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

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

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

"Guess Who's in the White House"

On April 1, a USA Today/Gallup Poll indicated that President Barack Obama had a job approval rating of 44%, while 50% of those polled said he should not be re-elected as President. The poll also indicated that 26% said that he deserved "a great deal" of the blame for the state of the economy, while 42% said President Bush did.

About two months before the USA Today/Gallup Poll, President Bush had given a speech before a Republican gathering and had said with an air of confidence: "I left office with my values in tact," which drew a round of applause. His statement was incomplete. It should have concluded with the words, "and with the country in a big mess."

That mess included an annual federal budget deficit of $1.3 trillion, a projected federal deficit of $8 trillion over the next ten years, owing to tax cuts, mainly to the wealthy that the Bush administration did not pay for, a nearly trillion dollar prescription drug bill for the pharmaceutical industry not paid for, and the loss of $3 trillion in federal revenue owing to the recession.

The recession was also part of the mess, as was a huge fall in stock market shares, a loss of 750,000 jobs a month, and over 8,000,000 jobs lost, a collapsing corporate financial system, two major automobile manufacturers, General Motors and Chrysler, on the verge of going under, and America's image in the world at low ebb.

President Bush walked away from the audience he spoke to clutching a fantasy. And President Obama stepped into office with an overload of huge problems. He also quickly learned that the Republicans in Congress had decided, under their House and Senate leadership, to do whatever they could to make him fail as President.

That included vigorously opposing his legislative agenda; in the Senate, holding up scores of his appointments to cripple the functioning of his administration, and using the filibuster an unprecedented number of times- - to date, 113 times- - to delay, thwart, and to suppress legislation that the House sent to the Senate that would advance the President and the Democratic Party's agenda.

Republicans in the Congress decided not to be the party of "loyal opposition", but the "party of no," the "party of extreme partisanship," and the "party of obstruction." Republicans in the Senate are presently holding up 293 bills that the House has passed and sent to their chamber.

All that has been described has been placed heavily upon the shoulders of President Obama. It should be taken into account when considering how to rate his job performance. The other matters to take into account are the things he achieved during the sixteen months he has been in office.

But before revealing that, I want to preface that discussion by recalling the plot to the movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" directed by Stanley Kramer which starred Spencer Tracey, Katherine Hepburn, Sidney Poitier, and Hepburn's niece.

The plot was the following. The parents, played by Tracey and Hepburn, were to be confronted with the fact that their daughter, played by Hepburn's niece, was going to marry a Black man, played by Sidney Poitier. The plot called for the parents to reject the marriage simply because the fiance was a Black man.

This could be the only reason, because the fiance was tall and handsome, had stellar personal qualities, was well educated, well spoken, and was an internationally famous medical doctor and author. In the end, the parents transcended their racial biases and were able to accept the marriage.

Now back to the political situation at hand, that of President Obama's low job rating and a wish that he not be re-elected. Given what he has achieved over a period of sixteen months, these negative views seem clearly to be related to the phrase: "Guess Who's in the White House."

The following are some of the things that President Obama has achieved sixteen months into his administration:

Within 3 1/2 weeks of it and aided by the Democratic Party in Congress, he got a $780billion Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed to deal with the recession and massive unemployment. The Act included giving 95% of working families a tax cut.

After 16 months, and also aided by the Federal Reserve, the President has halted the recession, gotten the American economy back into growth, has elevated the stock market from 6500 points to over 11,000, that has helped to recover and protect 401ks, and retirement and pension funds. Unemployment has been stabilized at 9.7%, and in March of this year, 162,000 new jobs were created.

The President and his economic team were put in charge of managing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan (or TARP) to bail out or to salvage 18 of the largest banks in the country, to keep the corporate financial system from collapsing. This was done successfully, which included spending only half the TARP funds, getting the banks to pay back most of what had been borrowed, and with the government and taxpayers making a profit. The President also:

Saved both General Motors and Chrysler, holding out a future of millions of jobs that are related to auto manufacturing.

Signed the ESCHIP legislation that extended health care to 11 million children.

Signed a bill that outlawed cigarette advertising targeting children.

Signed a bill to guarantee women equal pay for equal work.

Put a Supreme Court Justice on the high bench.

Signed a bill to give educational benefits to veterans.

Passed and signed comprehensive health care reform legislation that seven previous Presidents had failed to pass. According to the Congressional Budget Office this health care reform legislation will reduce the Federal deficit by $138 billion over ten years and $1.2 trillion over two decades, which will represent the largest deficit reduction legislation ever passed in the country.

Passed and signed an education reform bill that will save $68 billion over ten years by having the government issue student loans and not the banks, and that will allow the government to invest more money directly into American education.

Lowered 25 different taxes for Americans.

Invested $3.4 billion in developing the electric smart grid to expand this form of energy in the country's future.

Proposed a comprehensive climate change and energy independence bill that was passed by the House, and that Republicans are stalling in the Senate.

Proposed comprehensive corporate financial reform legislation that was passed by the House, that Republicans in the Senate initially sought to kill, but which they now, under Presidential and public pressure, seem willing to join Democrats in that body in passing.

Received the Nobel Prize for Peace on the assumption made by the judges that he would make the world safer and more peaceful. The President is earning that prize. He got the Russian President Dimitry Medvedev to sign a START agreement to reduce each country's nuclear stockpiles.

Since the USA Today/Gallup Poll, the President assembled 46 world leaders in Washington, D.C., who all signed a pledge to secure lose nuclear material within four years. Russia agreed to destroy 34 tons of plutonium, which could help to make 17,000 nuclear weapons.

Ordered hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments to grant hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners, and to allow gay men and lesbians to make decisions regarding the medical treatment of their partners.

