¾ of the states. Do you have the stones, Mr. Scarborough, to criticize the Republicans in Congress on your show for violating their oath of office and the Constitution? And do you have the stones to say on your show that the Republicans on the Debt Reduction Commission are in violation of their oath of office and the Constitution, honoring the Norquist Pledge not to raise taxes? And that this is all a disservice to the government and the American people who both need the revenues?
I have one last thing to put in this extended letter to you, Mr. Scarborough, and that is the comments I saw you make on your show in response to the recent toppling of Moammar Gaddafi in Libya. On the day he was captured and killed, you had David Ignatius of the Washington Post on your show via telephone from Libya. He made a reference to how you and other Republicans had opposed the President’s effort to take action against Gaddafi. Ignatius said he agreed with the President’s effort, thought it was well conceived and executed and was a success that benefitted America and Libya.
You had the documentary filmmaker Sebastian Junger on the show, who said he would be going to Libya to make a documentary film on events there. He also praised President Obama for his conception and handling of the mission, saying that using the method he did of intelligence, technology, and strategic air strikes was preferable to putting 100,000 soldiers on the ground, and he praised the fact that no American lives were lost. He also said that he was very pleased that Libyans were waving American flags, which showed considerable Libyan favor toward the United States. At that point, Mika Brzezinski interrupted, saying that the producers wanted to bring on a correspondent from Libya. You held her and the producer off, saying: “Let me complete the thought (that had been expressed by Junger), because that is so critical that in this “Arab Spring” you haven’t seen the burning of American flags, the burning of Israel’s flags, didn’t see it in Egypt. But as you said, not in Libya, a remarkable scene that we thought we would never see the waving of American flags in Libya.”
Sebastian Junger thanked the President for this unexpected, but very important event in Libya. But you, Mr. Scarborough, did not thank the President, incapable, or unwilling to do so. With your comments you were thanking some invisible, magical something or other, somewhere in space, that miraculously helped to bring about this “remarkable scene.” The remarkable scene had been produced by someone quite real: President Obama (and others, of course).
But you couldn’t recognize the President’s role in this, by comment. You were unable to show him any respect, could not congratulate or praise him, could not do a very patriotic thing. Doing none of these things was your subtle disparagement and demeaning of President Barack Hussein Obama. You showed your continuing subtle southern White disparaging disposition toward the President.
But you were not alone in displaying this kind of pitiful, even pathetic behavior. Many Republicans displayed it, even some in Congress. They could not show Obama respect or give him any credit for the successful mission in Libya. Senators Marco Rubio and John McCain consciously and deliberately belittled President Obama by just praising the French and the British, and neither one mentioned nor congratulated the Arab countries that had contributed to that successful mission. Republicans, as usual, were following the prepared script, which they seem to get every day. Listening to one Republican is like listening to all of them. They are such a broken record. According to David Ignatius, you joined the throng of Republicans who reacted negatively to a comment that an official in the Obama administration had made about the President “leading from behind” in the mission.
This official was clearly mistaken. But the fact that the remark was made was all that the Republican script writer had to hear. A script was seemingly produced calling for all Republicans to pounce on the phrase and on Obama, and the pouncing amounted to Republicans in unison condemning the President for taking too long to act, for violating the Constitution, for failing to show leadership, for being irresponsible in letting the French and British take the lead in the mission (which one could hear one Republican after another saying they were not competent to do), and for failing to act as a strong commander-in-chief.
Political analyst John Heilemann was critical of this extreme negativity, and had praise for the President and his success in Libya. He said the statement that the President was “leading from behind” had to be interpreted as him being engaged in forging alliances and a coalition to carry out the mission. The President himself cleared up the matter on the Jay Leno Show, when he said the U.S. led throughout the mission, from getting the UN to sign off on a resolution to keep Gaddafi from killing Libyans, possibly by the thousands, establishing a “no fly zone,” authorizing limited military action, from the air, and indicating that he and other American personnel were in consultation with NATO and Arab allies throughout the mission.
What doubtlessly angers you and other Republicans, Mr. Scarborough, is that President Obama has turned into a magnificent commander-in-chief. The efforts of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, and other Republicans in the foreign policy field, to discredit him have utterly failed. The President has taken a prize away from Republicans: the self-indulgent prize that Republicans were tougher on defense and handled national security better than Democrats. The person you have continued to disparage, in your way, over a period of years, Mr. Scarborough, turns out to be the one that Americans want answering the phone at three o’ clock in the morning. In this instance as in others you’re on MSNBC seeking to demean the Democratic President and a successful foreign policy mission he achieved.
There is something- - among many things- - you have not learned about President Obama, Mr. Scarborough, although Republicans in Congress have. It is also not something they would be willing to talk about, because this would be talking about the President in a positive way, and about one of his strengths. The Republicans in Congress know that the President is relentless. When he puts his mind to do something he pursues it until he achieves it, and only gives up when it is clear to him that he cannot achieve the goal. But then, he’ll make an effort to come at the objective in another way, as he did with the American Jobs Bill. He couldn’t get it passed whole, so he’s seeking to get it passed piece-meal. This was the kind of relentless quality he showed pursuing his Economic Recovery and Investment Act, his health care-reform, his relentless pursuit of the Pentagon to get an Afghanistan strategy he could accept,his pursuit to save the American auto industry, his relentless pursuit and killing of Osama Bin Laden, and his relentless effort to run Gaddafi out of Libya. But had you had your eyes open back in 2008, Mr. Scarborough, you would have seen this trait in Obama, then. He pursued Convention Delegates in a relentless manner, not deviating from the strategy. You also apparently did not see the relentless way he pursued red states during the Presidential election, that even people in his Party did not want him to do, and that some hosts on MSNBC criticized him for doing. But then were amazed when he accomplished that goal, bringing ten red states into his win column.
It seems to me, Mr. Scarborough, that you, owing to your ingrained subtle southern White proclivity, will remain incapable of understanding President Obama as a person, as President, and as a Presidential leader, and what he means to America, and will always be obliged to find fault with him and to try to diminish him. He gives meaning to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the “promises of America” like no other President has been able to provide. He represents and symbolizes what America is supposed to be about, an America that Republicans, from my observations of them for years, would not recognize or know if it crawled into their laps and bit them in their crotches!
Obama validates America just like Black people have always validated America and in a way that White people have never been able to do. Blacks as slaves for centuries, and victims of racist oppression for centuries, still had faith in the country, in its documents, ideals, and promises of freedom and opportunities, and even fought in wars to help preserve all of this, and the possibility of the country continuing an effort to create “a more perfect Union”- - knowing the large role they played- - had to play- - in pushing Whites and the country in that direction.
When Whites have thrown American ideals, values, and promises to the ground and trampled on them- - which they did for centuries, which meant simultaneously trampling on Blacks for centuries - - the latter always withstood the trampling, picked up the trampled ideals, values, and promises and handed them back to Whites, saying to them: “try it again, to live up to the ideals, values, and promises of America, that you profess to uphold, for all Americans.” Frederick Douglass handed these things back to Whites with his Fourth of July Oration of 1852. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, Ida Wells-Barnett, A. Philip Randolph, and Dorothy Height also handed them back. Martin Luther King, Jr. handed these things back to Whites with his “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington D.C. in 1963. President Obama is continuing this long-standing Black tradition, as he seeks to promote bipartisanship with Republicans in Congress, and seeks to get Whites who oppose him to live up to the ideals, values, and promises of America, and to strive with Blacks and others, including other Whites, to try to build the “more perfect Union.” You have doubtlessly heard President Obama talk like this, but you haven’t shown, from what I have seen you say in instances on television, that you are able to understand what he is saying. I don’t think it is a coincidence that Republicans, like yourself, Mr. Scarborough, do not talk about building “a more perfect Union.” You and Republicans like you seem impervious to pursuing and achieving this national objective, which is explicitly prescribed in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Sincerely Yours,
Dr. W. D. Wright

AN EXTENDED LETTER TO MR. MARTIN BASHIR, RE: "THE KATZENJAMMER TWINS," PRESIENT OBAMA, AND THE REALPOLITIK CONTEXT OF AMERICAN NATIONAL POLITICS

October 2011


Dear Mr. Bashir:

