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.”