As can be seen, President Obama has done a number of important things during his sixteen months in office (some of which are also achievements of the Democratic Party). One can see how his approval rating could and should be much higher than 44%, and it is mysterious to say the least that 50% in the USA Today/Gallup Poll would not want him to be re-elected.

Are we witnessing responses that could be related to a distressing thought for many Americans, and that would help to explain why President Obama has not been given proper credit for what he has achieved, and why many insist that he has not served the country well? These peculiar reactions seem clearly to be related to the phrase: "Guess who's in the White House?"

The Political Lynching of President Obama

The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 has sent the Republican Party into a hysterical tailspin. This party has been considerably anti Black since the early 1980s and has its base among Whites in the eleven states of the former Southern Confederacy, who are the Republicans primarily in this tailspin.

The cry that shoots up from this element, and from other Republicans, found in the Mid-West and West, is that Obama has to fail as President! These elements are relying upon the Republicans in Congress to do whatever they can to make him fail. Feeling charged with this task, they have formed themselves into a political lynch mob in this body and have been engaging in actions to try to achieve this objective that amount to a political lynching of the President.

The Republicans in Congress have been against virtually everything that the President has proposed and sent to Congress for discussion and legislation. They have engaged in the tactics of saying "no" of "no show" for legislative committee meetings, of being obstructionists (rather than the party of the loyal opposition), and of being against bi-partisan political action.

In the U.S. Senate, Republicans have used the rules of that body to delay, thwart, or prevent legislation from being discussed or passed, or as a means to try to kill legislation, or to block Administration appointments. They have used the filibuster to date 112 times, something wholly unprecedented in American political history, to try to do all of the things mentioned.

The filibuster has always been an undemocratic political device, and is not to be found in the discussion of the Senate in the Constitution. It permits a single Senator, or an elected numerical minority of Senators, to dominate, thwart, or prevent an elected majority of Senators from passing policies or laws. It also allows less populated states to have a greater voice in the chamber than large populated states.

Why is this anti-democratic, dictatorial political device permitted to continue?

And yet the present situation in Washington, D.C. where the Republican Party in Congress is pitted against the President in such a confrontational manner is not wholly unprecedented. It is to be recalled what occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Walter White, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, went to the White House to ask President Roosevelt to get Congress to pass an anti-lynching bill.

Roosevelt told him that that was not something he would try to do even if he wanted to. He was concerned about the reaction of the southern white Democrats who controlled most of the important committees in the House and Senate. He said to White, as revealed in the latter's autobiography, A Man Called White: If I come 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.

In other words, as Roosevelt saw it, southern Whites in Congress and in southern states, would rather see the country collapse than have their ability--which they regarded as their inherent right--to dominate and control Blacks, and to be able to do with them or to them whatever they wished.

But even this kind of extreme behavior from southern Whites was not unprecedented and had a horrendous antecedent.

The eleven southern states that seceded from the United States in 1861 were willing to break up the Union, rather than see the U.S. government engage in action to end slavery in the region and the White domination, control, and gross economic exploitation of Blacks. This is another meaning to be assigned to the Confederate flag.

In 2009, it is Deja Vu once again. President Obama has proposed a major overhaul of the American health care system, climate change and energy independence policies and legislation, major educational reform, and effective regulation of the corporate financial sector that had recklessly plunged the country into a financial and economic mess. All of these things are important for the American people, the country, and the country's future.

But the Republicans in Congress are seeking to prevent this kind of legislative agenda from being passed and signed into law. They exhibit a lack of hesitation, conscience, and moral distress about inflicting possible catastrophic harm upon millions of Americans and the country, as long as they can prevent Obama from succeeding as President. This assertion cannot be put down to wild talk or baseless accusation. There are, as seen, historical precedents.

Including the recent instance of Deja Vu whereby southerners especially in the House and Senate were against Obama using federal funds to try to save Chrysler and General Motors, which are both important to the economy of the Mid-West. They permitted themselves to countenance the failure of these auto-makers and the hardships this would present to the people and economy of the region, if it meant that Obama would not have a political success.

So what is the primary motivation for trying to make Obama fail as President? Some pundits have said that the Republicans in Congress are seeking to weaken Democrats for the 2010 elections, and President Obama and the Democrats in the 2012 elections.

This view seems plausible, but it has little merit as Republican behavior in Congress results in the public giving the Republican Party low ratings in the polls.

Former President Jimmy Carter was closer in pinpointing the primary motivation for this incredibly extreme and reckless political behavior demonstrated by Republicans in Congress and without the government. He said it could be traced to the racist belief found among these hostile elements that a Black man should not be President of the United States.

This is a good answer, but it is one that has to be taken further to gain the full meaning of it.

The Presidency has become the last stronghold of white male dominance and exclusivity in American life, which has seen both features severely eclipsed over the past several decades.

The following used to be positions held exclusively by white men in the country, but are no longer: U.S. Senator and Representatives, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, UN Ambassador, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, U.S. Attorney General, governor, Lt. governor, state attorney general, mayor, police commissioner, fire commissioner, Fortune 500 corporate president or CEO, major college or university president, major foundation head, astronaut, NFL head coach, Major League baseball manager, NBA head coach, NFL quarterback, and other flight positions in the country.

But there was the office of President. That office was still held by a white man. It was still in the hands of the "proper" one to lead the country, who could establish and implement policies, legislative programs, and laws, and who could also build constituencies and galvanize people, institutions, and regions of the country to keep America the way it was "supposed" to be.

But the white male dominance and exclusivity in the White House, and the hoped for future this might provide, was taken away when Obama, a Black man, became President.

This loss and racist fear of the future has plunged many Republicans and the Republican Party itself into depths of irrational political thinking and political behavior.

