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The Long Shadow of America’s Greatest King

16 Jan

When your birth date falls on the same day as the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday observance you accept the fact that you’re going to have to settle for second billing and like it.   Fortunately, Dr. King is one of my few heroes and sharing my day with him honors and humbles me.

As I have said in the past, King was far more than an action figure with a string in the back that says “I Have A Dream”  when pulled.   That’s too simple and King was far too complicated to be reduced down to a catchphrase.

King was not a popular man at the time of his assassination.   Breaking with President Johnson over the Vietnam War had done more than cost King the best friend the movement ever had in the White House.  He was vilified by the Left and the Right.  Black revolutionaries sneered at his message of non-violence.

But most of all,  King was tired.  Tired of marching. Tired of re-fighting battles that should have already been won.   Tired of being away from his wife and children so much.   Tired of the death threats on his life.

Michael Eric Dyson, scholar and author of I May Not Get There With You,  the account of King’s later years says we should note King cut less than an iconic figure at the time of his death.

[King] was at the low point of his popularity at the time of his death. When Martin Luther King Jr. met his end on that balcony in Memphis, he was indeed at the low point of his popularity for the first time in nearly a decade. He didn’t make the most admired list for the Gallup poll. Very few universities wanted to hear from him. No American publishers wanted to publish a book by him. And he was being questioned, even in African-American culture, for the relevancy of his non-violent approach. Dr. King was facing tremendous odds. His back was against the wall. His resources were drying up within his own organization. He was fighting with a prominent northern board member about whether or not he should speak out against the war in Vietnam and paid the price for it. So, he was facing opposition from within his organization and more broadly from the civil rights movement, and even more broadly from the mainstream American press as well as from public policymakers and politicians in America. He was quite on the outside and outskirts of popularity and acceptance in America. This notion that Dr. King was widely praised is one of nostalgia and of amnesia, and it should be combated.

Some might think it audacious and brazen to call King the greatest American ever.   Shouldn’t that sort of accolade be reserved for presidents and statesmen, not a Baptist preacher?

It is neither audacious or brazen to tell the truth and I have no problem defending Dr. King as a greater transformative figure than George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Franklin D. Roosevelt.   A listing of the Greatest Americans places King at third, ahead of Washington and just behind Lincoln.  Ronald Reagan was named Number One, so take that as you will (I take it as patently ridiculous).

It is expected that presidents will be–for better or for worse–transformative figures.   For a private citizen to do so the unmeasurable help of millions of dollars backing them up and effecting their change by way of non-violent resistance against the evil of state-sanctioned racial discrimination is almost impossible to fathom.   Bill Gates with all his billions could not have done what King did with shoe leather and faith.

By no means was King the only one marching.   It took the commitment of thousands of like-minded souls willing to be spat upon, beaten, bitten by dogs, and in some cases murdered for their courage to be the change they sought to bring to the world.

Without them and the leadership and inspiration of a Dr. King, the part of the Dream that was realized with the election of Barack Obama does not happen.   Without Dr King there is no President Obama.

There is an urge by some to see Obama as the realization of King’s dream.  I  understand this urge, but it should be resisted. Obama is not so much the manifestation of the Dream as he is the greatest beneficiary of The Dream.   King’s mark on the world is established beyond dispute.   Obama is still attempting to make good on his and like any politician it’s a mixed bag.  “Change We Can Believe In” is hard to bring about when there is a rigid status quo resistant to changing a thing just as Dr King’s dream seemed like a waking nightmare to his opponents.

On MLK Day the man who would be Obama’s replacement praises the preacher man.  Writing on his Facebook page, Mitt Romney says,  “Martin Luther King Jr. Day is an occasion to reflect on the legacy of an outstanding American. Dr. King not only believed in the fundamental truth that we are all made in God’s image, he fought for that truth in a campaign that brought our country closer to fulfilling its historic promise of liberty and justice for all. The United States has made enormous strides toward racial equality in the decades since Dr. King’s death, but we must never rest until all people are judged, in his immortal words, not ‘by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

On the Today Show,  Romney, who got wealthy by shutting down companies and putting workers on the street said all this talk about income inequality was simply “envy.”

“You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent — and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

A clueless plutocrat like Mitt Romney could never understand a humble man like King who was motivated by a fierce sense of justice, not personal wealth.  If King were doing in 2012 what he was doing in 1968  Romney would not be mumbling empty platitudes he neither wrote nor believes.   He’d be condemning King as a dangerous radical who wanted to take from the 1 percent and give to the 99 percent.