I saw the two interviews you had with Cornel West, and how in each instance, he expressed extreme hostility toward President Obama. I know something about West, as he was someone I wrote about in my book Crisis of the Black Intellectual (2007). I have sent you some of the comments I made about him in that work. Your interview with him has induced me to want to say more about him to counter what he said to you, which will lead to a discussion of the political framework through which Obama has to function as President, which West, as well as his side-kick Tavis Smiley, seem to know little about. This could be said about many political pundits and media political analysts. Obama has shown that he understands this political context very well, and seeks to respond to it on the basis of what it is, and he has had his success against it being true to himself and doing things his way.
In both of the interviews you had with Cornel West, and other interviews of him I have seen or read about, where he talked about President Obama, such as his interview with Playboy, he showed a lack of knowledge of what Obama has achieved in the White House, and against enormous opposition- - indeed, determined obstruction! The level of West’s hostility to Obama would seem to preclude him wanting to know what he has achieved, as this would under-cut much of what he says about him; which is true generally of his detractors on the Left. For your information, I have sent you a copy of Professor Robert P. Watson of Lynn University’s publication of the President’s achievements that appeared on the Internet, entitled “The 244 Accomplishments of President Obama.” Without question Obama has been the most successful President, legislatively, since Lyndon Baines Johnson.
I have also sent you Watson’s researched publication and this letter on the belief that you will have Cornel West on your program again, because he is seeking, along with others, such as Ralph Nader, Paul Krugman, and Robert Kuttner to appear on political shows to engage in a discussion of what they euphemistically call a “progressive” agenda, and that they would like to get into a discussion or debate with President Obama about.
When West and the other people mentioned use the word “progressive” or the phrase “progressive agenda,” they are being deliberately deceptive, which is why I used the word “euphemistically.” West, Nader, Krugman, and Kuttner are all socialists, but do not use that description for themselves knowing the public hostility to that term. So they come up with euphemisms to describe themselves: liberals, radicals, radical democrats, or progressives.
Paul Krugman referred to himself as a liberal in a book he published in 2009 entitled Conscience of a Liberal. But in the April 6, 2009 issue of Newsweek, the writer of an article on Krugman, Evan Thomas, said of him that “Ideologically, Krugman is a European Social Democrat” (p. 24), with no demur from Krugman, via quoted remarks in the article. But he did in fact confirm this reality, as the article revealed, because he wanted President Obama to nationalize the big corporate banks during the financial crisis, the “zombie” banks, as he called them. No President would ever think of nationalizing America’s banks, and would not be able to get away with it; and, indeed, would not or ever have enough staff and money to make this an ongoing program. Krugman’s position was sheer ideology at work that produced his fanciful thinking. And it is on this level of fantasy that Krugman and other socialists seek to evaluate and debate President Obama.
Cornel West is clearly one of these people and his ideological and fanciful thinking was evidenced in his first interview with you. He complained about Obama choosing Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers as two of his top economic advisors- - people from Wall Street, as he had it. He said that the President should have chosen Krugman or Robert Kuttner to be among his top economic advisors. West was not only being ideological and fanciful, he showed that he had his head in the sand. Obama is not a socialist, and for that reason alone, he would not appoint socialists as his top economic advisors. And he would know that the Senate would never confirm such people, which is what West should have known. Republicans in and out of Congress were calling Obama a socialist, Marxist, Leninist, and even communist, as a way of trying to discredit him. Therefore, socialist economic advisors were clearly out of the question. But West, in his usually overly-dramatic way, tried to convince you that Obama had betrayed “progressive” thinking and “progressives” with his choices for top economic advisors, and that it was necessary to be critical of him for doing that and calling him out on it. And he gave no thought to the people chosen by the President to be his advisors doing what the President wanted them to do. And, incidentally, Geithner did not work on Wall Street. He had been head of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve System, which means, of course, he worked with Wall Street.
There is another thing which you may or may not know, as to why West was angry about Obama’s appointment of Lawrence Summers as one of his top economic advisors. When Summers was President of Harvard University, he had a vitriolic confrontation with West in his office. He accused West of engaging in activities, namely, making rap and hip-hop CDs in his effort to communicate his thoughts to urban Blacks, instead of engaging in the kind of scholarship Summers said, that was expected of a Harvard professor. The confrontation shocked Harvard, had extensive national coverage in the media that depicted West as being dressed down and humiliated, and that saw him eventually leave Harvard and go to Princeton.
In your interviews with Cornel West, Mr. Bashir, you indicated that you had become aware of Tavis Smiley. He and West seem to be great friends. I call them the “Katzenjammer Twins.” They both have the attitude, owing to their successes, and their public exposure, and opportunities to speak about the situation of Blacks in the country, that they are supremely important voices among Blacks. The two of them went to China together, presumably to talk to and to educate some Chinese about Black people in America, or about America itself, from some of the comments I heard them make via a video. They now have, as you know, a radio talk show together. And, together, they excoriate President Obama- - as they argue, for not doing enough for Black people; or to make attacks against Wall Street and to tie Obama to it, in the sense of him being its agent.
West and Smiley both regard themselves as “power brokers” among Blacks, two people of great influence among Blacks. Melissa Harris-Perry, whom you know, Mr. Bashir, and who has been on your program, was annoyed by this presumptuous attitude by the Katzenjammer Twins, which began when Obama ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination. In February of 2008, Harris-Perry wrote an article entitled: “Who Died and made Tavis King?” She said in that piece: “Over the past two months African Americans have emerged as equal partners in a multi-racial, intergenerational, bipartisan, national coalition led by the most exciting political candidate of the past four decades, who also happens to be the first African-American presidential possibility in our history. So why is Tavis Smiley throwing a tantrum?” (Randall Kennedy, The Persistence of the Color Line, p. 90).
There were other Black intellectuals and leaders who criticized Smiley and West, as there were those who criticized defenders of Obama, like Melissa Harris-Perry. The Katzenjammer Twins had it in their heads, and tried to invest other Blacks with the idea, that Obama was not racially black enough to be President. This was incredibly absurd thinking. Whenever, in the history of America, has being racially black, or ethnically Black, been a requirement to be President? West particularly liked saying that Obama was not black/Black enough for the Black vote, saying along with Smiley, that Hillary Clinton was. Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta at the time, and who Bill Clinton had appointed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, publicly declared in an interview, that Hillary Clinton was Blacker than Obama could ever be.
There were two incidents that took place during the Democratic nomination process that resulted in Tavis Smiley moving into an irrevocable hostility toward Barack Obama. He moderated an annual Black Forum on national television, which invited Black intellectuals, leaders, and community activists to talk about issues and problems facing Black communities, or Blacks in their relationship to White people. I watched three of these Forums which in each case went on for hours. My view was that they were “ventilation sessions,” “feel good moments,” but utterly useless at providing help for Black communities, or Blacks in their interactions with Whites. This was proven by the fact that the Forums always came back to the same issues and problems, with the same kind of discussions that provided the same kind of answers, which implied that they were not having any noticeable impacts in Black communities.
Smiley invited then candidate Obama to two of the Forums, and each time, he refused the invitation. Hillary Clinton accepted an invitation, and appeared at a Forum. If she could do it, why couldn’t Obama? Smiley was livid about the rejections, and became unforgiving toward Obama. One could think of two reasons why Obama did not appear at a Forum. The first might have been that he was not anxious to appear on a program hosted by someone claiming that he was not black/Black enough to get the Black vote, and who tried to discredit him during his campaign for the Democratic Party nomination. The President could well imagine Smiley bringing up the “not Black enough” matter at the Forum to continue trying to discredit and undermine him.
The second possible reason for avoiding a Smiley Forum was that Obama did not want to deal with the question of what his “Black Agenda” would be: the specific things that he would do for Blacks as President. This is something that Smiley, West, and others like the Katzenjammer Twins, were interested in having nomination candidate Obama address. But Obama knew, as others knew and said so, who were favorable to him, that he could not promote a Black Agenda as President; that “race-specific” programs were at the moment, politically taboo. One can conclude that he did not want to be put on the spot about that, or having to say something declarative and definitive with respect to affirmative action, another matter of potential liability for him seeking the Democratic Party nomination. Obama could well believe that Smiley and even others at a Forum would confront him with these politically toxic matters.
West had his own special stimulus for his acute hostility toward Barack Obama; indeed, there seemed to have been two stimuli. The first was that Obama dwarfed, and, thus, suppressed, West’s exalted image among Black people- - a pushing aside- - he could not possibly have liked. The second stimuli came up in your second interview with West, Mr. Bashir. You referred to what West had said in his Playboy interview, that President Obama had not returned his phone calls and had not thanked him for, as he said, participating in 65 events during his Presidential run against John McCain. You asked whether he was hurt by this. He did not want to answer, but he finally did, and said he was, and that the whole matter said something negative, in his mind, about Barack Obama.
In your second interview with West, he also said some things I wish to comment on. West says things that seem to reflect deep knowledge, critical analysis and insight, or utterances of a moral or humanistic quality. He also does this in an overly dramatic manner, with looks, gestures, bobbing, weaving, and bending movements to give emphasis, which he seems to believe, validate what he says. But as I indicated in the pages I sent to you, Mr. Bashir, a critique of what West says can reveal that he is often throwing out empty and even deceptive phrases, and sometimes just plain nonsensical comments as he did talking to you. After acknowledging the Republican vile and deprecating talk and criticism of Obama, he then said to you: “I refuse to accept the notion that because we focus on mediocre and mean-spirited that we can’t be critical of Barack Obama, and that’s why Ralph Nader and I say- - what?—we’re going to have a robust discussion. We want a dialogue with Obama, we want to make him stronger and at the same time bring critique to bear, because we want the same influence for poor people that lobbyists have with wealthy people when it comes to Obama. And why? Because in the end, both parties, brother Martin, are tied to oligarchic and plutocratic rule. This is a problem in our society. Both parties in that sense are too tied to big money. You see where he is now (Obama)- - raising money to the well-to-do, Goldman Sachs and others, and then telling Black people, “Oh, my God, stop crying, stop crying, I’m concerned about you- - Goldman Sachs concerned about Black people, working people, poor people, p-l-e-a-s-e….”
With respect to the first point made by West, which is a ruse. No President can prevent criticism of himself or his policies, and Obama has never said that he was or should be immune to criticism. So what was the reason for West making this comment? It would seem to be able to make himself look heroic, that he was Prometheus Unbound, “speaking truth to power;” that he would not be silenced- - when no one was trying to silence him. As I said, West tends to be overly dramatic when he presents his views.
He said that he, Nader, and others, wanted to have a dialogue with the President, which would be for the purpose of “making him stronger.” The people who would be seeking this dialogue would be socialists, and the President would not be helped or “made stronger” by having a public discourse with socialists. The President is not a socialist. He is not a progressive, or a radical, not even a liberal. He has no trouble holding liberal, moderate, or conservative ideas, and acting on all of them separately, or interactively. He said the following in Lisa Rogak’s edited book Barack Obama In His Own Words, containing excerpts from some of his speeches, and that West and his socialistic ilk obviously have not read, or have chosen not to acknowledge:
“To me, the issue is not are you centrist or are you liberal? The issue to me is, Is what you’re proposing going to work? Can you build a working coalition to make the lives of people better? And if it can work, you should support it whether it’s centrist, conservative, or liberal.” (p 15).
With this comment, Obama shows that he is not an ideologue, that he is not motivated or directed by ideological thinking, as progressives and socialists, especially, are. And he did not hide this fact from them, when he ran for the Democratic Party nomination or for President. During both campaigns, he talked about bringing people together, bipartisanship, and people solving America’s problems in a common effort. This is still his basic thinking, which is reflected in the fact that his American Jobs Bill is predicated on programs that Democrats and Republicans had agreed upon in the past. He is just more aggressive in promoting this bill and in trying to exercise bipartisan leadership.
But he was always prepared to do that, and that could have been foreseen by the likes of West or the likes of progressives, such as Adam Green, Roy Sekoff, Cenk Uygur, or Matthew Rothschild, editor of Progressive Magazine, who want him always to act like a bull in a china shop: being belligerent, drawing lines in the sand, making no compromises, rejecting bipartisanship, ignoring or rejecting the political process, or governance, and holding fast to principles, regardless, etc. These people and others like them should have read what Obama said in another excerpt from one of his speeches found in the book mentioned:
“I’m fascinated by Lyndon Johnson; there’s a piece of him in me. That kind of hunger- - desperate to win, please, succeed, dominate- - I don’t know any politician who doesn’t have some of that reptilian side to him. But that’s not the dominant part of me. On the other hand, I don’t know that it was the dominant part of Lincoln. The guy was pretty reflective.” (p. 4).
Obama was saying, “if I have to be dominant, I’ll seek to be dominant,” and that is the present mold he is in now, as he challenges the Republicans in Congress to pass his jobs bill, and as he seeks to dominate public opinion and to direct it toward the Congress to get them to do it. But being dominant is not new with Obama, although people, including yourself, Mr. Bashir, seem to think it is. He was dominant when he made the 18 biggest corporate banks undergo a three-month stress test that they did not want to undergo. He was dominant when he saved General Motors and Chrysler, and the American auto industry himself, defying Republican opposition, especially in the Senate to do so. He was dominant when he forced BP to provide a $20 billion relief fund for the Gulf area.
He was dominant when he told the Pentagon top brass to keep going back to the drawing board and give him an Afghanistan strategy he could accept. He was incredibly tough and dominant in this instance, because he was an individual without military background or experience, and yet he was telling top Pentagon brass what to do. The President held a coalition together with regard to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and then gave the Pentagon and Congress one year to end the program, which they did. He made a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, defying his party to do so, and many on the Left, who denounced his actions, and got much more than he had to give up, and to the benefit of the middle and lower class.
And it always amuses and annoys me when I hear political analysts like Howard Fineman, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, John Heilemann, Mark Halperin, Bill Press, Joan Walsh, Cynthia Tucker, and others say that Obama is not a strong leader. Fineman once said, on the Keith Olbermann show, with the latter and Matthews who was also on the show at the time agreeing with him, that the President lacked “chops.” John Heilemann recently said on the Chris Matthews show, with Fineman agreeing, that it was not in Obama’s nature to be confrontational, that he was “conciliatory by nature.” Reducing a complex thinker and actor like Obama down to a single emotion or action response is wholly inept. These people show that they have a hard time dealing with a President of Obama’s character, and his cool, calm, and collected demeanor, and his general coordinating method of Presidential leadership, much of it behind the scene, punctuated with instances behind the scene of dominant leadership, and sometimes punctuated with public dominance, as occurred with the auto industry rescue. So where were the analysts, when Obama demonstrated his “chops” in the instances I mentioned? Were they ignorant of these things, which would say something about them as analysts? If they knew about them, and did not acknowledge them, that would also say something about them as analysts.
Only a strong President could achieve what Obama has achieved, given the horrendous opposition he has had to deal with in Congress; the way he has survived and considerably succeeded against a three-year long political mob action against him in the Congress, on the Fox channel, and on conservative radio talk shows, and their ability to bring him down. And how does one label him a weak, or non-assertive President, when he has taken away the notion that only Republicans are good on defense and at handling national security, and have given this mantle to the Democrats, which Clinton wasn’t able to do, and that he did without his own party’s help? And did the “Arab Spring” have its origins, or at least to some extent, in the speech that Obama made to the Arab world in Cairo, Egypt, early in his administration, where he called for change and democracy in that region, with some people in his assembled audience probably not liking what he was saying? And what about the way he just recently led publicly and behind the scenes in forging an American/Western Europe/Arab League coalition, which no American President has ever achieved, to bring down Moammar Gaddafi in Libya?
The third thing I wish to refer to with respect to West’s comments is the silly comment he made about intellectual critique being equal in power or value to lobbyists working for corporations and their hundreds of millions of dollars to throw at political parties and politicians. West said that he, and those sharing his thinking, wanted “the same influence for poor people that lobbyists have with wealthy people, when it comes to Barack Obama,” and critique was going to achieve this. How absurd! And equally absurd was West’s assumption that the poor would understand or even want a socialist critique presented on their behalf against the lobbyists and to the President. This kind of verbal action the 19th century Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass would have described as doing nothing more than just “rattling the air.”
West justified talking about a critique, which he thought was equal to lobbyist power, as he said to you “because in the end, both parties, brother Martin, are tied to oligarchic and plutocratic rule.” These are terms that West and others like him would use in their socialist critique, which the poor would not understand. But the very idea of thinking that a critique would be an affable substitute for an organized national political effort on the part of the poor amounts to sheer fantasy.
West said that “Both parties….are too tied to big money.” And then he abruptly went into disparaging remarks in an attempt to discredit Obama for taking money from the corporate rich. “You see where he is now- - raising money to the well-to-do, Goldman Sachs and others and then telling Black people “oh, my God, stop crying, stop crying, I’m concerned about you- - Goldman Sachs concerned about Black people, working people, poor people, p-l-e-a-s-e....”