For instance, electing a Black man, Michael Steele, to head up a political party that has been considerably anti-Black since the early 1980s. And thinking that this could be interpreted as something other than racist "tokenism".

Trying to convince themselves and trying to prove by forgeries that President Obama was not born in the United States and was not a citizen of the country.

Showing utter disdain for Obama as a human being, which is so telling.

Calling Obama, alternatively, fascist, Nazi, communist, marxist, socialist, terrorist, or jihadist, which are all euphemisms for what they would really like to call him publicly, but can't get away with doing so.

Endeavoring to silence or censor moderates or kick them out of the Party, fearing that they would be supportive of the President and his legislative agenda.

Believing that the minority Republican Party in Congress should be regarded, even by the Democrats, as the majority party in that body.

Seeking to build a party of ideological purity, that succeeds in alienating political independents and dividing the Republican Party and moving it to the edge of splitting into two parties: the Republican Party and the Southern White Party.

Virtually making bi-partisanship un-American and a form of political evil, while endeavoring at the same time, to make extreme partisanship American and a form of political good.

Wanting Republicans in Congress who do not seek to govern, to legislate, or to do the country's business. But to be "nay-sayers" to policies, programs, and laws, and who seek in any way possible to obstruct or sabotage the legislative process and paralyze the functioning of the Senate, and thus, of the U.S. government--to try to make Obama fail as President.

Believing that putting this kind of political face before the American electorate--as the "do-nothing" and "obstructionist" party--is the way to gain voters and donors for the Republican Party, and give it a viable future.

Politically lynching President Obama is the means that the anti-Obama Republicans in the Congress and without are using to try to win back the White House for a white male occupant, to get "their country" back, and as the means to "prove" that a Black person does not have the inherent capacity to be President of the United States.

We are told that they are honorable and fair-minded Republicans in the Senate, but they are all involved in this political lynching of the President. So what does this say? What would be the response of the Republican women in the Senate if the political lynching was of a female President? Would they participate in the lynching or be supportive of it?

Now that Democrats have lost their 60 votes in the Senate, it is to be expected that the Republicans will seek to step up their lynching of President Obama. They will not only require 60 votes for all significant policies and laws in the Senate, they will also reject or suppress policies, programs, or laws that the Democrats in the House send to the Senate. To date they have suppressed over 290 bills.

This is the political future that Republicans in Congress and without offer the American people, beginning with the Congressional elections of 2010. They envision this as assuring Obama's failure as President, and it also has them saying to the national government, the American people, America's relationship to the world, and the country's future: "You can all be damned!"

Disneyland Republicans (Disneyland Democrats)

It should be stated once again because, apparently, some people seem not to know that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, and that the Democratic Party won the House of Representatives to give it a clear majority, and enough seats in the Senate to be one vote shy of being able to prevent a filibuster.

Those who seem not to know of these election outcomes are not foreigners living in other countries, but rather the Republicans in the House and Senate of the U.S. Congress. Just recently, all the Republicans in the House voted against President Obama's "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act," popularly known as the "stimulus bill," and all but three Republicans voted against it in the Senate.

The Republicans are obsessed with having "talking points," so that members of the Party, such as talk show hosts, or political analysts, or media political commentators, can all be on the same page in their political discourse, and be able to exhibit a collective voice.

A slate of talking points were rolled out in response to the "stimulus bill" and why Republicans in Congress had overwhelmingly voted against it. And the talking points showed the Republicans in Congress functioning on the basis of fanciful thinking, or fantasies, which makes it possible to describe them as "Disneyland Republicans," a term which can also be applied to other Republicans.

The leaders of the Republicans in the House John Boehner and Eric Cantor, and the Party's leaders in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, with other members of the Party echoing them, argued as a talking point, that the reason they did not vote for the bill was that it was not "genuinely bipartisan."

What did they mean by genuine bipartisanship? Nothing less than--as this and other talking points showed--the Democratic Party and the Republican Party functioning as equals to construct and pass laws, policies, and programs, and specifically, the "stimulus bill". This was clear, fanciful Disneyland thinking.

The reality of political party relationships in the Congress, or in state governments, or city governments, is that one party has won the election and is the majority party, and the other party has lost the election and is the minority party. The minority party is not equal to the majority party in these situations. And this is so obvious.

But it is not obvious to the Disneyland Republicans in the Congress, as reflected by other of their talking points: that the stimulus bill should have mainly been about tax cuts, or at least half of it should have been tax cuts, and the other half spending. This was the loser of the elections, the minority in the Congress, trying to determine how the stimulus bill was to be constructed.

President Obama had to remind Eric Cantor, when he had Republican Congressional leaders at the White House, that he had won the election, and that he, as well as the Democrats, had some prerogatives, even a mandate from the American people, to determine the legislative means to deal with the economic crisis.

The Republicans in Congress responded by coming forth with more talking points. They said that in saying that he had won the election, President Obama was showing that he was not interested in a genuine bipartisanship, that his talk of bipartisanship was only show, that his Party had the majority in Congress, and that he and the Democrats were going to do as they pleased regardless of what Republicans in Congress said.

These were talking points that pointed to the Republicans seeming not to know that they had lost the election, that they were the minority party in Congress and that they were not the equal of the majority party and did not have an equal voice in this bill construction, and were not entitled to it. To think otherwise was strictly fanciful, Disneyland thinking.

Senator John McCain weighed in on the situation, and he showed that it had not yet sunken in with him that he had lost the election to Obama. He argued that the stimulus bill should have been half spending and half tax cuts. This was coming from someone who had been the losing Presidential candidate, but who apparently thought he was equal to the winner, and even a "co-President." This was fanciful, Disneyland thinking.