I Mittens ever read King’s A Proper Sense of Priorities speech he would have ample reason to be scared right down to his silk skivvies.

Someone said to me not long ago, it was a member of the press, ‘Dr. King, since you face so many criticisms and since you are going to hurt the budget of your organization, don’t you feel that you should kind of change and fall in line with the Administration’s policy. Aren’t you hurting the civil rights movement and people who once respected you may lose respect for you because you’re involved in this controversial issue in taking the stand against the war.’ And I had to look with a deep understanding of why he raised the question and with no bitterness in my heart and say to that man, “I’m sorry sir, but you don’t know me. I’m not a consensus leader.  I don’t determine what is right and wrong by looking at the budget of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Nor do I determine what is right and wrong by taking a Gallup poll of the majority opinion.” Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher of consensus but a molder of consensus.  On some positions cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.

Mitt wouldn’t know a thing about that.  That’s why he isn’t a leader and should never be president.

Dr. King had so much more to say than just “I Have A Dream.” Take two minutes out of your day and get hip to a King many Americans do not know.   The radical Dr. King.  The threat to both racists and reactionaries Dr. King.  The Dr, King that was too dangerous to live.

I could not love Martin more if he were my father.  He inspires me and guides me as much as a father ever has a son or daughter.   This is his day and the legacy of America’s greatest King is far richer and more complex and enduring than a fading memory of a distant figure whose legacy has been watered down to four words.

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Posted by on January 16, 2012 in It's My Life

 

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Is It True What They Say About The Obamas?

10 Jan

The Obamas: a success story that's still being puzzled over.

Washington isn’t just the seat of power in America, it’s also the world’s biggest fishbowl and there is no bigger fish than the President and his First Lady.   So when New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor focused her attention on Michelle Obama and her frustrations in her role as the second billed star in a history making accomplishment, she ruffled some feelings within the White House.

How much weight you give to the accuracy of this book has to go back to how much trust you have in the Bob Woodward style of writing books about people based upon second and third hand sources.   My take as a journalist is I take these kind of gossipy, unsubstantiated stories with a certain degree of wariness. I won’t go so far as to say the author got the story wrong, but she’s trying to sell a book and she needs a hook to separate hers from the many others already written about the Obamas. If she found one nobody else did, good for her. I know how the sausage gets made so I’m not as wowed.

Kantor said: “I interviewed 33 White House staffers, most of them many times. I wouldn’t trade that for a quick interview with the president, because I’m not sure he’s at liberty to discuss the real questions I asked in this book. In a way, it goes to Barack Obama’s own predicament as president: He’s such a gifted storyteller. Yet can he really tell his own story anymore?”

The White House response: ‘This is the author’s take, reflecting her own opinions, on a remarkably strong relationship the President and First Lady – both of whom share an unwavering commitment to each other, and to improving the lives of Americans. The book, an overdramatization of old news, is about a relationship between two people whom the author has not spoken to in years. The author last interviewed the Obamas in 2009 for a magazine piece, and did not interview them for this book. The emotions, thoughts and private moments described in the book, though often seemingly ascribed to the President and First Lady, reflect little more than the author’s own thoughts. These second-hand accounts are staples of every Administration in modern political history and often exaggerated.”

Decide for yourself who’s got more to lose or gain here: The White House trying to put the best face on the Obama’s marriage or an author with a book to sell?

I listened to Kantor on NPR’s Fresh Air program today and I came away with a totally different impression of her and the book than I had previously.   She clearly feels warmly toward the Obamas, particularly Michelle.   She said at one point despite the sensationalism of some reports, Michelle doesn’t hate Rahm Emanuel.   What was going on is the natural friction between the First Lady’s staff in the East Wing and the President’s staff in the West Wing.

Anybody know how many people are responsible for the president’s schedule?  Two?  Ten?  Try 33 on the scheduling staff.  Now balance that against Michelle wondering if the president isn’t being over-scheduled or will he be able to attend a school function for his daughters?

A hatchet job on the First Lady?

Michelle Obama had to grow into her role as The First Lady as much as her husband has had to grow into hers.   It’s been more difficult than she expected, but she’s risen to the challenge.  So has her husband for whom her support is absolute, total and unshakable.

