AN EXTENDED OPEN LETTER TO JOE SCARBOROUGH

Dear Mr. Scarborough:

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

Sincerely Yours,
Dr. W. D. Wright