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