It is true that both parties are in the grip of corporate elites and their corporations, especially the Republican Party, which has been true for decades. West criticized Obama for seeking to raise money with these elements, referring specifically to Goldman Sachs. This criticism is motivated by socialist ideology and is out of touch with reality. The corporate domination of American national politics through the use of their money is the political context that any Presidential candidate has to participate in to try to get elected; in short, has to get money from the rich sources, and if there is a failure to do that then a Presidential candidate cuts his own throat.
So the question is not taking money from the corporate elites and their institutions. The question is do they then own you, do you have to promote their agenda and give up promoting your own? West is unable to recognize, or won’t accept the fact, that the rich sources that Obama took money from did not control him. Despite the money he got from corporate elites and their corporations, he still pursued his promise of getting health care reform, and got it, with his corporate opposition spending $300 million trying to prevent it, or severely to pare it down. He got money from the corporate financial sector, and still pursued his promise to bring about corporate financial reform, which he achieved, with corporate banks spending $200 million to prevent it, or severely to pare down legislation, with Goldman Sachs contributing $1 million to the effort (who had given $1 million to Obama’s Presidential campaign in 2008).
And then there was West’s deceitful move: he tried to make it appear that Obama did not care about Blacks, the working class, and the poor, by trying to make Obama interchangeable with Goldman Sachs; saying that there was no way that Goldman Sachs could be interested in these elements, and the same was true of Obama, because he was linked to that corporation. Obama was thinking about the middle class, when he gave it the largest tax cut it had ever received in America, and by the educational reform he got passed that benefitted middle class children. He had Blacks, the working class, and the poor in mind with his health care reform. He had the middle and lower classes in mind when he made his deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years. Letting them expire would have imposed a $3000 tax hike on the average middle class family, and the lower class’s taxes would have risen from 10to 15 percent.
Lawrence O’Donnell asked two leading strong ideological progressives, Adam Green and Linda Hamsher, on his program Last Word, if they would be willing to let the Bush tax cuts expire knowing about the tax increases on the middle and lower classes, and both unabashedly said yes! Ed Schultz and Keith Olbermann who was on MSNBC at the time, were also willing to see this happen, as they both rigorously opposed extending the Bush tax cuts on their programs, vehemently accusing Obama on their shows, of “caving in,” or “selling out” to the Republicans, or “betraying the progressive base.” Schultz and Olbermann, as they evidenced repeatedly on their shows, were willing, as were other progressives, to see the health care reform bill go down, because it did not have a public option attached to it- - which meant that they were all, as Democrats, willing to throw millions of people under the bus, who needed that health care reform to pass; people they claimed they wanted to help. Jonathan Alter got into a heated argument with Ed Schultz on the latter’s show about his extreme position. He got into a less vociferous argument with Keith Olbermann about his extreme position on his show.
Obama took exception to this kind of rigid ideological thinking in a press conference that was called to speak about the Bush tax cut compromise, and in a press conference where he criticized those who felt that holding on to the purity of principle was more important than actually helping people. He said in that press conference “people will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. That cannot be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat.” In short, the President was calling the purist progressives, and there are many of them, “fraudulent Democrats,” and not genuine Democrats, whose hallmark was helping people and, of course, they did not like it- - even though it was true; another instance of Obama acting dominantly as President and in a public manner. What was also true was that they were so easily susceptible to ideological paralysis that prevented critical thinking. I wrote an open letter to Keith Olbermann about his fraudulent views, which I put on my blog (December, 2010), which came after an open letter I had sent to Ed Schultz that appeared on my blog (November 2010), showing that he did not have a clue as to Obama’s political thinking and how he led as President. I referred to his deep ignorance about what the President had achieved in office, against horrendous opposition. I said the same thing to Keith Olbermann in the letter I wrote to him, where I also referenced Howard Fineman’s ignorance, who was a frequent guest on the Olbermann show, with the two of them nurturing each other’s ignorance about the President.
For instance, Fineman, and other political analysts, such as Chris Matthews, John Heilemann, Mark Halperin, Bob Herbert, Clarence Page, and numerous progressives, notably Arianna Huffington and Katrina vanden Heuvel, and many socialists complain about the President making a concession to the Republicans before he begins negotiations with them, which is proof to them that he is not a strong leader that he “capitulates.” Making pre-concessions is not what the President wants to do. He knows from his own experience with negotiating in the Illinois state legislature and in the U.S. Senate, that each side in a negotiation comes with their ultimate demands as a starting point. But the President has found this difficult to do, because of the subtle, but intense racist context in which American national politics occur. The corporate involvement in American politics occurs within this context as well, like so much else of great significance in this country.
The base of the Republican Party is the White people in the states of the former Southern Confederacy. This is where racism is still the strongest in the country, primarily expressed in a subtle manner. These southern Whites had originally been in the Democratic Party, and had made it a very racist party in that region. They left that party in large numbers between the mid-1960s and the 1980s, and switched over to the Republican Party, taking not only their racism with them, but the political “dirty tricks,” that southern Whites had perpetrated against Blacks to diminish their political rights and their political power in the South, and that they are still trying to exercise in the region as Republicans.
Southern White racists lodged within the Republican Party tried to bring about Obama’s defeat in the Presidential election of 2008, but had not been able to do so. They then turned to Republicans in Congress to help them against Obama. And one of their kind, Senator Mitch McConnell, from Kentucky, obliged them, saying publicly to them, and to the rest of America, that the number ONE priority of the Republican Party in Congress would be to make Obama fail as President - - someone who entered the White House wanting Democrats and Republicans to cooperate with each other in Washington. But the Republican Party, prompted by its racist base, made the determination to try to make Obama fail as President- - to make a Black President fail!- -to get him and his Black family, out of the White House, which symbolized to them that they had “lost their country” and had “to get it back.” The Republicans in Congress decided to oppose everything the President said or proposed of consequence to do in office, to conduct a political lynching of him. They were going to be a party, not of “loyal opposition,” but of “royal obstruction and destruction.”
The corporate elites and their institutions wanted Obama to fail as well, as they wanted to prevent him from achieving educational reform, health care reform, and corporate financial reform. They knew what the racist reasons were that Republicans had for making the President fail. They dove-tailed with their own reasons for wanting him to fail. The corporate elites and their institutions saw where they could kill two birds with one stone by financially supporting the Republicans in Congress and their racist objectives, who were their primary allies in Congress, who would help them stop Obama, and his objectives with respect to them.
This coming together of Republican racism in Congress and corporate elite and corporate financial institutions also occurred with respect to the matter of government spending on social programs. Since the late 1960s, southern White racists have been trying to diminish the New Deal orientation of the national government, so that the national government does not function as an activist government and cannot spend big money to provide social programs to Blacks in the country, especially in the South. Corporate elites and their institutions have financed Republicans, knowing of this racist agenda, which dove-tailed with their effort to have the national government spend less on social programs, to enable it to shift public money to the rich and their corporations, as well as certain social programs that they would privatize on the corporate market. The 2010 mid-term elections brought more racist Republicans into the Congress, who entered it with the determination to help the Republicans already there to try to make Obama fail as President- -to make a Black man fail as President!- - even if it meant damaging American credit, or taking down the American economy, or pushing the country back into a deep recession.
In a context where the racist objectives of Republicans and the financial objectives of the big corporate banks, and big insurance corporations come together to try to get Obama out of the White House- - which amounts to a mob action against an individual - - the President had to figure out how he could get a dialogue going with Republicans to deal with matters that he wanted to see addressed as President. He had to govern, had to maintain a public image of being reasonable, had to get something done, and there were always thoughts in the back of his mind about re-election- - that the Republicans and the corporate elements were trying to prevent. To deal with this situation forced on him, his tactic has been to offer a compromise at the outset of talks or negotiations, because that is the bait to draw Republicans into a discussion with him. His problem is not to make too big a compromise or concession. The progressives and socialists always show their displeasure at this, without any understanding of what’s happening; what the Realpolitik is for Obama as President; how he can’t avoid functioning, as President in this interlocking racist/corporate elites/corporation context. Thus, when Obama agreed to compromise at the outset on the Bush tax cuts toward the end of 2010, progressives and socialists were livid, but this method enabled him to get more out of the deal and for the American people than the corporate elites and their institutions got, and what amounted to a second stimulus for the economy that kept it from going back into the deep tank.
The following is another instance of the President’s tactic of necessity. He asked the Congress to raise the debt ceiling, which the Republicans in the House especially refused to do, unless there were sizeable cuts in social programs. The Tea Party contingent among them were willing to have the U.S. credit rating go down and even have the economy slip back into a deep recession, perhaps even into a depression. They put the country in a risky situation, and the President had to give serious thought to that risk.
This was similar to the dilemma that Franklin D. Roosevelt had to face during the Depression. There were Blacks who wanted him to get Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill. Walter White, the Executive Secretary of the NAACP, went to Washington to plead with the President to push for the bill, which he refused to do, explaining why to White, as the latter recorded in his autobiography A Man Called White : “I did not choose the tools with which I must work,” he told me. “Had I been permitted to choose them I would have selected different ones. But I’ve got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The Southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen or occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I came out for the anti-lynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.” (pp.169-170).
In this instance, Roosevelt made a pre-concession to southern White racist Democrats, not to seek an anti-lynching bill, as a means to open up a dialogue with them to be able to negotiate the passage of certain legislation. Roosevelt had no doubt that these racist Dixiecrats would bring about the collapse of the country. They were the descendants of the southern Whites who were willing to destroy the United States if they could not extend Black chattel slavery westward. Recently, it was southern Whites in the Senate who strongly opposed President Obama’s efforts to give government loans to save General Motors and Chrysler, and the American auto industry, and a large part of the Midwestern economy, to prevent him from having a success. In short, they were ready to throw people, their jobs, their personal wealth, and an important part of the Midwestern economy under the bus- - while they lived in states that were subsidizing foreign automakers.
Obama had this recent example before him, as he tangled with the Republican Party and its extremist Tea Party elements about raising the debt ceiling and making deep cuts in government programs. They threatened the faith and credit of the U.S. and the American economy, putting Obama in a box. He offered deep cuts to John Boehner, which opened up a dialogue and negotiations with him, and then the President jarred Boehner by insisting that $4 trillion be cut from the national debt- - more than what Boehner had wanted- - and that it be made possible by a combination of program cuts and tax revenue. Boehner was actually amenable to the idea, but Eric Cantor and the Tea Party elements were not, and then threatened the U.S. with economic disaster, which was a risk the President was not willing to take. There were some Democrats who wanted the President to use the clause in the 14th Amendment that said American debts had to be honored and raise the debt ceiling by himself. This would have put the President and country in unchartered waters. And the President could easily conclude that the Republicans in the House would draw up impeachment articles against him, even if these went nowhere. But the action would further impede the functioning of government and who knew for how long. The President ceded to the Republicans accepting a deal of program cuts, and no revenue, but getting an agreement to establish the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee to deal with revenue, cuts, and the debt problem against which he could take veto action if displeased with the Committee’s recommendations.
But the President had no intention of waiting for the super committee to act, especially on revenues. After the debt ceiling debacle, he immediately made taxing the rich a political issue, and then proceeded to draw up a job’s bill, that included tax revenues, and took the tax-jobs bill to the American people, which he is still doing at the present time, choosing at this moment to act publicly in a dominant manner. The Republicans thought they had him down. He had outmaneuvered them and put them on the defensive. And their recalcitrance helped to send people into the streets against Republicans, mainly, and Wall Street. What Republicans have learned about Obama over the past three years, which progressives, socialists, political pundits, and media political analysts have not yet learned, is that he is relentless. When he sets his mind to achieve something, he keeps pursuing his goal until he succeeds: as witness how he pursued delegates to defeat Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination. Or his relentless pursuit of an economic stimulus, health care reform, and financial reform, which included a simultaneous relentless pursuit of some Republicans to vote for these measures that he found he could not pass without their help. He stayed with his belief in the interest to promote bipartisanship, and it paid off for him and the country, even if it were just enough bipartisanship to gain the requisite votes. He is presently showing his relentless pursuit of an objective in promoting his jobs bill.
Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, and a whole lot of political analysts, the likes of those I have mentioned and I would also include Mike Barnicle, Frank Rich, David Brooks, and Joe Klein, who do not have much understanding of the entirety of the political reality the President has to deal with, and who always want to make him into something he is not as an individual, or as President, and to judge him and even severely criticize him on the basis of these abstract, un-related constructions. And one often hears references made to Bill Clinton, suggesting how he would handle strong political opposition and the American economy in recession, differently and more effectively.
This kind of argument is a staple with many White progressives, who have indicated that they wished Hillary Clinton were President, who they feel would be tougher in office than Obama. The progressives still remain in considerable ignorance about Clinton’s years in the White House, including the way he dealt with the strong southern based opposition he faced in Congress after the 1994 mid-term election, which was done by getting in bed with them politically. Al Sharpton criticized progressives on his show, and Melissa Harris-Perry did so in an issue of The Nation, for having a double standard of criticizing Obama, while not being critical of Bill Clinton, for instance for signing racist legislation into law, and being considerably reactionary in the White House. In his new book After Schock , Robert Reich said that America “risk(ed) upheaval and reactionary politics,” (p.4) if it did not find ways to put more money into the hands of the middle class, which is a critical component for sustained economic growth and the creation of jobs.
Reich was unable to see that this country has been in reactionary politics since the late 1960s, which Reagan and Republicans, and the corporate elite and their institutions, nailed down, and which has been perpetrated with great success since the 1980s. At the recent progressive “Bring Back the American Dream Movement Conference,” Reich said to the audience that he would like to see the Glass/Steagall Bill restored, that Clinton and the Congress officially ended by replacing it with the Gramm/Leach/Biley Act in 1999 that took government restraints off corporate bankers and that was calculated to promote the growth of the size of corporate financial institutions, a greater centralization of corporate capital, and greater centralization of corporate organization in America. In short, the greater wealth and power of big corporations. Economist and political analyst Kevin Phillips wrote in Bad Money that “the 1995-2000 period saw a stunning total of 11,000 bank mergers, and the crescendo peaked the next year following the repeal (of Glass/Steagall). Some five hundred new FHCs (financial holding companies) were also created.” (pp. xix-xx).
In short, Bill Clinton facilitated the reckless financial behavior on Wall Street. He also did that by encouraging Americans to go into debt and to buy stock, and by signing the Financial Mobilization Act into law, that severely crippled existing regulatory agencies. He also signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into law that forbade the Commodity Futures Trade Commission from regulating derivatives at the national and state level, which the CFTC had wanted to do; and, thus, to regulate the “shadow bank.” The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission of 2011 concluded that this latter piece of legislation “was a key turning point in the march toward the financial crisis.” (Lawrence Lessing, Republic,Lost , p.76). Bill Clinton has escaped criticism for his role in helping to bring about the financial crisis and recession in this country in 2008, to which he, Ronald Reagan, and George Herbert Walker Bush before him, and George Walker Bush after him, made notable contributions.
The Black novelist and political essayist James Baldwin said in his explosive book of 1963, The Fire Next Time: “We are controlled here by our confusion, far more than we know.” (p.89). And this is understandable. When a people seek to build a free country on the basis of racism and slavery and do so for 230 years, and then after this period is over, plunges into a second phase of slavery and racism, commencing around the 1870s and lasting until the 1930s and 1940s, it produces a fetid, debilitating intellectual legacy that makes it very difficult for Americans not only to understand their own country, but to be able to speak about it intelligently, critically, and honestly. Case in point: How can Mitt Romney who is said to have created thousands of jobs as a businessman over a period of years, and only 48,000 non-government jobs as governor of Massachusetts over a period of four years, be considered a better job creator than President Obama, who according to Congressional Budget Office has created nearly three million jobs? Or how Rick Perry can be ranked above Obama as job creator who, by his own words, created a million jobs in Texas? Yet, every day, one can see and hear political pundits and media political analysts talking about Obama being at a disadvantage having to face job creators like Romney and Perry. Why are they not at a disadvantage running against the President on this matter who has shown himself to be a better job creator than the two of them together?
I will be tuning into your next show, Mr. Bashir, which I find to be a significant one in American broadcast.