It’s doubtful I’ll pay to read The Obamas but if I saw a copy at the library, it’s probably worth checking out.

ADDENDUM:  But don’t give Mrs. Obama a copy as a birthday present.  You might get it flung back at you faster than you hand it over.

Speaking to Oprah gal pal Gayle King on the CBS Morning News, the First Lady made it clear she did not approve of Kantor putting his business on the street.

“I never read these books, so I’ve just gotten in the habit of not reading other people’s impressions of people.”

“I guess it’s just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here,” she said. “That’s been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some kind of angry black woman.”

Maybe Michelle isn’t an angry Black woman, but she isn’t remotely happy with Kantorr trying to climb in her head.

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Posted by on January 10, 2012 in News & Views

 

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Why Do Democratic Presidents Disappoint Liberals?

08 Dec

George, Barack, George Jr., Bill and....hey, Jimmy, move in closer!

Waiting on a flush-and-fill and oil change today, I had time to read an article in New York magazine by Jonathan Chait on the dissatisfaction many liberals feel toward President Obama. Chait’s conclusion? Liberals are dissatisfied because they are incapable of feeling satisfied.

If we trace liberal disappointment with President Obama to its origins, to try to pinpoint the moment when his crestfallen supporters realized that this was Not Change They Could Believe In, the souring probably began on December 17, 2008, when Obama announced that conservative Evangelical pastor Rick Warren would speak at his inauguration. “Abominable,” fumed John Aravosis on AmericaBlog. “Obama’s ‘inclusiveness’ mantra always seems to head only in one direction—an excuse to scorn progressives and embrace the Right,” seethed Salon’s Glenn Greenwald. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow rode the story almost nightly: “I think the problem is getting larger for Barack Obama.” Negative 34 days into the start of the Obama presidency, the honeymoon was over.

Since then, the liberal gloom has only deepened, as Obama compromise alternated with Obama failure. Liberals speak of Obama in unceasingly despairing terms. “I’m exhausted [from] defending you,” one supporter confessed to Obama at a town-hall meeting last year.

“We are all incredibly frustrated,” Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director, told the Washington Post in September. “I’m disappointed in Obama,” complained Steve Jobs, according to Walter Isaacson’s new biography. The assessments appear equally morose among the most left-wing and the most moderate of Obama’s supporters, among opinion leaders and rank-and-file voters. In early 2004, Democrats, by a 25-point margin, described themselves as “more enthusiastic than usual about voting.” At the beginning of 2008, the margin had shot up to over 60 percentage points. Now as many Democrats say they’re less enthusiastic about voting as say they’re more enthusiastic.

The cultural enthusiasm sparked by Obama’s candidacy drained away almost immediately after his election. All the passion now lies with the critics, and it is hard to find a liberal willing to muster any stronger support than halfhearted murmuring about the tough situation Obama inherited, or vague hope that maybe in a second term he can really start doing things. (“I’m like everybody, I want more action,” an apologetic Chris Rock said earlier this month. “I believe wholeheartedly if he’s back in, he’s going to do some gangsta shit.”) Obama has already given up on any hope of running a positive reelection campaign and is girding up for a grim slog of lesser-of-two-evils-ism.

Why are liberals so desperately unhappy with the Obama presidency?

Chait’s argument is, sentimental journeys aside, liberal disenchantment with Democratic presidents has always been present since the glory days of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. That means every Democrat who won the White House (Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama). All of them took fire from their Left flank.

The entire article is worth reading in full as Chait recalls the way Obama’s Democratic predecessors have left liberals unsatisfied.

"Okay Barack, I got this. Go take a nap or something."

Things were so much better when Bill Clinton sat in the Oval Office, right?  Right?

Bill Clinton’s election, following a dozen years of Republican presidencies, ushered in buoyant hopes of renewal. But liberals experienced his presidency as immediate and almost continuous deflation and cynicism. Clinton did enjoy one major triumph in his first year, when he passed a budget bill that raised the top tax rate, expanded the earned-income tax credit, created a new national-service program for graduates, and reformed other parts of the budget. This was the progressive apogee of the Clinton administration. Liberals at the time viewed it as a sad half-measure. The focus was on deficit reduction, not public investment, and each iteration of the legislation that worked its way through the congressional machinery emerged less inspiring than the last. “The Senate’s machinations on President Clinton’s budget plan have left many Democratic House members feeling angry and betrayed,” noted a New York Times editorial.

