I’m getting tired of Barack Obama. No, not him personally. I’m getting tired of the condescending, holier-than-thou attitude that seems to permeate so many of his presidential statements, at least those relating to domestic matters.* (Actually, it is interesting that this attitude does not come across in statements about other countries – or at least other countries that are not our allies.)
Let me give a couple of examples. In his graduation speech at the University of Michigan on May 1, 2010, President Obama said:
"What troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad. … When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy government is us."
Those are very nice sentiments, and the Associated Press was duly impressed. But they are also phony. Who has actually said "all of government is inherently bad"? President Obama doesn’t say. Some blogger somewhere may have said it or maybe even a commentator on talk radio. But what Republican leader has said it? John Boehner? Mitch McConnell? Paul Ryan? Eric Cantor? Or how about Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty or Mike Huckabee? No, none of them has ever said it. Sarah Palin has never said "all of government is inherently bad." And President Obama knows it. But that doesn’t stop him from implying they said it because it’s easier to argue against extreme statements like that than it is to engage in reasoned discourse with people who actually know what they are talking about.**
President Obama went on to say that "this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation." That is true, but it is also true that misrepresenting the positions of those who disagree with you closes the door to compromise and undermines deliberation. Back in April, President Obama said this about Senator Chris Dodd’s proposals for financial regulatory reform and those who had concerns about Senator Dodd’s bill:
"Now, there's a legitimate debate taking place about how best to ensure taxpayers are held harmless in this process. And that's a legitimate debate, and I encourage that debate. But what's not legitimate is to suggest that somehow the legislation being proposed is going to encourage future taxpayer bailouts, as some have claimed.… [A] vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts. That's the truth. End of story. And nobody should be fooled in this debate."
But while President Obama was, in effect, accusing those who opposed the Dodd legislation of lying about what the bill provided, Adam Davidson of National Public Radio, not what you would call a charter member of the vast right wing conspiracy, was saying he could not find an expert of either party who agreed with the President. Similarly, Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times said this about the Dodd proposal at that point:
"Unfortunately, the leading proposal would do little to cure the epidemic unleashed on American taxpayers by the lords of finance and their bailout partners. … The bills also don’t eliminate the prospect of future bailouts of interconnected and powerful companies. … Too big to fail is alive and well, alas."
Similarly, at various times last year President Obama, while admittedly in what may have been more of a campaign mode, would tell his audiences that those who had created various problems, by which he meant Republicans, needed to stop criticizing his plans for cleaning them up. He was willing to clean up their messes, but they needed to just be quiet and get out of his way while he did so. It is hard to see how statements like that keep open "the door to the possibility of compromise" or how they support "democratic deliberation". Trying to silence those who disagree with you is bullying, not compromise or deliberation.
Finally, President Obama said this in his speech at the University of Michigan:
"The truth is, the debate we’ve had for decades now between more government and less government, it doesn’t really fit the times in which we live. We know that too much government can stifle competition and deprive us of choice and burden us with debt. But we’ve also clearly seen the dangers of too little government -– like when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly leads to the collapse of our entire economy."
No, it wasn’t "too little government" that nearly led to the collapse of our economy in the fall of 2008. In fact, various parts of government played important roles in helping cause the near-disaster. As I have mentioned before, the Federal Reserve kept short term interest rates too low for too long, helping to encourage the housing bubble.
Also, in spite of proposals by the Bush administration and leading Republican, Congress repeatedly failed either to exercise greater oversight and control over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or to pass reforms on how Fannie and Freddie operated. It was Democrats in Congress who led the opposition to these proposals, and now the collapse and bankruptcy of these two agencies has cost taxpayers over $130 billion with more coming.
But President Obama probably doesn’t want to mention Congress’s failure to pass these reforms, since he opposed them while he was in the Senate. And even though the President accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of opposing Senator Dodd’s bill after Senator McConnell went up to New York to talk with Wall Street bankers about the bill, he doesn’t mention all of the campaign contributions he received from Fannie and Freddie executives while he was opposing legislation to reform those agencies.
As Jay Cost said at RealClearPolitics, President Obama is "a polarizing leader in a polarized age." It may not be what he wanted, but it has happened, and it is partly because of the policy choices he has made. Why can’t he admit it?
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* I realize there were plenty of people who felt, and probably still feel, this way about George W. Bush. I am not arguing they were wrong, but the fact that they felt that way about President Bush does not mean I cannot criticize President Obama for the same thing.
** President Obama had this problem in January when he addressed a gathering of House Republicans. The President got into a discussion with Representative Paul Ryan about increases in federal spending, but after Representative Ryan pressed the President on his budget numbers, President Obama just said, "We’ll have a longer debate on the budget numbers, all right," and then took another question.
Update (5/13/10 9:15 pm): Added a link for the Jay Cost quote.
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