Sincerely Yours,
Dr. D.W. Wright

The Super Committee's Secret

The Congressional Super Committee that was established to deal with the national debt has been fully constituted. It will have six Republicans, three from the House and Senate, and six Democrats, also three from the House and Senate, on board to deal with the matter.

But the Committee is sitting on a big secret. Not the fact that all the Republicans selected for it have signed the Grover Norquist Pledge, which calls for Republicans in Congress, while in office, "not to raise taxes under any circumstances."

The big secret is that the six Republicans of the Super Committee who signed that Pledge are in violation of their oath of office and also the Constitution. And the same could be said of the other 233 Republicans in the House, and the other 37 Republicans in the Senate who have signed this Pledge.

Article I SECTION 8 of the Constitution reads: "The Congress shall have the power 1. To lay and collect taxes." This was the first responsibility that the Founding Fathers gave the Congress, indicating how important they thought it was for the national government to be able to raise revenues for its operations and expenses.

The Founding Fathers would be shocked, if not outraged, to see elected members of Congress throwing out this clause and responsibility and, in effect, erasing them from the Constitution. This precious document can only be changed by an amendment that requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, which then has to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

The Republicans in Congress have violated this provision of the Constitution, as well. And so far, as in the case of the other violation, with acceptance and impunity. Even without demur from the Democratic Party.

How can leaders of this Party observe these Constitutional travesties, that have been going on for years, and not publicly denounce them and demand an end to them? How is it that political pundits, and media political commentators, can keep turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the situation? And what about the Independents? Where is their criticism or outrage, or demand that this affront to Constitutional oaths of office, the Constitution itself, and the country desist?

And what about rank and file Republicans? Strangely enough, recent polls consistently show that over 60% of Republicans favor taxing the top two percent of the wealthiest Americans. These are the people Republicans in Congress are Hell-bent on protecting and expanding their wealth, and widening the gap in the distribution of wealth in the country.

So what are the American people going to do about maintaining the integrity of the Constitution, and the matter of revenue, which is not only necessary for national government operations and expenses, but is also necessary to help maintain America as a prosperous country and a land of opportunity for its citizens?

One could say shame on the Republicans in Congress, but that is not likely to have any effect. One could say shame on the political pundits and media political commentators for not bringing this matter to the attention of the American people. Will they do so now?

An Extended Letter to Keith Olbermann to Talk About His Turn to Be: "Worst Person in the World."

Cc: Johnathan Alter, Michelle Bernard, Michael Beschloss, Wolf Blitzer, Gloria Borger, Keith Boykin, Donna L. Brazile, Douglas Brinkley, Jonathan Capehart, Maria Cardona, Tim Carpenter, Eleanor Clift, James Clyburn,David Corn,Candy Crowley, Elijah Cummings, Jeanne Cummings, Jim Dean, Eric Deggaus, Keith Ellison, Howard Fineman, Karen Finney, Maurice Foster, Adonal Foyle, David Gergen, Nancy Giles, Ed Gordon, Adam Green, David Gregory, Melissa Harris-Lacewell, Chris Hayes, Arianna Huffington, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Karen Hunter, Harold Jackson, Jesse Jackson, Sheila Jackson, Ben Jealous, Karl Johnson, Greg Jones, Stephanie Jones, Tom Joyner, Tim Kaine, Katy Kay,Steve Kornacki, Barbara Lee, Steve McMahon, Rachael Maddow, Joe Madison, Roland Martin, Chris Matthews, Marc H. Morial, Mark Murray, John Nichols, Michele Norris, Lawrence O’Donnell, Clarence Page, Mike Papantonio, Jack Rice, Eugene Robinson, Hilary Rosen, Simon Rosenberg, April Ryan, Ed Schultz, Robert Shrum, Walter Shapiro, Al Sharpton, Hilary Shelton, Roger Simon, Michael Smerconish, Bev Smith, A.B. Stoddard, Ray Taliaferro, Mark Thompson, Chuck Todd, Cynthia Tucker, Joan Walsh, Todd Webster, Mark Whitaker, Brian Williams, Joseph Williams, Michael J. Wilson, Richard Wolffe