The rest of Clinton’s first two years consisted of a demoralizing procession of debacles and retreats. A series of Clinton appointments—Lani Guinier, Zoe Baird—came under conservative fire and were withdrawn in a panic. He steered his agenda toward right-of-center goals, like the North American Free Trade Agreement and a crime bill, serving only to alienate his liberal allies without dampening hysterical attacks from conservatives and the business lobby. Health-care reform collapsed entirely, in part because liberals refused to support a compromise final measure. Six months into Clinton’s presidency, after he had abandoned his effort to integrate gays into the military, Bob Herbert summarized what had already settled as the liberal narrative: “The disappointment and disillusionment with President Clinton are widespread … He doesn’t seem to understand that much of the disappointment and disillusionment is because he tries so hard to be liked by everyone.” Hardly anybody contested that portrait.

Surely the revered iconic, John F. Kennedy is deserving of the Left’s love?

But what about John F. Kennedy, the liberal icon? Kennedy’s reputation benefited from a halo of martyrdom, deepened by liberals’ rage against Johnson, which retroactively cast Kennedy as far more liberal than he actually was. In reality, Kennedy’s domestic agenda slogged painfully through a Congress controlled by a coalition of Republicans and conservative southern Democrats. He campaigned promising federal aid for education and health insurance for the elderly but didn’t get around to passing either one. The most agonizing struggles came on Kennedy’s civil-rights agenda. His soaring campaign promises quickly grew entangled in a series of bargains with Jim Crow Democrats that liberals justifiably saw as corrupt. Kennedy understood he lacked the votes in Congress to push the civil-rights legislation he promised. He placated James Eastland, a powerful Jim Crow senator from Mississippi, by nominating the arch-segregationist judge William Harold Cox to the federal bench. Civil-rights leaders viewed Kennedy’s machinations with something less than unbridled gratitude. Martin Luther King Jr. said that Kennedy “vacillated” on civil rights. When he set up a meeting with activists, Kennedy was surprised to be “scorched by anger,” as G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot wrote in a recent history of the sixties.

If Jimmy Carter was a bigger loser than Obama and Lyndon Johnson a bloodthirsty warmonger because of the debacle that was the Vietnam War, surely liberals can take heart in the presidency of FDR’s successor, “Give ‘em Hell” Harry Truman?

Truman: The kind of Democrat liberals wish Obama were more like.

Harry Truman has become the patron saint of dispirited Democrats, the fighting populist whose example is invariably cited in glum contrast to whatever bumbling congenital compromiser happens to hold office at any given time. In fact, liberals spent the entire Truman presidency in a state of near-constant despair.

Republicans took control of Congress in the 1946 elections and bottled up Truman’s domestic agenda, rendering him powerless to expand the New Deal, as liberals had hoped he would after the war had ended.

Liberal columnist Max Lerner decried Truman’s mania for “cooperation” and his eagerness “to blink [past] the real social cleavage and struggles,” attributing this pathological eagerness to avoid conflict to his “middle-class mentality.” (Some contemporary critics have reached the same psychoanalysis of Obama, substituting his bi-racial background as the cause.) The New Republic’s Richard Strout lamented how “little evidence he has shown of being able to lift up and inspire the masses.” The historian Richard Pells has written that in the eyes of liberals at the time, “the president remained an incorrigible mediocrity.”

Chait asserts that when it comes to getting down to the job and getting things done, Barack Obama is second only to FDR for what he’s accomplished in his first term.

Part of the reason Roosevelt’s record looms so large from a distance is because historians measure these things differently from political activists. Activists measure progress against the standard of perfection, or at least the most perfect possible choice. Historians gauge progress against what came before it.

By that standard, Obama’s first term would indeed seem to qualify as gangsta shit. His single largest policy accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, combines two sweeping goals—providing coverage to the uninsured and taming runaway medical-cost inflation—that Democrats have tried and failed to achieve for decades. Likewise, the Recovery Act contained both short-term stimulative measures and increased public investment in infrastructure, green energy, and the like. The Dodd-Frank financial reform, while failing to end the financial industry as we know it, is certainly far from toothless, as measured by the almost fanatical determination of Wall Street and Republicans in Congress to roll it back.