But then again, Senator McCain also seemed to be operating from another political stance that seemed to feed into his fanciful thinking. He had always conceived bipartisanship as occurring on an individual basis: an individual from one party crossing the aisle to work with an individual from the other party to fashion a bill. This was what Senator McCain did with Senator Russ Feingold to produce a bill on public financing for Presidential elections.

But for McCain to conceive of himself and President Obama as being two individuals who were politically equal and who would work together to pass pieces of legislation, had to be predicated on fanciful thinking.

President Obama was not just an individual, he was the elected leader of the country. John McCain was a Senator representing a single state, Arizona, and its population. This was not an equal or co-equal situation, and with McCain assuming or believing that it was, showed him to be in the throes of fantasy.

Another talking point that the Disneyland Republicans in Congress came up with, and that was echoed by other Republicans, and especially their talk show supporters, was that the "stimulus bill" was not a jobs creating bill, and they matched that point by saying that government did not and could not create jobs.

The Disneyland character of this kind of talk was that the Republicans, as well as the Democrats in Congress, were in government-created jobs. And this would also be true of governors or mayors, Democrat or Republican.

As to the "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act" not creating jobs. The first thing to be said, which the Disneyland Republicans and their following seem unable to say, is that this bill was constructed to SAVE as well as create jobs.

Saving jobs did not seem to be that important to them, but this, of course, would be important to people who were being threatened with the loss of their jobs.

But to argue that the government could not create jobs, that spending billions of dollars on infrastructure would not create jobs, and that in engaging in this kind of spending the government would not be creating jobs, was ludicrous on the face of it, and bespoke of a fanciful, Disneyland undergirding of thought.

What the Disneyland Republicans in the Congress were unable to perceive, since their thinking was so fanciful and unrelated to reality, was that they were now in the role of PARTICIPANT/CONTRIBUTOR in the Congress, and not in the role of being the DETERMINANT FACTOR, which belonged to the Democrats, the winning, majority party.

When President Obama sought to reach out to the Republicans, he did so on what should have been an understood assumption by the Republicans, and that should not have had to be spelled out to them: that they would be included as participant/contributors, and that this would be the basis of bipartisanship between the two parties.

The President believed and still does, that this could be the basis for significant bipartisanship in the government. But the Republicans in their fanciful, even delusional thinking, would not accept this conception of bipartisanship, as reflected in the demand that the "stimulus bill" be half theirs.

What would be the point of winning elections if the losing party was made equal to the winner, which would make it the winner, too? Now, that is so absurd it isn't funny, but the Disneyland Republicans were operating on the basis of this absurdity seeking to be determinant on legislation, rather than participant/contributors.

President Obama does not like the idea that the losing party cannot participate significantly in government as the losing minority party. If it is not able to, then it would also not be able to represent its large constituency, which has its legitimate concerns and needs, too; who are Americans after all, and who have a right to have some kind of representation and voice in their own government.

The President had the experience in the Illinois state legislature of being a member of a party that was frozen out by the majority party, making it impossible for his party to represent its large constituency in the state. He came to the U.S. Senate and found the Democrats excluded by the Republicans.

This President understands democracy to mean inclusion and not exclusion, so that the losing minority party has a functioning place in the government and the legislature process, but it has to be on the basis of the minority party accepting its role as a participant and contributor, and the President would say, as he has said, as a constructive contributor.

The Disneyland Republicans in the Congress are taking great pride in being defiant toward the President, and even OBSTRUCTIONISTS. This shows that they do not want to promote bipartisanship on any basis, except as equals, as determinants, and this is delusional and Disneyland.

It is also being dishonest and deceitful. And they exhibited this kind of behavior in another way, as revealed in one of their sanguine talking points. That talking point argued that tax cuts should have gone to small businesses, and even said that this should have comprised ninety percent of the tax cuts, because small businesses create most of the jobs in the country.

But this is Disneyland Republicans and other Republicans being dishonest and deceitful. This tax proposal is what they always come out with when they cannot promote their favorite tax program of giving big tax cuts to the rich and the economic corporations that they own or manage, as they did under George Bush, and Ronald Reagan before him - which, in the case of both Presidents, led to huge federal defecits and unbalanced budgets.

Another of the chief talking points of the Disneyland Republicans in Congress, as well as many other Republicans and their media supporters, was their argument that they functioned from conservative values and conservative principles. Thus, they were proud of being rigidly ideological. President Obama detests ideological politics, seeing them as narrow, promoting partisanship, exclusion, and also producing gridlock do-nothing politics, and do-nothing government.

For the President, ideology and ideological politics cannot and will not, be the basis for trying to build bipartisanship in Washington. One of the primary ideological tenets of the Disneyland Republicans, and which is one of their talking points, which they actually took from Ronald Reagan, was that "government was the problem, not the solution" to national issues.

President Obama rejected this view. The American voters rejected this view. Government can be helpful, or hurtful, which requires trying to use it in an intelligent manner. The Disneyland Republicans wanting the "Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act" to be all about, or mainly about cutting taxes, indicated that they had Reagan's view of government, and wanted the President and Democratic Party to accept it. It would have involved Disneyland thinking for them to do so.

President Obama turns to Abraham Lincoln for his views on government. Lincoln believed that it should be limited in ways it related to the economy, or the larger society, but it might be called upon to play an extensive role in relation to each.

With respect to the latter, Lincoln used the U.S. government to create a national banking system, to finish building a continental railroad, to subsidize war industries, to give land away in the West for settlers to take ownership of it and to farm it, and to establish land grant colleges to promote scientific farming and technical training.

It is not by coincidence that the Disneyland Republicans in Congress and other Republicans--as did the Republican Party Presidential candidates in their string of Presidential debates--associate the Republican Party with Ronald Reagan and not Abraham Lincoln. Who invokes the name of Lincoln? The Democrat Barack Obama!