Dear Mr. Olbermann:
On “Countdown” on Tuesday, December 7, you presented your viewers with one of your “Special Comments” on President Obama. In saying you were going to do so, you ended your remarks with disdain and intense dislike for the President lacing your face. This signaled that you were going to present this Comment in an odious manner in the mold of Edward R. Murrow on steroids. This was also made clear when you threatened the President. You said, a segment or two before you gave your Special Comment, that he “had better quit drinking the debilitating mixture of self-congratulation and self-martyrdom.” Or what, Mr. Olbermann? Were you saying that you were going to break him with your Special Comment? And where do you get off, in the first instance- - a talk show host- - telling the President what he has to do? Suggesting things, alright. But giving orders? You have a rather exalted image of yourself, don’t you; that you signify someone of overriding importance in America. In fact, you conveyed possessing these two attributes to Howard Fineman before you gave your Special Comment. He stepped out of a party at the White House, involving administration officials and reporters, and he jokingly said: “you should go in there because they would like to talk to you.” And you said harshly: “no they won’t want to talk to me, not after tonight,” as you contemplated giving your Special Comment later in the program.
I used to watch Edward R. Murrow on television, giving commentary, conducting interviews, and being interviewed. And I want to say here and now, and emphatically: You are no Edward R. Murrow ! You have brazenly stepped into this great man’s shadow, blanketed yourself with his excellent image and stellar reputation, and have endeavored to show that you are his spiritual heir in news commentary. But the fact is you are nothing like the Edward R. Murrow that I watched for years. He was soft-toned in speaking, showed critical intellect, was scrupulously fair in his criticism of ideas, people, or events, and maintained a civil demeanor, even when he discussed and criticized Senator Joe McCarthy and the Senate Army Hearings.
Your difference from Edward R. Murrow is acute. You are egotistical, sarcastic, cynical, self-righteous, willing to ignore or misrepresent facts, capable of being un-civil, and even crass. You, in fact, resemble the pathologically cynical comedian Bill Maher, who loves to ridicule and castigate, and the person you relish in dumping on, the slashing and demeaning Ann Coulter. The three of you share similar personality characteristics, including having a strong mean, even cruel streak, in you. Additionally, the three of you think cynicism is the same as morality. Thus, when you project yourself as a TV news commentator in the likeness and spirit of Edward R. Murrow, and use the hesitations and camera angle shots that he utilized, and even some of his words, to give your Special Comments, you expose yourself as a FRAUD! Because you deliver your Comments in a brassy tone and self-righteous, authoritative manner he never employed, or would have ever thought of employing.
On a show before you gave your Special Comment on President Obama, you held an interview with David Stockton, the former Budget Director for President Ronald Reagan. It was obvious why you had him on the show. He had been on MSNBC, CNN, and other media outlets, saying emphatically that none of the Bush tax cuts should be extended, because it would balloon the federal deficit. You showed, facially, satisfied agreement with Stockman’s view.
After the former Budget Director, you had Eugene Robinson on for an interview, and he surprised you, Mr. Olbermann, as he did me, by the way he seemed incensed with what David Stockton had said. He knew about the Reagan Budget Director. Before Robinson answered the question you asked him, he said he had to say something about Stockton, and could not let the matter go. He then indicated that Stockton had favored the rich, was one of the authors of “supply-side economics,” that opened America to large scale importation of cheap foreign manufactured goods, that suppressed American manufacturing. George Herbert Bush had called this “voodoo economics,” when he ran against Ronald Reagan in the Republican primary in 1980, but backed off when he became Reagan’s V.P.
But what might have also ticked off Robinson a little was seeing you showing such satisfaction with Stockton’s views, and your cozying up to him. Stockton had helped Reagan to deregulate as much of the economy as possible, and aided the President in plunging the country into 2.8 trillion dollar federal deficit. Robinson knew you were against a permanent or any other kind of extension of the tax cuts for the rich, and an expansion of the current federal deficit. But Stockton helped to lay the foundation for the current deficit, and you were sucking up to him.
But what might have also ticked off Robinson a little was seeing you showing such satisfaction with Stockton’s views, and your cozying up to him. Stockton had helped Reagan to deregulate as much of the economy as possible, and aided the President in plunging the country into 2.8 trillion dollar federal deficit. Robinson knew you were against a permanent or any other kind of extension of the tax cuts for the rich, and an expansion of the current federal deficit. But Stockton helped to lay the foundation for the current deficit, and you were sucking up to him.
So what happened to your Leftist principles, Mr. Olbermann, and all the talking you had been doing on your show for months criticizing President Obama for trying to compromise with recalcitrant Republicans? You engaged in compromising and bipartisanship yourself, on a small scale, of course, but with a huge federal deficit creator. This was incongruous behavior. But you did this because you obviously thought Stockton, a high-ranking Republican, would augment your position of being against the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich. It all smacked of a Faustian alliance based on Faustian principles; shaking hands with the Devil, so to speak. But you didn’t stop there. You extended your Faustian alliance and principles to a person you referred to on your show the night you gave your Special Comment, again seeking to boost your image and stance on the Bush tax cuts. That person was Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Lawrence O’Donnell referred to her on his show, “The Last Word,” the same night you gave this Special Comment. His remarks were related to what she had said in reaction to President Obama’s compromise tax plan with the Republicans, which she stated was immoral, unfair, and unjust. And you reacted enthusiastically to this castigating view on your show.
O’Donnell had a different take on Senator Landrieu. He first noted, which you also knew, because you had spoken about it with derision on your show during the health care reform debate, that she had forced Senate majority leader Harry Reid to give her state 100 million dollars to get her vote for the reform bill. You thought that was unconscionable back then, but you didn’t mention it when you referred to Senator Landrieu on your show. Lawrence O’Donnell thought that it took away any moral credence she could have objecting to the compromise tax plan.
But he concluded that her rejection of the plan went deeper and in a different direction. He believed she rejected it and threw out the reprimanding moral language, because she was trying to separate herself from the President. She knew, O’Donnell said, that the President was not just disliked in the South, but that he was hated in the region, and she wanted to be on the side of the racists there. He also noted how she had tried to force the President to remove the moratorium on deep water drilling for oil in the Gulf by holding up his appointment of Jack Lew to head up the Office of Management and Budget Director.
This was the person you turned to, Mr. Olbermann, prior to giving your Special Comment on the President, to give yourself what you seemed to think added moral stature to yourself and your presentation. You were using her this way, as you had David Stockton, even though your Leftist principles would have cried out betrayal. But what’s a little betrayal of principle, when you can get help in a Faustian manner to smack the President, whom you seem to have grown to intensely dislike, and for reasons I will endeavor to explain in this extended letter.
But your Faustian thinking was not over. You went even deeper into that well, and you pulled Winston Churchill out of it. You said you were calling on him for a second time to make a Special Comment. And you obviously thought this man would certainly boost your moral stature to make your Comment with regard to the President. You utilized a quote of his. A lot of people do that, as he was a very quotable person, and many of his quotes show sagacious insight and stellar political wisdom.
But before we go into that matter there was something else you did prior to making your Special Comment that was not Faustian in itself, but it would show up in a Faustian manner in your Comment in the form of disregarding fact and truth, owing to your surreptitious villainous alliance. You interviewed Ezra Klein on your show, but before you asked him a question, and at the very opening of your program, you outlined the President’s proposed compromise tax plan, which meant that you knew what was in it before you went on your show, and long before you presented your Comment. You asked Ezra Klein, one of the most knowledgeable people to be found on the policies, laws, and programs that come out of Washington, D.C. to explain the tax package.
He presented the proposed plan which he estimated to be worth a maximum high of 900 billion dollars, and which broke down in the following manner: 300 billion in middle class tax cuts, 56 billion in jobless benefits for 2 million people for 13 straight months, way beyond the time that benefits are normally distributed, (usually for about three months), 40 billion for tax extenders, meaning the taxes from the President’s Economic Recovery and Investment Act, or the Stimulus Bill, that he wanted extended and that included an income tax credit, a tuition tax credit, and a child tax credit. Depending on how things were counted, Klein said, there were 30 to 180 billion dollars to help small businesses, and an estimated maximum high of 120 billion dollars to go to the rich, involving a 35% estate tax that exempted an estate owned by an individual that was worth 5 million dollars or less and a 35% tax on an estate worth more than 5 million dollars. Klein objected to the estate tax, but thought that the proposed plan added up to great gains for the American people, rather than significant losses, suggesting that it was the rich who were the big losers.
You and Klein agreed on the facts and the truth regarding the tax plan. But what happened to the facts and truth when you subsequently presented your Special Comment? They will both disappear, because you did not want them getting in the way of the Comment that you had prepared prior to your show, that you read off without a hitch or modification, or any hint that you were being dishonest and devious. And this in itself has to be regarded as strange behavior. Why would you cite fact and truth at the opening of your show, seek fact and truth from an invited guest, who clearly knew both, when you knew you were going to disregard both in your Comment? Is this to be regarded as simply being hypocritical?
Hardly. In your case it is a reflection of the Faustian alliance and principles that undergirded your Special Comment segment. Indeed, you had written it in a Faustian manner, because it was written in a way to make lies, misstatements, and accusations stand for fact and truth. This, of course, is wholly un-Edward R. Murrow, who would turn over in his grave, knowing that you were using his image, his reputation, and his manner of delivering commentary in that manner. He would be saying “good night and good riddance.”
Something else has to be said about your use of the Special Comment itself, other than the instance cited of you trying to line yourself up with Churchill. As you have shown over and over again, you use it to try to make yourself appear as some kind of oracular figure, or as a political sage of enormous insight and wisdom, for the purpose of trying to make yourself bigger than the subject you’ve chosen to discuss. This was not something that Murrow would ever have thought of doing. For him fact, truth, reality, and fairness were the parameters of political commentary, that kept him on the same plane as the subject he was discussing, and which made it possible for him to deal with it in a critical and realistic fashion.
Let me repeat, Mr. Olbermann: You are no Edward R. Murrow, and you can never be, owing to your egoism, sarcasm, cynicism, and self-righteousness, and your willing dips into meanness and even cruelty. But let me suggest someone to you who does in significant ways resemble Murrow in delivering political commentary. This is Lawrence O’Donnell, who displays this significant likeness on his show “The Last Word.” MSNBC made an excellent choice giving him a political talk show.
So let’s get back to Winston Churchill. Choosing him, Mr. Olbermann, it seems clear, was your way of trying to make yourself bigger than the subject you were about to discuss: President Obama. This was really reaching for the stratosphere, because the President is the biggest person in the United States, and one of the biggest people on the planet, second only to the Pope, owing to him being the leader of more than a billion people around the globe. Clearly, you are nowhere near being in the President’s league, Mr. Olbermann. You do not match up with him in any discernible way, intellectually, morally, or politically.
But you endeavor to cast yourself as a gigantic moral and sagacious presence by constructing your Special Comment in a manner to project that image of yourself. You obviously thought laminating yourself to Winston Churchill and his epochal image and standing, and some of his powerful words, would help you reach this elevated height. In short, you thought you could use him for this purpose, as you sought to use David Stockton and Senator Mary Landrieu, but to greater effect and purpose.
But one can raise some serious questions about you choosing Churchill to help you elevate your image and moral and political stature to great heights, to appear bigger than the subject you were about to discuss- - and especially given your liberal/progressive principles. Churchill always identified with the British Crown, the British aristocracy and their power and wealth in Great Britain, and he also was a fierce champion of the British Empire. And correspondingly, he was also very un-democratic. He had to work within the British Parliamentary system, because there was no other political institutional outlet available in Great Britain. But his anti-democratic views are revealed very clearly in one of his quotes: “If you think democracy is the best form of government, then you have not spent five minutes with an average voter.”
The British needed his leadership during the war, and eventually called for it. But after the war, knowing his affinity for the aristocracy and empire, and the funneling of public money to these sources, they tossed him out of office, with thanks, and replaced him, by vote, with Labour Party leader, Clement Attlee, who promised to have the British Government do more for the lower levels of the British people. Attlee would have conformed to your professed liberal/progressive principles, but he did not have the stature you wanted, and that Churchill proffered, and that would enable you to look as if you were not trashing President Obama, when that was precisely what you sought to do with your Special Comment.
You drew on a quotation from Churchill that you paraphrased in your Comment: “Let me begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing, that we have sustained a defeat without war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road. We should know that we have passed a milestone in our history when the whole equilibrium of politics and policy has been deranged, and the terrible words for the time being have been pronounced against this administration: ‘Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.’”
One can only wonder how phrases such as “sustained a defeat without war,” “passed a milestone in our history,” and “the whole equilibrium of politics and policy have been deranged,” can be appropriate. Just because President Obama made a compromise tax plan with Republicans? But seeing how that could be perceived by some as being wholly outrageous, you threw in some items in the Comment that you thought were of a higher order, and that would bring credence to your use of such phrases, and that referred to the President’s wretched, even virtually criminal behavior.
The things you provided your viewers to consider, and that you presented in the Special Comment, without discussion, and in the form of strong sound bites, were his failure to close Guantanamo, not overturning President Bush’s domestic security program, not dealing effectively with “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” - - “your foot-dragging” on this matter, as you put it, and not prosecuting President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, and other government officials for authorizing the torture of prisoners.
You threw these fiery, provocative things out as sound bites in your Special Comment, Mr. Olbermann, in rapid succession and without any discussion. Sound bites are things that appeal to the emotions and not the intellect. And you chose that low road. There were explanations to be had for all of these things, including the fact that the President had a whole lot of other things that he had to deal with on an emergency basis, and none of the things you mentioned fitted into that category.
I want to provide a brief discussion of two of the things you rattled off. From time to time you had guests on your show who claimed that the President had the power to end DADT, if he wanted to, but he seemed, for whatever reason, not to want to. You always agreed with this assessment, but it was not the truth. If the President had tried to end DADT by executive order, which was always said to be the power that he had, he would have been engaged in trying to overturn a federal law, and there would have been a loud call for his impeachment by Republicans, who would be very satisfied with any impeachable crime against the President. Congress and the courts were the only agencies that could overturn DADT, and the President had no power to force either to do so, although he kept pressure on the military to act, which is what the study of gays in the service that he authorized did, which simultaneously delayed the courts acting to repeal DADT, which would be arbitrary and would likely aggravate the hostility in the military to repeal and could spur action to thwart implementation of a new policy. The year-long study also gave supporters in Congress time to try to overcome the resistance in that body to repeal and to round up the votes for it. The President kept all stakeholders on course, and gave them one year to repeal DADT. You would, as you did, Mr. Olbermann, call this “foot-dragging.” Someone else would say it was politics: “the art of the possible.”
As for the President prosecuting President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, and other people in the Bush administration for authorizing torture, this was something that he had no intention of attempting. This would have produced an enormous political scandal in the United States that could have gone on for years, something that would be covered in a sensational manner by the media as long as it lasted, and it would be a subject of continuous conversation among American citizens.
And the scandal could even take on an international dimension, because if Bush, Cheney, and others were tried for authorizing torture in the U.S., some governments and lawyers in other places might want to prosecute them for the same matter, in an international court. This kind of mountainous scandal would sit like a massive dead weight on the Obama administration, and would prevent or make it very difficult to deal with the tanker load of problems that the Bush administration left for him, and the reason why the American people voted him into office to take care of. Your kind of call can only come from someone who does not like or understand politics, or who thinks a purified ideology, or purified principles, triumph everything- - a person like yourself, Mr. Olbermann. How naïve can you really be, how politically immature can you be? It is clear, you can be both, in spades.