Beneath these headline measures is a second tier of accomplishments carrying considerable historic weight. A bailout and deep restructuring of the auto industry that is rapidly being repaid, leaving behind a reinvigorated sector in the place of a devastated Midwest. Race to the Top, which leveraged a small amount of federal seed money into a sweeping national wave of education experiments, arguably the most significant reform of public schooling in the history of the United States. A reform of college loans, saving hundreds of billions of dollars by cutting out private middlemen and redirecting some of the savings toward expanded Pell Grants. Historically large new investments in green energy and the beginning of regulation of greenhouse gases. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women. Elimination of several wasteful defense programs, equality for gays in the military, and consumer-friendly regulation of food safety, tobacco, and credit cards.

Of the postwar presidents, only Johnson exceeds Obama’s domestic record, and Johnson’s successes must be measured against a crushing defeat in Vietnam. Obama, by contrast, has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes—expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime. So, if Obama is the most successful liberal president since Roosevelt, that would make him a pretty great president, right?

The answer for many liberals to that question would be a resounding “NO.”

Chait says liberals just won't fall in love with their presidents.

Which leads to the question. Are Obama and his six Democratic predecessors all spineless, unprincipled compromises with no sense of core beliefs and all too eager to crumble before conservative opposition or are the expectations of liberals for our presidents to faithfully execute our expectations completely untethered to reality?

If it’s not them, it has to be us.

Democrats hope they can harness the Occupy Wall Street movement and turn it into support for Obama’s reelection and Democrats getting off the mat after the 2010 Republican ass whupping. That’s an understandable thought and one I briefly held myself, but the differences between OWS and the Tea Party are too stark for a George Soros to co-opt and underwrite the movement as the Koch Brothers have. There aren’t the same opportunities to harness that rage into votes.

It’s hard for me to believe Republicans will find Newt Gingrich, a consummate Washington insider and a guy whom the longer you know him, the less you like him, any more ideologically “pure” Newt’s pretty feisty now as he works Obama over, but not so much two years ago when he was standing in the White House driveway with Michael Bloomburg and Al Sharpton as part of an “education tour” at the president’s behest. Mitt will be waving that picture around at a Iowa debate in the near future.

People typically seem to prefer status quo politicians who nibble around the edges instead of transformative figures who take whole bites. The election of Reagan after the Carter years is a rare exception to this rule.

There’s a reason why a conservative like Ronald Reagan won election by such overwhelming margins while a true liberal like George McGovern were crushed in humiliating defeats.

Liberals keep looking for their own Reagan. They haven’t found him or her yet and as long as they demand perfection they never will.

We'll miss him when he's gone.

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Posted by on December 8, 2011 in News & Views

 

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Last of the Compassionate Conservatives

21 Aug

Jack Kemp was a leader of men on the field and off it.

Republicans many times can’t get the words ‘equality of opportunity’ out of their mouths. Their lips do not form that way.

~ Jack Kemp

Whenever someone comes at me talking smack about how Obama ain’t this and Obama ain’t that and how there’s no way they would vote for him again, I listen and then ask them one question, “Who are you going to vote for instead?”

Shuts them right up.

The Republican field is made up of several flavors of the fruit from the Crazy Tree.  There’s no options there for anyone even hoping for a protest vote.   Between Perry, Romney, Bachmann, Gingrich, Cain and the rest of the munchkins there’s nothing for a disgruntled Obama voter to hang their hat on.   The G.O.P. has been assimilated by the radical nuttiness of a handful of loud extremists and reborn as the G.O.Tea Party.

It wasn’t always this way.  Once upon a time there were still such a thing as moderate Republicans who actually gave a damn about something other than making sure the wealthy and corporations didn’t pay too much in taxes.   Some of even could speak honestly about race without their tongues swelling in their mouths.

The last Republican whom I really admired was Jack Kemp. He honestly seemed to care about inequality and spoke about issues of poverty, racial discrimination and through programs such as the creation of inner city “enterprise zones” really put some muscle behind addressing these issues.

Kemp would show up on C-SPAN talking about how playing quarterback for the Buffalo Bills had opened his mind about race and what he wanted to do to make Dr. King’s dream a reality, I would listen and think, “Man, I wish THIS guy would run for president.”  In 1988 Kemp ended up as Bob Dole’s running mate against Bill Clinton but his heart didn’t seem to be in it and after Clinton crushed the Republican ticket Kemp faded into elder statesman/failed candidate status until his death in 2009.