There is one thing that really galls the Disneyland Republicans in Congress, and other Republicans, and that makes them feel disoriented or lost, and that makes them susceptible to fanciful thinking, and a Disneyland approach to politics. They had their conservatism stolen from them by Barack Obama during the Presidential campaign, and who still steals it from them as President.

The Republicans were totally caught off guard to hear a Democratic Presidential candidate stress American themes, talk strongly about patriotism, show strong religious beliefs, talk about religion having a relationship to politics, who favored faith-based initiatives, who stressed the family and family values, and who even talked favorably about the market economy, and who advocated strengthening the military.

What was left for the Republican Party after it lost the elections, and had so many of their conservative tenets taken from them? During the Presidential campaign Reublicans tried to combat Obama's usurpation by calling him an extreme liberal--"the most liberal politician in the Congress"--as it was phrased.

Obama definitely has liberal ideas. But he also has, as seen, conservative ideas, and he also, at times, thinks like a moderate. Obama is not an ABSOLUTIST EITHER-OR thinker, which says a person can hold only one set of political beliefs, political values, and engage in only one form of political behavior, either liberal, conservative, or moderate.

The Disneyland Republicans in Congress are absolutist either-or thinkers, and this is also true of many Democrats in Congress. The Disneyland Republicans are narrow conservatives, and many Democrats in the body are narrow liberals who do not want to work with or work significantly with Republicans. That makes them Disneyland Democrats.

President Obama has difficulty with both kinds of Disneyland politicians, because he is a HOLISTIC thinker, one who can hold multiple sets of political ideals, political values, and engage in multiple forms of political behavior: liberal, conservative, and moderate.

There has never been a President in the White House who thinks like this. Obama wants Representatives and Senators in Washington to think like he does, in a holistic manner, and not in an either-or manner, because it results in partisanship and gridlock in government.

When he ran for the White House Obama said he wanted to change the mind-set and the political culture of Washington. The mind-set is rigid either-or thinking that promotes narrow ideological thinking, and that in turn promotes partisan politics and its consequences. The political culture is rooted in this mind-set, which sustains it, and which militates against changing it.

The absolutist either-or mind-set is also found among political analysts and media political commentators, who, therefore, help to maintain the political culture in Washington, of which they are often too critical. Invariably, individuals in these two groups of analysts, view a politician as a liberal, or moderate, or conservative. It does not occur to them that a politician could or should hold multiple political views, and function from multiple political stances.

This is what they are still unable to understand about Barack Obama. Invariably, they refer to him as a liberal, and evaluate him from that perspective, and when he does not conform to what their analysis from that limited perspective says about him, or what he should be doing, they refer to him as "deviating," being "ambiguous," being "inconsistent," not being "truthful," or "forthcoming;"while ignoring other thoughts expressed in his views.

Even Obama's massive numbers of followers do not know that he is a holistic thinker and that he holds or is capable of holding multiple political ideals or beliefs, simultaneously, and is able to act on them all. Most of his followers can be described as liberal, and they regard Obama as a liberal. But he is not, although he does and can have liberal political beliefs and engage in liberal political behavior.

Obama wants to change the political mind-set in Washington from either-or, to holistic thinking. He wants politicians in government, whether it is Republicans or Democrats, to be able to hold multiple political beliefs or values, and be able to function in multiple political ways, as a matter of course. And he would like to see both do so at all levels of government.

This mind-set would automatically be oriented to bipartisan thinking and bipartisan politics, which would still have to occur within the framework of a winning political party, the majority party in government, and the losing minority party; and bipartisanship based on a majority as a determinant factor and a minority as a participant/contributor, preferably constructively.

This change would involve getting rid of the notion of the losing party as the "loyal opposition." It is loyal only to it's own ideals. Thus, this concept is based on either-or thinking and partisan politics and can promote obstruction, gridlock politics, and gridlock government.

Either-or political thinking and either-or partisan politics are the "Old Political Thinking" and the "Old Politics." President Obama wants New Political Thinking, which is Holistic Political Thinking, and a New Politics, which is Holistic Bipartisan Politics, based on a Majority-Determinant and Minority Participant/Contributor model.

President Obama cannot bring about the change he wants in the political mind-set, the politics, and the political culture in Washington D.C. alone, and still less alone at the state and local level. He needs help. And he has the basis for it.

This basis is his large political following, who he said he would call on for help once in office. What this constituency would have to do is to work themselves out of their own absolutist either-or method of thinking, and develop a holistic manner of thinking, and become convinced of the need for this country to produce politicians who can think and act this way.

The next thing for them to do would be the following: 1) Over the next four years to use their cell phones, the internet, and other communication devices to organize themselves nationally, statewide, and locally to be activists on this matter; 2) to establish the means -- lectures, op-ed columns, public forums, college or university teach-ins, radio or television talk show discussions, etc. - to draw the population of the country into a discussion about absolutist either-or and holistic thinking, and about the need to produce politicians who can think this way to be able to hold multiple political ideals or beliefs and engage in multiple forms of political behavior; 3) who could think of bipartisan politics in a holistic manner as a matter of course; 4) who would have a full understanding that bipartisanship politics takes place in government in the context of a winning party that is the majority party, and the determinant factor, and of a losing party that is the minority party and a participant/contributor, and preferably constructively; 5) that believes that democracy is about inclusion and not exclusion; 6) that a minority should have a significant voice in government and it's legislative processes, to be able to represent its constituency in a significant manner within the limited political framework.

If Democrats, Republicans, or Independents were sent to Washington with holistic mind-sets, this would establish this mind-set in Washington D.C., that would produce a political culture of the desired New Political Thinking and the New Politics, which would nourish and perpetuate both.