But bringing up what you regarded as the failings of the President in your Special Comment was done deliberately, because they were related to your chief objective of trying to discredit him, using the despised and villainous Neville Chamberlain to try to give weight to your charges. This was low, Mr. Olbermann, very low, but you showed how easily you could sink so low, and how you had no hesitation in consciously and deliberately deceiving the people who you were expecting to hear your remarks: the 280,000 people who watch your show. And doing that time honored Republican thing of giving people a lie, a myth, a sound bite, scaring them, and giving them someone or something to blame, as a means to manipulate or to persuade them. The quickest thing that many people in this country learn is to hate something or somebody. It’s a result of the centuries-long racist and slave history of America.
The things that you said the President failed to act on seem to me to be the things that you meshed together in your own mind as a stinging jolt to it that initially turned you against him, and it would seem that this was also when some White professional liberals/progressives, especially the leaders among them, who doubtlessly watch your show, began to turn against him. Your principles and those of others like yourself required that the President act immediately on the matters you mentioned. The President’s principles, those of his own order, and those of the Democratic Party, said to him to act immediately to solve problems and help the American people.
This was a no brainer situation for the President, because he knew why he had been elected, and it was not to try to impeach President Bush or Vice-President Cheney (which would not have been possible anyway, because Speaker Pelosi yanked that off the table to the chagrin of John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who was eager to do so), or prosecuting the two men, along with others, for authorizing torture of Islamic detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere. From there, Mr. Olbermann, your attitude toward President Obama seemed to change from being favorable to him, to developing an intense dislike of him that has reached the low point that is reflected in your Special Comment.
You said to your viewers in the process of presenting it that the Churchill quote had been made on October 5, 1938. You did not tell them, but it came from a speech he made in Parliament. After you told of the date, you brought in Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain: “I don’t want to make any true comparison to the historical event to which it related. The viewers can look it up if they wish. And I confess I will not fight if someone wants to draw a comparison to what you have done to the domestic policies of our day to what Neville Chamberlain did with the international politics of his day.”
First of all, Mr. Olbermann, one has to ask how you find it legitimate to compare domestic politics to international politics, and how this can be a true comparison? This is muddled thinking. It sounds like Senator John McCain saying that he was against repealing “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,“ because the country is in a recession. A supreme non sequitur. You mocked Senator McCain on your show for making this comment, but it seems to me that you have some of the Senator in you, maybe even something worse as revealed by the Chamberlain comparison with President Obama. In your suggestion to your viewers, you did more than just hint that this was a true comparison.
It is not likely that many of your viewers knew who Neville Chamberlain was, or in any case, knew much about him, but they would have been able to surmise from the tone of your voice, the near savage looks you displayed, and your gloating self-righteous demeanor, that he was an unsavory person. You seemed to have expected this general ignorance, and that would be alright with you, and even better for you, because it would prevent eyebrows being raised among your viewers as to why you brought Neville Chamberlain into the picture, whose activities in the fall of 1938 had greatly exercised Winston Churchill and had been the reason for the October 5th remark. Another way of putting this is that your viewers would not have seen, or understood how you had consciously and deliberately deceived them by suggesting a comparison between President Obama and Neville Chamberlain, and then wondering why you had done that.
Chamberlain had gone to Munich and had signed the Munich Agreement with Germany, France, and Italy, which the U.S. did not sign, but endorsed quietly from a far distance. Hitler wanted the Sudetenland area of Czechoslovakia that was composed of German people to incorporate the territory and its people into the Third Reich. After getting the concession, he promised that he had no further designs on Czechoslovakia or Central and Eastern Europe. Chamberlain thought he had forestalled German eastward aggression and a war in Europe. But he was wrong. Hitler subsequently conquered Czechoslovakia and fixed his eyes on Poland.
Now, to return to one of Churchill’s phrases: “we have sustained defeat without a war,” made after Chamberlain returned home and waved the peace treaty in the air, claiming he had averted war and maintained the peace in Europe. But there were those like Churchill who believed he had appeased a tyrant, and had thrown principles of freedom to the wind.
Did President Obama do things like this in his first two years in office? During this time, did he derange the equilibrium of politics and policy in the country, and in such a way to have the country pass a milestone in its history? What pushed the country across the threshold, the President working out a compromise with Republicans on the Bush tax cuts? Did the American legal system undergo a great and negative transformation by anything that the President did in office? And can it be said that he made an agreement with an incredibly evil man to give a territory and its people to another country?
It is true that he stepped up American involvement in the war in Afghanistan to go after people who had aided an attack on America, killing thousands. But the Afghan war has not brought the American legal system down, or turned the American government into a political dictatorship, that has resulted in the wholesale suppression of human and political rights- - which were the images of President Obama that you put before your viewers, when you linked him with Neville Chamberlain and suggested that this was a true comparison; that he was as ruinous on the American domestic scene as Chamberlain had been ruinous on the international scene. You had, in your view, effectively put the President in “his place.” Boy, what some of us in this country know about this kind of attitude!
You regard yourself as a spiritual descendant of Edward R. Murrow concocting this horrendous villainous image of President Obama, and trying to pass it off as truth to hundreds of thousands of people? Your thinking that produced this scenario was fanciful and outrageous. But this was also true in another way that made your thinking even willfully insidious. Why would someone compare a President said to be engaged in domestic matters with a Prime Minister said to be engaged in international matters, and then say that this was a true comparison? It is utterly illogical, a non-sequitur. But there could be logic to it if one could fathom a hidden motive for doing so. There would be no reason to make this comparison, using Chamberlain as a comparative figure, unless it represented an effort to bring Hitler into the scenario, with whom Chamberlain is joined at the hip in history books, as two nefarious characters.
You said in your Special Comment, Mr. Olbermann, that President Obama was dealing inadequately, and virtually in a criminal manner, with such matters as incarcerating prisoners at Guantanamo, in not closing that facility, in not prosecuting people who had authorized the torture of prisoners, in not ending DADT, or the Bush wiretap policies, and for prosecuting a war that had become unpopular.
It can be said of Adolf Hitler, that he was a cruel dictator, that he established concentration camps and incarcerated millions of prisoners, that he tortured and killed prisoners, that he prosecuted people in a vicious manner, that he censored the press and suppressed the rights of people, and that he promoted war.
Laid out this way- - the consequence of an investigation taken- - it is clear that your comparison between President Obama and Neville Chamberlain was a phony one, a smoke screen to hide your really intended comparison, that you did not want to make directly, but that you hoped people would see if they looked into the matter, which you suggested that they do. You then said to them aggressively: “And I confess I will not fight if someone wants to draw a comparison to what you have done to the domestic policies of our day to what Neville Chamberlain did with the international policies of his day.” On the basis of the comparison proffered between President Obama and Chamberlain one could look all day long and would find nothing to compare the two about. But you had, using Chamberlain in a Faustian manner, implanted subliminally a comparison between the President and Adolf Hitler in the minds of your viewers, and suggested that they investigate that comparison, which you implied to them was a true one.
One can recall how you used to criticize what you called “the crazies” on the Right, for calling President Obama Hitler or a Nazi, but then you turn around and in a Faustian inspired insidious manner, equate him with or make him appear to be like Hitler. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, reaching this deep into the gutter, but the fact that you did so, shows that you don’t have that quality of shame within you.
One could think that those viewers who investigated upon your suggestion would see that you made a false comparison, and had surreptitiously suggested another to them that was without merit, and hideously onerous, and that you in fact had consciously and willfully deceived them. But then again, one cannot be certain of that, because Mr. Olbermann, you and others of your liberal/progressive ilk, have done a good job of brain-washing viewers like yours, with the notion of the need for the purity of principles, the disdain for politics, and very negative views about President Obama. So much so, that you and others like you find it hard even to acknowledge his legislative achievements, let alone discuss or praise them. It had been remarked on a political talk show, before your December 7 Special Comment, that to see legislative achievements of this magnitude and quality by a Democratic President, one would have to go back to the Lyndon Johnson Presidency of the 1960s.
You yourself, Mr. Olbermann, only mentioned on your show and only in passing, President Obama signing a nuclear weapons reduction treaty, START, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. No Democratic Party President had ever signed such a treaty, all previous ones had been done by Republican Presidents. One would think this achievement would be met with some rejoicing by liberals/progressives like you. It would seem that this would be a normal response for people, who had helped to elect this President. Rachel Maddow agrees with such a response, because she has praised his achievements on her show. Why is it that you and others can’t do the same? All he got from you, and other White professional liberals/progressives who are lodged in what are described as liberal/progressive political groups, was a passing nod at best. In your Special Comment, you could only find it within yourself to ridicule one of the President’s important achievements, saying in a sarcastic, nasty tone, that liberals/progressives “did not mean to be disloyal to you by not concluding our prayers every night by thanking you for preventing another great depression.” But on the other hand, liberals/progressives of your ilk, Mr. Olbermann, have not even been willing to praise or give credit to the Democratic Party for all of its legislative achievements, and all the things it has done over the past two years to make life better for millions of Americans. At a minimum, this has to be described as being weird- - even if you can’t and do not think that it is, Mr. Olbermann.
You said some of the following things in your Special Comment about President Obama with respect to his compromise tax plan with Republicans, apparently showing his villainous Neville Chamberlain qualities. You were on steroids when you did so, displaying angry eyes, vicious looks, and strong hostility. You said the President “bowed to the rich,” that he “caved in” on the Bush tax cuts, and that he submitted to Republican “blackmail” in negotiating the compromise tax plan.
You said a tax cut for the rich would “suck 4 trillion dollars out of government revenues over the next ten years. “ You said it was not necessary to give tax cuts to the rich in order to get benefits for the unemployed, as Republicans would come around to doing that, because they don’t want to be accused of not doing so. You blasted the President for not doing something for the “99ers.” Arianna Huffington lamented the same on the Lawrence O’Donnell show. Ed Schultz has made this a “line to draw in the sand” for President Obama. You said the 2% “temporary payroll deduction tax,” established the precedent that money pumped into social security could be negotiated and traded off to make it that much easier to gut it. You also said that the Republicans would “blackmail” the President into making the 2% payroll tax reduction permanent.
Let’s take the last of these points first. When you interviewed Ezra Klein, before you presented your Special Comment, he said that both Republicans and Democrats had created a myth about the social security trust fund being the only source of revenue to maintain this government program. He said there were numerous other sources, including the general fund, which was a big source of funds. But when you presented your Special Comment, you ignored what Klein had previously told you, because you had written your Comment beforehand, and you were not open to either fact or truth about this matter. And this meant that you denied this truth and fact because your interest was to discredit President Obama and not just his tax plan.
With respect to the rich “sucking 4 trillion dollars out of government revenues over the next 10 years,” with the compromise tax plan, this is something you simply made up, i.e. creating your own facts. The plan is meant for only two years, not ten, and it involves an estimated high of 900 billion dollars, of which those in the high two or three percentile income group would get an estimated maximum of 120 billion dollars. Ed Schultz, the other great detractor of President Obama, also showed his confusion about this matter. On one of his shows, he asked his viewers one of his rigged questions to get an answer that favored his opening remarks: “Do you have faith Obama’s compromise will be good for the USA in the long run?” The tax plan was designed for the short not the long run. Schultz, like you, made up his own facts, to be able to dig at the President. You made it appear, with your talk of “bowing”, or “caving in” to Republicans, that the only thing that the President got from this tax plan were the unemployment benefits, with yourself being reluctant to talk about the unemployed obtaining them for 13 straight months, and only showing an interest in saying that this was how Republicans “black-mailed” him to extend the tax cuts for the rich, which you erroneously stated was for ten years.
But you also did something else that has to be noted. You described the unemployment benefits as “meager crumbs.” For someone who makes seven or eight million dollars a year, you could describe these benefits that way. But for people who are desperately in need of those “meager crumbs”, 300 dollars a week for 13 uninterrupted months, or to put it another way, who will receive $1,200 dollars a month and a total of $15,600 dollars for 13 months, this is a very welcomed help.
As I said, Mr. Olbermann, you are capable of meanness and even cruelty. You have shown both in this instance, belittling, and, thus, attacking what are the lifelines of about 150 million people in this country. Your own personality characteristics, your obsession with purist principles, your acute hostility toward President Obama, and your delusional belief that you are bigger than he is, and that you can put him “in his place,” led you to this disgraceful behavior.
You made a valid point, though, about the President and the Congress, as well, doing something for the “99ers,” but you were not interested in really dealing with the matter. You presented it mainly as a sound bite to stir up emotions and provoke hostility. One can speculate as to why the President did not include it in the tax plan: it could jack the cost of the plan up to a trillion or more dollars, over a two year period. The word “trillion” associated with national government spending is presently poisonous as cobra venom, and puts a restraint on wishes or efforts to do just and beneficial things, even for the needy.
You railed against the 35% estate tax, like a lot of Democrats in the Congress and outside of government have. And it was done in a sound bite manner. Ezra Klein did not offer an explanation as to the reason for the tax, when you interviewed him, but he did when he appeared on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “The Last Word.” He did not say what motivated Senator Blanche Lincoln to toss it into the mix, but he did say that the Republican negotiators said they would not sign off on the tax extenders: the earned income tax credit, the college tuition tax credit, and the child tax credit, unless it was included in the compromise. But those were also things that the President wanted extended from his Stimulus Bill, which amounted to 40 billion dollars. This was an important benefit which you were unable to acknowledge, because of your fierce attitude toward the estate tax. But you would not have been able to acknowledge it in your Special Comment anyway, any more than you could other important benefits that you knew about, and that Klein talked to you about, because your script had already been written, and those facts and truths per Faustian requirement were deliberately omitted, for hopeful effect.
Your thundering against the President and the compromise tax plan was based on your view that the President was a weak leader, lacked fight, and was not capable of standing up to the Republicans, that he readily bowed to them and caved in to them. This view underlay the point you made that the two year plan (which you had said to be a ten year extension earlier in your Comment), was “promising at best that this battle (over the Bush tax-cuts) will continue in 2012,” and that it would be played out in the same “amoral and degrading manner” as it was presently being played out. If you had said that this was speculation on your part that this would occur in 2012, this could be regarded as a reasonable thing to say, Mr. Olbermann. But that was not how you phrased it. You made it sound like a fact, which made it another of the facts you made up and included in your Special Comment, which was so un-Edward R. Murrow of you.
up and included in your Special Comment, which was so un-Edward R. Morrow of you.
You and a lot of White professional liberals/progressives like to say loud and often that the President lacks fight, and that he is not a fighter. Some Black people say this, too. But this criticism overwhelmingly comes from White professional liberals/progressives like you, Mr. Olbermann, which would include people such as Ed Schultz, Adam Green, Arianna Huffington, Howard Fineman, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Cenk Uygur, Jane Hamsher, Roy Sekoff, and Mike Papantonio. This is the view that the lot of you have been spreading to liberal/progressive political talk show hosts, liberal/progressive newspaper columnists, and people in the liberal/progressive political groups, which are strewn around the country. The only way you can talk about the President this way is because you just want to lie about him or are just willing to close your eyes and ears to evidence which points to the contrary.
The President is very much a fighter, not the way Ed Schultz and some others of your ilk would like him to be: with little to no thought, strong emotion, angry looks, cutting words, and bullish action. But just remember how Barack Obama got to the White House, and you will see a fighting spirit there. You may recall, Mr. Olbermann, although this may be painful for you and others to do so, he defeated Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, the Clinton machine, and the Democratic Party itself, which supported his adversary throughout the entire Democratic Presidential nomination process. This was a person hardly on the national political scene in America, and he, with his campaign help, defeated an allied trio of political giants. What do you think that took Mr. Olbermann, and the likes of you, a fighting spirit or a passive, limpish one?