Make no mistake:  Kemp was not a secret latte-slurping liberal.  He firmly believed in supply side economics and was as loyal a Republican as possible.  But speaking about race didn’t frighten him and Kemp offered solutions and uplift, not charity or dependency to African-Americans.

Sadly, I don’t see any Jack Kemps in the current crop of Republicans running for President. Jon Huntsman has the kind of quiet, non-scary, moderation that appeals to me, but he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning the nomination. George Bush ran as a “compassionate conservative” but that was just a campaign phrase to him.  Kemp genuinely meant it and lived it, but that spirit seems to have been buried with him as today’s Republicans regard compassion as weakness.

I see Jon Huntsman as the same sort of  basically decent, moderate, mainstream Republican as Kemp was and one that has been largely hounded out of his own party. Huntsman is as silent as the rest of the field on race matters, but at least he doesn’t come off as an extremist.  I have no idea why Huntsman got in this race in the first place. He has no natural base in the Republican Party and is running in the single-digits along with the other bottom-feeders.

Huntsman’s campaign is being headed up by John Weaver, a veteran of John McCain’s campaigns, but I don’t see where this candidate scores a key early win. Not in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina.  Huntsman is hoping a victory in Florida vaults him into the top-tier, but so did Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and it turned into his Waterloo.  Presidential campaigns are fueled by money and enthusiasm and I don’t see how Huntsman can generate enough of either to survive, let alone thrive.

Huntsman has Kemp's moderation, but not his vision.

The funny thing is Huntsman would probably fare better running as a moderate Democrat challenging Obama than as a Republican trying to win the nomination of a party that has no use for his kind anymore.

Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? If Black folks want Republicans to care about their issues I’m supposing more Black folks should be voting for Republicans.

So does that mean Blacks have to align their interests closer to those already prevalent in the Republican Party or does the Republican Party have to be more accommodating to the interests of Blacks?

“There really has not been a strong Republican message to either the poor or the African American community at large,” Kemp said.

What have Romney, Bachmann, Perry, Huntsman, Gingrich or Cain proposed or suggested to get African-American unemployment down and back to work? Something? Anything?

Because if they haven’t how do Blacks engage in discussions and strategy sessions with the GOP to make our priorities THEIR priorities as well? I don’t see leading Black Republicans such as Cain, or Congressmen Allen “I’m Harriet Tubman” West, or Tim Scott making this a priority of theirs. When Michael Steele tried to reach out to Black communities he got a chilly reception from them and a shrugged shoulders and a “why bother?” from his GOP peeps.

It makes no sense politically to be putting all of our clout in one basket. I’m not clear about how to convince the skeptics on both sides that its mutually beneficial for African-Americans to diversify their political portfolio.

Kemp was a self-described “bleeding heart conservative” whom had the GOP paid attention to would have been exactly the kind of Republican who not only only invited African-Americans to the party, he went looking for them.   With his death the Republicans have turned cold, indifferent and hostile to the interests of African-Americans and it’s a missed opportunity for both sides.

There’s a void waiting for someone to fill it, but while Huntsman possess Kemp’s moderation, he lacks his vision and his guts.

Maybe if there were at least one Jack Kemp in the Republican clown car Blacks might have a reason to give the GOP a second look.  Huntsman isn’t close to being in Kemp’s league, but he’s the closest thing the GOP has to a moderate.   Too bad they’re about to stomp him into a greasy spot.

"So Jack, they got anymore of you left in the GOP?"

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Posted by on August 21, 2011 in Rantology

 

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W.W.H.H.D. (What Would Hillary Have Done?)

18 Aug

"Miss me yet?"

Put-off progressives and dismayed Democrats are saying “I told you so” about Hillary vs. Barack as POTUS, but they are simply projecting their own fantasies and discouragement on someone who would have likely charted a similar course as Obama has.

In 2006, I was covering a meeting of the now defunct Democratic Leadership Council.   Some of the potential presidential candidates were in attendance, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Governors Mark Warner of Virginia and Tom Vilsack of Iowa and the hands-down, prohibitive favorite, New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

You could tell Clinton was the rock star in the room.  She was the only one the mayor showed up to see and as the former First Lady, the only one with Secret Service protection.

It’s worth remembering that the DLC was a centrist, corporatist, non-progressive group of Democrats.  Barack Obama shared a lot of their beliefs, but he wasn’t a member of the DLC, Hillary Clinton was.