And all of this could also happen at the state and local level of government to make it national political thinking and politics and a national political culture. Political analysts and media political commentators have a role to play in these developments, and the President's national constituency should draw them into it them.

Obama: Substance Aplenty

The Republican Party and its various kinds of supporters are attempting to portray Senator Barack Obama as someone who is flashy, charismatic, an eloquent speaker, even a rock star, but who has no substance.

George Will has likened Senator Obama to the famous dancer Fred Astaire, who was flashy and elegant as a dancer. But in the case of Obama, he lacks substance.

George Will is regarded as an astute political analyst. He recently had an interview with Wolfe Blitzer on CNN to advertise his latest book. Blitzer made the observation that this Presidential election was a real exception, because it was possible that a Black man might become President.

George Will's response to this observation was that he did not think that this would be unusual. Wolfe Blitzer had a look on his face, as if he was not hearing what he was hearing. There have been 43 Presidents in American history, and all of them have been white men. George Will did not think it would be unusual to have a Black man in the White House!

What he thought was unusual about the upcoming Presidential election, was that it would provide an opportunity for a classic contest between a conservative and a liberal running for the high office.

George Will's first response to Wolfe Blitzer was so bizarre that one can only conclude that he does not want a Black man to be President. It is not something he would say in public directly, but he nevertheless said it publicly and clearly by implication; and also said publicly by implication, that being President of the United States was "a white man's job."

This is still what a lot of white people feel in this country, and what is meant by those who publicly and directly say that they will not vote for Senator Obama because he is Black.

But other white people, like George Will, express their racism more subtly. Some Republicans express racism against Senator Obama by saying that he is too young to be President. Theodore Roosevelt was 42 when he became President. John Kennedy was 43, and his brother, Robert Kennedy, would have been 44 had he been elected in 1968.

Senator Obama is 47, a relatively young man, too. But while relatively young white men can be President, a relatively young Black man--who is even older than the white men mentioned--cannot be President. This is almost like saying 47 is too old to be President. If so, then what about John McCain who is or will be 72?

Clearly, saying that Senator Obama is too young to be President is subtle racism at work, and is also saying that "being President is a white man's job".

The Republican Party's general attack against Senator Obama at the moment is that he lacks experience, is not ready to govern, lacks substance, and would be risky and a liability in the White House. This line of attack exhibits subtle racist undertones, as will be shown.

Senator Obama himself believes that one of his strengths as a Presidential candidate is that he did not spend years or decades in Washington D.C., and become drenched in and handicapped by the old political thinking and old politics in the city.

He believes that his life experiences, combined with the political experience he has had, which includes being a state senator and a U.S. Senator, and being able to understand and evaluate how executive and legislative branches function and interact with each other, has given him some preparation to be President, and also insights into how to govern.

The strongest part of the Republican attack line is that Senator Obama lacks substance or personal substantive qualities, and that this is the main reason why he would be risky or a liability as President. When someone like Obama who is drenched with such qualities is accused of not having them, one sees the subtle racist undertone of the argument, and how it points to the sign that reads "being President is a white man's job."

Let's review some of the things that Senator Obama has done and accomplished that speaks to the question of whether or not he has substance, and that would also speak to the caliber of his experiences that has given him some preparation to be President.

Senator Obama is very intelligent, which is an achievement. Having intellectual ability is not the same as being intelligent. George Will, for instance, has intellectual ability, but he certainly was not exhibiting intelligence, when he said that having a Black man in the White House would not be an unusual thing in American history and life.

Senator Obama graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, the most prestigious law school in the country. He became editor of the Harvard Law Review, the most prestigious position that a law school student can attain in this country. Being the editor of the Harvard Law Review opens an unfettered path to the nation's biggest law firms, or a position as a legal assistant to a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

Instead of letting these opportunities open up doors for him, Senator Obama decided to dedicate his education, intelligence, and knowledge of the law to serving people on the lower end of the social scale. He became a community organizer in Chicago to help such people, namely, Blacks and Hispanics, became a civil rights lawyer for them, and subsequently taught the American Constitution and Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.

Senator Obama was elected to the Illinois state legislature, as a state senator. He served in that capacity for eight years. Tucker Carlson, who used to have an hour's long program on MSNBC to analyze politics, and who boasted constantly about being a conservative, used to say of Senator Obama's experience as a state legislator, that it amounted to nothing, and also added his few years in the U.S. Senate to that castigation.

How can being a state senator and a U.S. Senator totaling up to 12 years amount to nothing, and not involve important political and legislative experience? One can see what is agonizing Tucker Carlson at the gut level: a Black man possibly becoming President.

Senator Obama was able to pass some significant legislation in the Illinois state Senate. He got an ethics bill passed, the first one in twenty five years in Illinois. He joined with conservative Republican Kirk Dillard to pass a law requiring police in Illinois to videotape interrogations in capital cases, which could be used in court. He helped to get health insurance for 150,000 children in Illinois, and also a tax cut for low income families. His last year in the Illinois state legislature when Democrats were in the majority, he, remarkably, was able to get 26 bills passed.

The Republicans usually refrain from talking about what Barack Obama actually did in the Illinois state legislature. They usually only like to mention that he voted "pass" on 125 bills. This was out of over 4,000 votes that he cast.

The Republicans will use the 125 "pass" votes against Senator Obama in the general election. What they will not tell voters is that Senator John McCain did not vote 235 times between 1999 and 2008 for measures that were voted on in the U.S. Senate. He just refused to show up.