And I especially want to draw your attention to the first battle that Barack Obama won, Mr. Olbermann, because after your Special Comment, you had Thomas Buffenbarger, President of the Machinist Union on your show. He had been a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, as well as his union, and you showed a clip of him hurling a fist in the air, and railing against Obama for not being a fighter, while saying that Hillary Clinton was. You brought Buffenbarger on the show, knowing that he still held the view that Obama was not a fighter, not even as President, but at the same time trying to make it appear that you knew nothing about his continuing point of view, by the way you questioned him. There was something very dishonest about that, don’t you think, Mr. Olbermann?
You obviously didn’t think there was anything dishonest about your behavior, as you listened with pleasure to your guest expressing his opinion about the President lacking fight. This meant that Mr. Buffenbarger still had his head in the sand, and that you eagerly stuck yours in with his, enabling the two of you to douse the painful memory that Barack Obama had out-fought, and had defeated Hillary Clinton and her awesome help for the Party nomination. What does it take for you to see the light, Mr. Olbermann?
And I especially want to draw your attention to the first battle that Barack Obama won, Mr. Olbermann, because after your Special Comment, you had Thomas Buffenbarger, President of the Machinist Union on your show. He had been a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton, as well as his union, and you showed a clip of him hurling a fist in the air, and railing against Obama for not being a fighter, while saying that Hillary Clinton was. You brought Buffenbarger on the show, knowing that he still held the view that Obama was not a fighter, not even as President, but at the same time trying to make it appear that you knew nothing about his continuing point of view, by the way you questioned him. There was something very dishonest about that, don’t you think, Mr. Olbermann?
You obviously didn’t think there was anything dishonest about your behavior, as you listened with pleasure to your guest expressing his opinion about the President lacking fight. This meant that Mr. Buffenbarger still had his head in the sand, and that you eagerly stuck yours in with his, enabling the two of you to douse the painful memory that Barack Obama had out-fought, and had defeated Hillary Clinton and her awesome help for the Party nomination. What does it take for you to see the light, Mr. Olbermann?
And with your head in the sand, or with blinders on, you, as well as others of your ilk, will not acknowledge the fight it took for Barack Obama to defeat a national military hero in John McCain, and that he fought hard enough to take ten red Republican states in the election. And then there were the instances when he evidenced fighting spirit against 18 of the most powerful American corporate banking heads in the country, and compelled them to put their institutions through a 3-month stress test to see if they could be viable and solvent in another serious economic crisis. He took on the heads of General Motors, and Chrysler, and told them that if they wanted more government subsidies, they would have to change the way they made cars to make them more fuel efficient, and they complied with his demands. Also, as President, Barack Obama fought and won the battle against Republicans in Congress to get his Stimulus Bill, healthcare reform, educational reform, and against them, Wall Street and their lobbyists, and the Chamber of Commerce, to get financial reform. The President forced generals and the Pentagon to go back to the drawing board several times to give him an Afghan war strategy he could accept, which they did. So what more proof do you and the people who listen to your deceitful jabber need to accept the President as a fighter?
One should think that Ed Schultz would be able to see this. He interprets politics often in terms of sports language and sports metaphors. The President is nearly 50 years old, is in good physical shape, and plays basketball with a strong competitive spirit regularly. Ed Schultz, however, was unable to see this as suggesting a fighting spirit. His recognition of it was blocked by his childish view of what it meant to be tough as President: use biting, reprimanding language, show anger, hurl fists in the air, call opponents out, and show that you will punish people by twisting arms and kicking ass. How childish and pathetic. Mr. Schultz has yet to learn that machismo is the same as infantilism.
You told your viewers towards the end of your Special Comment that during the healthcare debate, the President abandoned single payer and the public option, while presenting these assertions in a sound bite manner. The first assertion is a falsehood, because the President was never an advocate of single payer, knowing full well that this type of healthcare system used in Canada, in Europe, and in other countries is state socialism, and that this is not something that he would be able to achieve in this country, as President, even if he were in favor of it. So the fact that he talked about it hardly made him an advocate of it. The second assertion was a misrepresentation. The President did not campaign on the public option, this is what you Leftist purists tried to foist upon him, but which he resisted. He certainly was not against a public option because it would involve the American government and the insurance corporations working together- - his kind of thinking and action- - to give the American people better healthcare opportunities and coverage. But what he learned from Senate majority leader Harry Reid was that there were not 60 votes in the Senate for the public option, and that Reid and other Senators could not round up the votes.
The President then had no intention of bumping his head against the wall, or pushing against Harry Reid for something the latter indicated he could not deliver, and, thus, end up alienating a person he needed to get his legislative agenda across. The President does not give a rap about ideological purity or principle purity. That has been a long- standing view with him that goes back to his days in the Illinois state legislature. But if you understood something about politics, Mr. Olbermann, or cared about them-- and the same goes for others of your ilk among White professional liberals/progressives – you would appreciate these things and be able to handle them.
What clearly has come as a shock to you, Mr. Olbermann, and as something earth-shaking to the panicky, assurance- craving Ed Schultz, is that the President has taken people like you on in a fight- - showing a fighting spirit against you. But, of course, you don’t see it that way. In your Special Comment, you talked about the President regarding Democrats who criticize him as being disloyal. This has never been anything the President has said or implied, and you clearly made this up, because of your resentment of the President compromising with Republicans, and as you said in your Comment, “bowing” and ”caving in” to them - - implying no fight, no backbone.
You carried this matter of disloyalty to the absurd length of saying that the President would regard a “99er protest as disloyalty.” This, of course, is nothing the President would even likely give a thought to, and certainly would not say something like this publicly. He did not even say in his press conference that people like you were disloyal, even though you criticized his compromise with Republicans. He did not say at the press conference that the Democrats in the House and Senate were disloyal, because they criticized the compromise tax plan. So where did you get this argument that the President was labeling people who disagreed with him as being disloyal that you threw at him toward the end of your Special Comment? There’s only one possible answer: you made it up!
The President is not like you, Mr. Olbermann. He does not live in an abstract fanciful world of shiny principles and wishful thinking, nor does he have a compulsion to make things up, or to lie or misrepresent things, or refuse to tell the truth about things as you did in your Special Comment. You said there, in another instance of fabrication: “moderate democrats wonder why in the hell you get politically angry so often at the liberals who campaign for you, when you might save some of your sarcasm and self-martyrdom for the Republicans.” You said this in a demeaning un-Edward R. Murrow manner. But as soon as one hears the word sarcasm, and it is associated with the President, one can already see some lying going on, because the last thing the President is is sarcastic. This was you, Mr. Olbermann, projecting this personality trait of yours onto the President, and trying to penalize him for allegedly having it. And the President does not show anger publicly, or hardly ever, which is what you would have had to see him do, to claim that he frequently did so. In fact, this is something that people like you have criticized the President for not doing. So, which is it, Mr. Olbermann: he does or does not show anger publicly? And as to him engaging in self-martyrdom, this is utter nonsense, and represents your effort to try to belittle the President.
President Obama is a very self-contained individual. He’s bright, knowledgeable, is strong of character, with a strong moral center and has a fighting spirit that he knows about, even if the likes of you, Mr. Olbermann, do not, or better said, don’t want to know about. The President as he demonstrates repeatedly has enormous confidence in himself, his ability to lead as President, to take on challenges and get things done, and against stiff opposition. He is a fighter, but he fights his way! And there are some of us who say to him: “Keep it Obama!”
There is something that you and others still have not been able to fathom, Mr. Olbermann- - and even after being told about it and provided evidence of how it could be the case- - you probably still will not believe it. But the evidence shows that Republicans are afraid of President Obama. It takes the initial form of not wanting a Black man to succeed as President. You’ve heard the talk: Mitch McConnell’s sole objective to make him a one term President; Jim DeMint wanting his healthcare reform to be his Waterloo. The unprecedented use of the filibuster, the opposition to the President’s major legislative agenda and to his administrative and judicial appointments, the present hesitation to approve the START Treaty, so as not to give the President a success, and the conservative talk show daily disparagement of him, often in a racist manner, which has all been equivalent to a political lynching. Yet most White political commentators like to say that it has nothing to do with racism that Republicans just don’t want him to have a second term, and want a Republican in the White House.
Of course, they do, and they also want to make certain that this Black man has only one term in office. The base of the Republican Party is located among Whites in the states of the former Southern Confederacy. As Lawrence O’Donnell recognized, the President is not just disliked in the South, he is hated there, by many Whites and mainly in those former Confederate states. This is something you used to acknowledge as well on your show, at one time, where you also chastised racists, but both things seem to have passed from your interest and memory. There is no way that the Southern White base of the Republican Party wants Obama to have a second term. It was against him being elected in the first place. To their racist thinking, it’s always: “if you let one in, they all want to come in.” Meaning, other Blacks will seek to be President. But if one can be discredited, can be brought down, and can be made to fail then it could be said, in racist terms: “See, he couldn’t handle the job. Being President is a White man’s job.” And if failure did occur nothing would be said about all the underhanded stuff that was done to make him fail. It’s the Jackie Robinson story all over again, more than 60 years later.
A hard truth for the Republicans is that they have not been able to make the President fail. He, with the help of his Party in the Congress, has had great legislative success, the best by a Democratic President since Lyndon Baines Johnson. For two years, the Republicans have thrown everything, including the kitchen sink and the dishwasher at him, and he keeps beating them at their game. They remember how he handled them, namely, the Republican Caucus in the House, with ease in the nationally televised debate on healthcare. They can even look back on the 2008 Presidential election and remember how he took ten states from them. They can recall how Republicans closed ranks to oppose the President on the Economic Recovery and Investment Act, and the financial reform bill, but he was able to get Republican help on those measures despite the effort to prevent it.
The Republicans know the formidable force President Obama is. They have been desperately and fiercely testing him, and he has passed most of the tests. At the press conference, he said, that if the Republicans wanted to engage him in a fight on various matters, he was ready to take them on. You heard that, Mr. Olbermann, I’m sure, as did other White professional liberals/progressives of your ilk, but you all have evidenced letting it go over your heads, so you wouldn’t have to think about it or deal with it. And you don’t like to think about something else. The Republicans have not wanted President Obama to have legislative success. People like you, and your ilk, won’t give him credit for his legislative success and pass this good news on to rank and file White liberals/progressives. How does that make your lot significantly different from the Republicans you all are always criticizing?
the Republicans you all are always criticizing?
Ed Schultz felt a compulsion to think about the situation. He could not believe that the President was taking up cudgels against members of the Democratic Party. He said on one of his shows that the President “had a communication problem”. In the very next breath he blamed his action on the Republican Party, saying that “Republicans have him criticizing his base.” The President’s base is the majority of Democrats, not the White professional liberals/progressives, that Schultz thinks constitute the base. It is not the best of politics, as the President well knows, to criticize one’s own Party members or supporters, unless it is clearly necessary. And the reaction by Democratic Party members and the liberals/progressives in the media and in the liberal/progressive groups over the compromise tax plan made some criticism necessary. What clearly seemed to have compelled the President to take this course was seeing Democrats and supporters demonstrating thinking that was clearly inconsistent with the way Democrats were supposed to think and act politically. He found it utterly astounding that such people could actually be willing to let people suffer- - people that depended on them, who the Democrats had always sought to protect, serve, and advance in the country. And, of course, he was talking about you, Mr. Olbermann, not personally, but as part of elements he regarded as thinking in an uncharacteristic Democratic fashion that could threaten the future of the Democratic Party if it gained a strong place within the Party and among its broad party ranks and supportive bases. You exhibited that thinking, Mr. Olbermann, in your Special Comment, when you showed disdain for middle and lower class people, who were in desperate need of the 300 dollars a week that you called “meager crumbs.” You also showed whopping indifference and callousness- - and you were not alone in this, as some Party members and many liberals/progressives were with you- - who were willing to see all the tax cuts expire rather than see the rich have their tax cuts extended for any period of time, let alone on a permanent basis. This was a campaign promise, and people like you said it had to be honored at all cost- -indeed, a high cost for others and none for yourselves! And that this was something to fight the President about!
You said in your Special Comment that the President should let the “law expire and let all the tax breaks go.” Later that night, Mr. Olbermann, Lawrence O’Donnell asked Adam Green and Jane Hamsher, would they be willing to let the tax cuts expire, which would involve the average middle class family experiencing a 3,000 dollar tax hike, and lower class people experiencing a 50 percent tax hike from 10% to 15%, at a time when the country was just edging out of its recession, with times still being so hard for so many, and both said “yes,” and were emphatic in saying it. So for Hamsher and Green: Stand for principle! Stand for principle! To hell with the needy!
Ed Schultz exhibited thinking that could only be described as being idiotic, or to put it as he would on his show as: “psycho talk.” He was for letting the tax cuts expire for everyone, and he also said that the middle and lower class should be willing to make this sacrifice, and to accept a period of suffering. He even called for the “99ers” to be willing to sacrifice and suffer. When one considers that Ed Schultz had been virtually crying for months, because he felt that the President and Congress were not doing anything to help the “99ers” climb out of their present misery, he turns around and calls for them to make sacrifices and to be willing to suffer indefinitely along with millions of others. And for what? He said, incredibly, to let people know that they stood for something: that they stood firm against the rich having their tax cuts extended, even for two years which would increase the federal deficit.
Schultz seemed incapable of grasping that extending the middle class and lower class taxes alone would increase the federal deficit by hundreds of billions, or by trillions of dollars, depending on how long they were extended. And significantly, it never occurred to Ed Schultz, not with his peculiar thinking, that he was asking everybody but the rich to sacrifice and to accept suffering for an extended, or indefinite, period of time. The rich had money, which was a reason why Schultz was against extending their tax cuts. He was ready to take tax cuts away from the rich, who would not suffer, and also from the middle and lower class which would suffer. And he thought he had made the moral and triumphant argument. But he was not alone. In sum, this was the weird kind of thinking or implied kind of weird thinking that many White professional liberals/progressives, including yourself, Mr. Olbermann, were engaged in across the country.
But Schultz, continuing to remain impervious to the idiotic character of his argument, as well as to the suffering of huge numbers of Americans, conjured up another argument to try to justify encouraging teeming millions of Americans to make sacrifices and to accept indefinite suffering. He said in two years the country would be coming back to the same arguments about the Bush tax cuts that it was now having. You expressed this same view in your Special Comment, Mr. Olbermann, and you included the acceptance of scores of millions of suffering people implicitly in your argument, which didn’t faze you either.
You and Schultz based your joint same argument on the assumption that the 800 plus billion dollar injection into the American economy would have no impact, and that there would not be changed economic conditions on which the debate would take place. And both of you, characteristically, ignored President Obama, or assumed that he would have no fight in him as President to deal with the later Republican assault. At his press conference, he said he intended to go among the American people for the next two years to try to convince them that the Republican view on extending tax cuts for the rich was wrong, and also to talk to them, for two years, about the need for serious tax reform. This effort combined with anticipated beneficial changes in the economy would augment the President’s power and credibility, and could be very important factors in a debate about taxes in two years’ time, especially in terms of making the upper brackets pay much higher taxes.
And a third factor that would play a role is the fact that the President had already handled Republicans in a strong manner, by not giving their rich clients a permanent extension of their tax cuts, and had taken years of big money away from them. The President will be ready for a fight, as he told the Republicans at his press conference, but clearly, you and Ed Schultz will not be, Mr. Olbermann. You’ll probably run from that fight, as you have run from this one, where the fight was: in politics and the political arena, not in the world of abstract principles and wishful thinking.