What the Republicans also will not say is that Sentor McCain has a dismal voting record with respect to American troops and veterans, while Senator Obama has a good record with respect to both. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veteran Group gave McCain a "D" for his voting, and Senator Obama a "B+." Disabled Veterans gave Senator MCain an unfavorable 20% rating, while giving Senator Obama a favorable 80% rating.

In 2002, the Illinois Senator publicly denounced the war against Iraq, and indicated the negative consequences that would result from it, which came to pass. This showed great insight and judgment, i.e., substantive intellectual and perceptive qualities.

In 2004 Obama gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that catapulted him into the political limelight. In that speech, he exhibited a plethora of subsantive personal qualities: visionary thinking, holistic, rather than narrow either-or thinking, great oratory, charisma, an ability to excite, enthuse, and inspire people, and showed that he had a high capability for leadership.

How impressive Senator Obama's substantive personal qualities are can be compared to the personal qualities of Senator John McCain. The Arizona Senator has demonstrated over and over again, that he is not a good speaker, is not visionary or inspirational, cannot excite or invest people with enthusiasm, totally lacks charisma, and is stiff and dull.

Senator McCain is also not a leader, and he has never been one. For many years, he considered himself a "maverick," and some politicians, political analysts, and some voters thought that was what made him attractive as a politician. The Republican Party is presently running an ad that says Senator McCain is "the original maverick."

This ad is running, because McCain's campaign and the Republican Party are trying to combat the charge of the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party that John McCain is so closely allied with George Bush, that he would provide a third term of Bush's domestic and foreign policies. He would keep Bush (and Cheney people) on the domestic and foreign policy side of his administration to do so.

The ad also seeks to combat the opposition's charge that John McCain is no longer a maverick, but is now a Presidential candidate who will say and do anything to get elected. It is also out there to try to attract Independents to McCain.

Senator John McCain's definition of maverick would correspond to that found in Webster's Dictionary: "An independently minded person who refuses to abide by the dictates of or resists adhering to a particular group." A maverick defies and eschews leadership and seeks to circumvent it.

It is one thing to be a maverick as a member of the House of Representives or the U.S. Senate (and it is not being a maverick just crossing the political aisle). But what is true about a maverick is that such a person cannot lead a national political institution, as some Republicans are saying about John McCain, with respect to him trying to lead their national Party, and who are angry about the new ad.

And it does not take a rocket scientist to know that a maverick cannot be President of the United States and lead the national government or the country. Mavericks are extemporaneous, careless, and unpredictable. John McCain, thinking and acting like a maverick in the White House, would not only be an enormous risk and liability, but would have the country potentially courting disaster, and could plunge America's international relations into chaos.

To believe that the first of these dire things is a possiblity with maverick John McCain in the White House reflect on the comments he made on a campaign stop on 8/8/08.

The comments were prepared remarks: "When I am President, I will call the Congress back into session. They left for a five week vacation. They should return and return immediately. I will be glad to go back to Washington to vote to solve this energy crisis. And Americans want action. They don't want Congress to take vacations."

These remarks are illogical and wholly incoherent. If elected, Senator McCain would not be President until January 2009, when he would have no need to call Congress back from the vacation they had taken months earlier. He apparently was also thinking he would be President sometime in August, or in early September, to call Congress back into session. But then, abruptly, he ceased to think of being President, and switched to being a Senator, so he could go back to Congress to vote. And when did the American people say that they did not want Congress to take vacations?

As to the second possibility with a maverick McCain in the White House, reflect on what he said on Youtube a year earlier at a townhall meeting in Des Moines, Iowa: "I was in a conference in Germany over the weekend, and President (Vladimir) Putin of Germany gave one of the old cold war style speeches, as he adressed the conference there."

This comment coming from someone whose experience and strength is supposed to be in foreign affairs is so mindless, so egregious, it is stupefying. Indeed, both comments are stupefying.

Thus, need more be said bout maverick John McCain in the White House, except perhaps that these comments and the times that one has seen him show forgetfulness, ignorance of facts, ignore facts, misstate something said, or bungle attempts to explain things, might be suggesting that, if not senility, enfeebleness, is settling in.

It is a disservice to the American people that so many people in the media do not draw attention to, and evaluate the portent of, these shortcomings of someone who is seeking to be President, a patent pressure cooker job.

Senator Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. Junior Senators usually do not get much legislation passed. But the Senator managed to get some notable measures passed. He teamed up with conservative Republican Tom Coburn to create a public internet that enables taxpayers to track how the government spends their money.

He teamed up with conservative Republican Richard Lugar to pass a meaure to facilitate the US. working with its allies to detect and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. He joined up again with Tom Coburn to stop the Bush administration from handing out no-bid contracts to companies to reconstruct the Gulf coast.

Senator Obama also introduced the resolution that got the Senate talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq. He also got the Senate talking about fuel efficient cars, which had not been discussed seriously in that body for decades.

In 2007, Senator Obama decided to run for the White House. This was to be the greatest achievement of his life, and it showed just how much substance he had, and how valuable his own life experiences had been. Using his education, intelligence, communicaions skills, his community organizing skills, and an ability to draw talented people to his side, as advisors, campaign managers and operators, he built a national political organization from scratch to participate in the Democratic Party Presidential nomination contest.

With the same people, he was also able to build a national coalition, and a national political movement, to use the internet like noone before him to finance a nomination campaign, and also a Presidential election campaign. He got more youth involved in politics and voting than would have been thought possible, and also gained their help in building his national coalition and national movement.

In addition, he had to take on Senator Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton, the Clinton political machine and the institutional Democratic Party, that supported Hillary Clinton during the nomination campaign. Senator Obama evidenced extraordinary perception and judgment mapping out how he could win the nomination contest, and he did so, and became the presumptive nominee of the Party.

Recently, Senator Obama returned from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, and other countries in the Middle East, and also Germany, France, and England. In Iraq, he stood eye-ball to eye-ball with General David Petraeus, and made it clear that if he were President, he would be commander-in-chief, and would set the mission in Iraq.

He also said to the General, who he said disagreed with him, that as President, he would drawdown American roops in Iraq on a 16 month time table (while paying attention to conditions on the ground) and that he would redeploy troops to fight the war in Afghanistan. The Senator also was able to get Nouri al Maliki and the Iraqi government to endorse his withdrawal plan.

That was not all that Senator Obama accomplished in Iraq. He changed the nature of the debate about the country, that Senator McCain had dominated: the discussion from Iraq to Afghanistan, from the surge to redeployment of troops to Afghanistan and fighting the war there, and from long term occupation of Iraq, to maintaining only a minimal military force to protect American personnel and facilities, continue training Iraqi security forces, and to root out remnants of Al Qaeda.

Senator Obama was greeted as if he were a head of state, rather than a Presidential candidate, in Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, in Israel, and also in Germany, France, and England.

He gave a speech in Berlin to over 200,000 people in which he said, as Pesident, America would form a strong partnership with Europe, and would listen attentively to European concerns, and that America would seek to achieve a favorable image in the world again with a new approach to regional and global diplomacy and policies.

This speech was received with enthusiasm throughout Europe. It was consistent with the speech he gave on foreign policy before the Chicago Council on Foreign Policy in February, 2004, and with the foreign policy views he expressed in Foreign Affairs (July/August, 2007).

If a white man of 47 years of age exhibited the kind of substantive personal qualities that Senator Obama does, and had achieved what he had achieved, as just outlined--and had done this coming out of virtually nowhere, and having to go up against formidable opposition to do so--there is no question that he would be lauded and lionized in the media, with little to no effort to detract from his attainments.

There would, instead, be endless talk about the superb personal qualities that he possessed, and that he would be bringing to the White House, and also endless talk about how this would be a blessing to the country and to the American people.

There are many Americans, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Whites, with Whites being the largest among these groups, who helped Senator Obama become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party,and who believe he would bring superb personal qualities to the White House, and who will be seeking to put him there in November.

On the other hand, there are many Whites, especially, who do not want to see Senator Obama as President, and for many of this number, it is because of their racist hostility, that sometimes takes the form of openly saying, "I will not vote for a Black man," or something worse; which conveys the additional racist thought, even if not conveyed verbally: that "being Pesident is a white man's job."

There is a long standing racist discrediting technique that Republicans are presently using against Senator Obama, particularly in their ads. That technique involves denying or lying about the personal attributes of a Black person, or ridiculing, mocking, distorting, demeaning, defaming, caricaturing, belittling, or being dismissive of the attributes or achievements, to convey the impression that the Black person in question is nobody, and has done nothing and can do nothing of significance.

In short, a method to assault and diminish the character, intellect, stature, and humanity of a Black person, which is the wont of racists, that gives them the sense of being superior, powerful, and omnipotent.

Thomas Jefferson used the racist discrediting technique against the nonslave Black Benjamin Benneker, who was an astronomer, mathematician, and producer of almanacs, whose intellect, mathematical skills, and achievements he mocked and belittled. He did the same to Phillis Wheatley who, as a slave, published a book of poetry that gained her some international acclaim. Jefferson said her poetry "was below the dignity of criticism."

White racists have always been most afraid of the Black person with substantive personal qualities, because such people contradict the racist stereotypes--that allege who Black people are, what they are capable or not capable of doing--and who point to the immorality and injustice, and the violation of America's ideals and values, denying Blacks opportunities.

Frederick Douglass used to argue that it was not the color of the Black man that agonized Whites, because they had no trouble relating to a Black field hand, servant, or coachman, who they knew would stay in their place, or whom they could easily keep there.

As Douglass remarked: "The evil lies deeper than the prejudice against color. It is, as we have said, an intense hatred of the colored man when he is distinguished for any ennobling qualities of head and heart."

For years white boxing promoters would not let Black boxers have title shots, not because they were convinced they could not win them, but because they were afraid that they would win them and hold them. They justified their exclusion practice by demeaning the character, the skills, and the morality of Black boxers.

When Branch Rickey decided to bring Jackie Robinson into the major leagues to play for his Brooklyn Dodgers, he was sure Robinson could make the grade. There were major league players who thought so as well, and for this reason, they made extensive use of the racist descrediting technique on the field during games, and drew fans in on what they were doing, to try to make him fail, but, instead, they and the fans failed.

During the Second World War the Army Air Force did not want to train Black fighter pilots, because of their fear that they might be successful pilots, and the Air Force's racist practices against Blacks, which centered in denying or disparaging their intellect, courage, and morality to be pilots, would be seriously challenged.

Under pressure from the Roosevelt White House some Black pilots were trained, and finally sent to the war theater in Europe. One group of these pilots trained at Tuskegee Institute, which became the 332 Fighter Group. It had the distinction among fighter escort squadrons of not losing a single bomber to German fighter planes, during their escort of numerous bombing missions over Gemany.

Today, there is Barack Obama, a Black person who has substantive personal qualities aplenty, and who has tremendous political skills; and there are white Republicans (with Black Republican strategists, and John McCain surrogates, acquiescing) trying to make white people afraid of him, by using the long standing racist discrediting technique that many of us Black people easily recognize.

But there are many Americans who recognize the substantive personal attributes of Senator Obama, and who believe he has had the kind of experience in his life, and has the leadership capability and the political skills, to be President of the United States, and who think that he will be a good President.

America should be proud that it has produced a person such as this, and almost as if it knew instinctively what it needed in these very trying times at home and abroad to provide itself with vision, vitality, and leadership.