The President was aware of the kind of thinking that was going on among liberals/progressives that callously and indifferently called for the suffering of scores of millions of people, which he indicated at his press conference when he made the comment: “People will have the satisfaction of a purist position, and no victories for the people.” Yet, such people claimed they were fighting for the people, and saying that the President was not willing to fight for them; that he was only showing a will to bow or to cave in to the rich. He had no fight in him. That was a theme you hammered on a succession of your shows, Mr. Olbermann, and hammered it even more emphatically with your castigating Special Comment on the President.
But you also knew which did not appear in that Comment that the President had sought to get Democrats to take up the tax issue during the mid-term election, to fight Republicans over this matter. You yourself had talked about how he had been out in the country taking up the issue in various venues, (which Vice President Joe Biden had also been doing, which you seemed not to know), saying that the middle and lower class tax cuts should be extended, but not those of the top two or three percent. One night before the election, you had Speaker Nancy Pelosi on your show, and you asked her would the Democrats be campaigning on the Bush tax cuts and she said no, insisting that Republicans would find a way to use the issue against them, that could cost Democrats seats in the Congress. The Democrats did not fight, but President Obama did, as you even indicated before you became callous and devious and sought to put him in “his place” with your Special Comment. The President had to give up the fight, because his Party would not join him in engaging in it.
Chuck Todd said on MSNBC following the President’s press conference, that there were Democrats in the House in a fighting mood about extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which was also directed at the President for his willingness to accommodate them. Todd also noted that the Democrats “had no spine” during the election to fight about the matter, but somehow got spine in the lame duck session. Frank Rich appeared on the Rachel Maddow show and called Democrats in the House hypocrites fighting Obama. They would not join him in a fight during the election, and had put him in a situation where he was forced to make a compromise with Republicans, for which they were now ready to pound him for. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania was sharply critical of the Democrats in Congress. He said they knew that the polls showed that over 60% of the American people supported their position on the Bush tax cuts- -that the American public was behind them- - but that they still did not make this a battle cry during the mid-term election. He said they ran away from a fight with the Republicans. And he asked: “Why?” and said that this was the question that really had to be answered.
But the President felt he could handle the blows, and knew they were going to be raining down on him when he decided to seek a compromise with Republicans on the Bush tax cuts, and he also knew how he could lessen the number and impact of these blows. He put things in the compromise that would be appealing to many Democrats inside and outside of Congress, especially to Party leaders and elected officials. In short, he would give them a deal that most could not refuse. He did not go to the Democratic Caucuses in the House and Senate to discuss tax proposals with its members, knowing that he would face opposition, obstruction, and calls for postponement when he felt that time was of the essence. So, he informs some Democrats in the House and Senate as to what he was doing, but he decided to go around the Party in Congress and deal with this matter on the basis of Presidential initiative and Presidential leadership.
With the compromise tax plan that he and his agents negotiated with the Republicans, the President not only stirred up opposition to himself, within the Democratic Party, but within the ranks of liberals/progressives in the paper and electronic media, like yourself, Mr. Olbermann, and your twin detractor of the President, Ed Schultz, and within many liberal/progressive political groups. But for the record, let’s be clear about something. You, Schultz, and other people like the two of you, thought you spoke for the people on the compromise tax proposal, and that you represented their interests opposing the President. But the truth was, which you all diligently ignored, was that the polls consistently showed that over 60% of the American people sided with the President on this matter, and felt that he spoke for them and represented their interests. But the likes of you were not daunted by your stinging public rebuke, you still kept up trying to pound and discredit the President.
In the midst of this misguided opposition, he showcased his Coordinating Presidential Leadership Style. He has done so throughout his two years in office, but the compromise tax plan made this very visible, and it also showed how tough he really is as President and how bold he can be and has been as a leader. People like you, and Ed Schultz, Mr. Olbermann, were unable to be witnesses to this event, even though it unfolded in front of your eyes. The two of you, and others like you, only saw the President lacking fight, and running away from a fight, and surrendering to Republicans and their demands. You said on your Special Comment, not directly, but indirectly, to the President, with searing eyes and in a proud, deprecating voice: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.” With that remark, made at the opening of your Comment, you felt you had put the President in “his place:” namely, that he was weak as a leader, and that he lacked fight. You seemed to feel that your Comment itself, in its entirety, had nailed down this interpretation, and given body to this desperate wish.
But it took you away from being able to see the President acting in a leadership capacity. As said, he took the initiative to compromise with the Republicans, and that occurred early when he invited Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to the White House to feel them out about compromise. Then he indicated to the Democratic Party, the media, the liberal/progressive groups, and the American public at large that he was seeking an actual compromise when he had Vice-President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Management and Budget Director, Jack Lew, meet with Senator Jon Kyl, and other Republicans to negotiate a compromise tax plan. People in the media tried to find out what was occurring but they got only vague suggestions. But there was no reason for anyone to be shocked by a compromise being made when it was announced.
What you missed, Mr. Olbermann, what your disparaging thinking about the President made you miss, was the showcasing of his Presidential leadership style. It involves first drawing on his community organizing skills to bring stakeholders together to deal with a problem, or constructing a program. He gives them a general outline of what he wants to achieve and hands them the responsibility to flesh it out, with him intervening as he sees the need to steer the action. He simultaneously employs his second method, which reinforces the first one, which amounts to a basketball full court press by putting the stakeholders or negotiators on a time table to get the job done.
He was engaging in Presidential leadership, and since what he was doing was going to alienate some Democrats in Congress, as well as in some state houses, and many liberals/progressives outside of the Party, he was acting boldly, I would say. He was showing that he was willing to take a serious political risk as President, which is the proper description, when a President goes against members of his own party, and many of his and the party’s supporters. But he assumed the risk and stood steadfast in his decision, almost bringing tears to Mr. Schultz’s eyes who simply could not believe he was doing this, and triggering a venomous Special Comment from you. Both you and Schultz, and other major voices of the liberals/progressives, saw the President in an act of betrayal, not to the Democratic Party, or the American people, really, but to people like you and to principles.
When the terms of the compromise tax plan were made public, Roy Sekoff said on the Ed Schultz show, that “the Republicans got everything they wanted, and the Democrats got nothing.” He also said that it was always the Democrats “who had to bend and give up something.” Everybody gives up something in a compromise, but Sekoff, and so many others of his ilk, and yours, Mr. Olbermann, were unable to see that the President, the Democratic Party, and the American people, had gotten more out of the proposed plan than the Republicans, and even their chief constituency, the millionaires and billionaires.
What the Republicans mainly wanted, they didn’t get. They wanted a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts for another ten years and trillions of dollars in bounty. President Obama took 8 years and trillions of dollars away from the rich, by extending their tax cuts for just two years, with the rich’s take being only an estimated 114 to 120 billion dollars! The other thing the President did, in a stroke of brilliance, was to use the compromise tax plan to obtain a Republican agreement to a second economic stimulus- - something Republicans were determined he would not have, and fought against him having, and now were being forced to give to him, with Charles Krauthammer saying he “tricked” them into making the concession.
Was this acting tough, Mr. Olbermann? Apparently, you didn’t think so. Indeed, you were incapable of seeing the toughness, the “chops,” as Howard Fineman once said, in a deprecating manner on your show, that the President did not have. You viewed the President before your Special Comment and with it, through your stereotyped view of him as a weak President and as a non-fighter. But what did you, Schultz, and others want him to fight for? And the lot of you made this clear: fight for pure principles, not for good governance or the American people. In doing this, he was acting as the leader of the Democratic Party, and was standing strongly and boldly against people like you, with your obsession with purified principles, and your belief that this should be what the Democratic Party should be about. Adam Green said on the Ed Show sometime before the compromise tax plan, that if the President and the other current leaders of the Democratic Party did not lead the Party in the “right direction,” then liberal/progressive groups would seek to take over leadership of the Party and do so.
The President, in asserting his leadership of the Democratic Party, was saying that that was not going to happen. He was not only showing his opposition to purified principle-thinking, and trying to make that the thinking of Democrats and the Democratic Party. He was also showing his opposition to this kind of thinking taking the Democratic Party away from its traditional orientation, and traditional function, which was to protect, serve, elevate, and advance people’s lives in the United States. This was not, as he saw correctly, the goal of the liberals/progressives, like you, Mr. Olbermann. You, Ed Schultz, and others of your stripe, made that clear, when all of you were ready to throw tens of millions of people under the bus, preventing them from getting healthcare. All because the reform bill did not have a public option in it. In short, the likes of you were willing to throw tens of millions of people to the wolves to preserve the purity of your principles. The President recalled that situation during his press conference, and he said in a somewhat angry, but mainly in an annoyed and disappointed voice: “People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position, and no victories for the American people. That cannot be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat.”
Was he drawing the line in the sand, as Ed Schultz always said he had to do, and would do if he were a strong leader? He was, but Ed Schultz did not like it, because he was drawing it against people like him among the liberals/progressives. The President was drawing that line as the leader of the Democratic Party. That probably disturbed Mr. Schultz in another way, because on his show, he virtually regards and portrays himself variously as the President, or as a national political leader of the United States, or specifically as the political leader of the liberals/progressives. You, Mr. Olbermann, portray yourself on your program as the intellectual leader of the liberals/progressives, which your 280,000 viewers could induce you to believe, and which you might, in fact be, speaking nightly to that kind of sizeable viewership. Given how you advertise your Special Comment well in advance, to get your viewers ready to hear the Word coming from on High, this would suggest that you do consider yourself as the intellectual leader of the liberals/progressives, or the most important one speaking to them.
Evidencing that kind of self-image in a noticeable way, you had to be incensed with the President attacking the thinking of liberals/progressives, that would put principles before people, which is what you encourage these kinds of people to do. He had been aware of this kind of thinking since the debate about the public option, and he saw that it was still going strong, and was even worse, as people like you, Mr. Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Adam Green, Cenk Uygur, the main voice of the screwy thinking “Young Turks,” and other leaders of the liberals/progressives, were eagerly encouraging others to put purified principles before the lives and well- being of scores of millions of Americans.
But the President had the insight and understanding that people like you were not seeking to maintain the purity of liberal or democratic principles that you professed from time to time, but were mainly subsuming them under the banner of progressive principles, and subordinating them to what he saw as being bogus progressive principles, which you revealed so sharply responding to the compromise tax plan. These bogus principles were: don’t compromise; don’t negotiate; reject bipartisanship; draw lines in the sand; stand up for what’s right; place the perfect above the good; do not bow; do not cave; show that you stand for something at any cost; favor abstract over practical principles; put principles before people; regard principles as being the same as politics; view a political fight as a fight over principles, or as an ideological fight, and not as a fight over policies or legislative programs; disdain voting; scorn the political process; ignore governance; preserve principles at all cost, even at the cost of not helping people; and protect against politics damaging principles. This is vintage Barack Obama insight and understanding of a reality, and some of us say to him: “Keep it Obama!”
The President saw this kind of thinking, and rightly, as a serious threat to the history, traditions, and the integrity of the Democratic Party, and he was intervening in the situation, that is, acting with strong and bold Presidential leadership to stand against the Democratic Party being led in this direction. People like you, Mr. Olbermann, Ed Schultz, Roy Sekoff, Adam Green, Cenk Uygur, Mike Papantonio, Arianna Huffington, Matthew Rothschild, and Jane Hamsher, want the Democratic Party to become an ideologically oriented party like the Republican Party. For months, they have been complaining just like you, that the Republican Party has been obstructionist, extremely partisan, the party of “no”, and a party not interested in helping the American people. Yet, the lot of you wanted the Democratic Party to become just like the Republican Party, and function in the same way, all the while unable to see that that was what you were all advocating. All of you were showing yourselves to be Fraudulent Democrats!
You ended your Special Comment against the President, in a bloated, self-righteous, and nasty manner, saying that liberals/progressives “need to remind him that we are not bound to individuals. We are bound to principles. If the individual fails often and needlessly, then we get a new man, or woman. None of that is disloyalty. It is self-defense. This is what the base is saying to the President about his Presidency.” The base then is talking nonsense, because the principles it advocates are not Democratic Party principles, and because the President has been very successful in office. But as another matter, you and Ed Schultz, Mr. Olbermann, are confused about what the base of the Democratic Party is. You both think it is White professional liberals/progressives, and White liberals/progressives generally. The base has to be the base of the Democratic Party, which is made up of White liberals/progressives, professionals, and non-professionals. But it is also made up of Blacks, organized labor, which are the strongest and most loyal parts of the base, and Hispanics who are moving into it. The President has a very high approval rating among the base of the Democratic Party, which is likely to climb higher when the tax plan becomes law, and the economy gets a big boost. At that time he will be able to reclaim many Independents, who played a large role in his election as President.
You said, threatening the President- - again- - and in a nasty, oracular voice from on High, that if he did not do the things for which the people had elected him, and “did not steer out of what he was doing to them,” he would “not only not be re-elected, he may not even be re-nominated.” So, a law to promote equal pay for equal work, healthcare reform, educational reform, giving the middle class its largest tax cut in history, a nuclear arms treaty to promote American security amount to doing something to the American people, rather than something for them.
You would suppress these facts and truths, and others like them, in your Special Comment so you could make your wholly un-Edward R. Murrow mean-spirited and inflammatory remarks. What your emotional outburst showed, Mr. Olbermann, which was really of a silly, even childish nature, is how insubstantial your own political thinking and analyses are, and how much you and other White professional liberal/progressives like you, are disconnected from the Democratic Party and the American people.
So don’t think for a moment, Mr. Olbermann, that President Obama will spend sleepless nights worrying about being replaced as President by another Democrat. Indeed, he has laid the ground to strengthen himself to make another run for the White House. Chris Matthews and Jeanne Cummings talked about this prospect on the Chris Matthews Show, saying that the President’s conversion of the tax plan into a stimulus device to put over 800 billion dollars into the economy, which will likely increase growth and reduce unemployment, and that will likely augment his ability to run for office again. Matthews said in one of his “Let Me Finish” segments that this new money to be pumped into the economy could bring about a release of a lot of the 2 trillion dollars that corporations have been hoarding waiting for greater aggregate demand to occur.
And to think that for months Chris Matthews kept saying that President Obama did not know anything about economics- - even though he engaged in discussions with some of the best economic minds in the country every day of the week, geared the healthcare reform as a help to the economy, engineered financial reform, brainstormed with top American CEOs and labor leaders, appeared at international economic summits, where he talked to people versed in international economics. And now the new economic stimulus- - which apparently, and finally, has helped Matthews to see how ridiculous and deprecating his previous thinking and comments had been.
But you, Mr. Olbermann, have learned nothing of consequence as your Special Comment revealed, and as your post-Comment behavior on your show has shown, which is still centered in trying to show that President Obama is an ineffective leader and not a fighter. Your Special Comment, as previously stated, was given on December 7- - and as a pun and emulating you- - I would like to draw on a famous quote, this time taken from Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “December 7, a day that will live in the history of infamy.” But on a somber note a quote from Churchill can also be brought in here, because you have shown yourself to be a Fraudulent Edward R. Murrow, and like so many liberals/progressives today, unfortunately, a Fraudulent Democrat, too. And so, “terrible words” have to be “pronounced against” you, Mr. Olbermann: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.”