Speculating whether Clinton would have fared better as president than Obama is a parlor game that keeps thumb-sucking liberals suffering from buyer’s remorse and hardcore Clintonistas sleeping soundly at night.  “If only,” they wonder wistfully, secure and comforted if John Boehner and the Fox News crew were pulling this sort of crap on Hillary, she’d man up like Obama won’t and kick ‘em where it counts.

That’s the beautiful thing about a fantasy. Things always play out exactly the way you want and there’s always a happy ending.

Truth be told, nobody knows if Clinton would have been able to finagle a better debt ceiling deal than the one Obama settled for.   Regardless of which genitalia the 44th President possessed their best-laid plans for post-Bush America would have immediately been sidetracked by the economic mess their predecessor left for them to clean up.   Obama’s presidency was largely sabotaged from the jump by Bush’s incompetence..   The “What If Hillary Had Won” crowd tends to overlook details like that.

A President Hillary Clinton would still be hated, just for different reasons.

Something the revisionists forget is just how deep hatred for the Clintons runs.  The far right learned to loathe Obama.  They already knew how much they despised Hillary.  If Hillary had won it’s unlikely she wouldn’t have been targeted for the same sort of pummeling Obama has received from Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News and the Republicans.  Obama reaped the scorn that had been sown against the Clintons.  The difference would be the anger, disrespect and vitriol directed at a President Clinton would be driven by sexism, not racism.

What’s a tougher nut to crack?  Bigotry based upon race or gender?   Whatever advantages Hillary being White might afford her, they are mitigated by being a woman.  Obama catches hell based upon his skin color, but it’s difficult to claim that is a lower hurdle to clear than the misogyny women in positions of power meet.

Clinton would have been spared the pointless distraction of the Birthers nonsense, but all the drama leftover from Bill Clinton’s time in Washington would have been directed at her.

I still don’t believe a job swap between Clinton and Joe Biden is beyond the realm of possibility.   In a tight race where it looks disappointed Democrats aren’t motivated to turn out, an Obama/Clinton ticket would be jet fuel to the president’s reelection hopes.

Hillary denies any interest in serving as Obama’s vice-president.  She says even if he wins in 2012, she’s done as Secretary of State.  Obama says he loves Biden and he’s not dropping him from the ticket.   Blah, blah, blah.  Yeah, and that’s raindrops falling’ on my head, right?

Whenever an ambitious politician says, “No,” they really mean, “Maybe”  and when they say “there’s no chance” that only means nobody’s made an offer they can’t refuse.  If Obama comes to Clinton and shows her a path to the Oval Office, do you really think she will tell him to get lost?

Methinks the lady doth protest too much, Hillary Clinton still wants to be president.  Compared to morons like Michelle Bachmann, there’s no questioning her qualifications for the job.  Looking down the road at 2016 and whom the Democrats have on their bench and the first name starts with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and drops off sharply after that.  If she’s willing and able, Hillary would be a stone-cold lock to lead the party against the Republicans.

Hillary’s biggest problem last time was people were just plain tired of the Clintons.  The prospect of going in consecutive presidencies from Bush to Clinton to Bush back to Clinton again was not an appealing one for Democrats looking for someone new and fresh to come along.  Someone like Barack Obama.

Well, now that we’ve tried new and fresh and hope and change, could it be time to go back something seasoned and familiar?   It’s been speculated Karl Rove is down on Rick Perry because he’s willing to let Obama have his second term if it means Jeb Bush has a clear run at the White House in 2016.

Why not set up a Clinton vs. Bush grudge match where the favored son takes on the wife of the guy who made his daddy a one-term president?

It isn’t likely Clinton and Obama form a Dream Ticket (and a Republican nightmare), but it isn’t like it couldn’t happen either.  Differences can be smoothed over when a good deal presents itself.   Marriages for the sake of political convenience and expediency are always possible, even if implausible.

The Dream Team?

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Posted by on August 18, 2011 in News & Views

 

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Herman Cain: Clarence Thomas With Pizza Sauce.

02 Jul

"For my next song I would like to do 'Born This Way'. Hope you like it!"

Black conservative hate, hate, HATE playing the race card.   They really hate it something fierce.

Until they decide to pull it out and slap it on the table  Then they really love it something fierce.  In the New York Times, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain takes time out from sucking up to White conservatives to talk smack about what sort of Black man Barack Obama is.

Before you announced your campaign, you said that the liberal establishment is scared that “a real black man might run against Barack Obama.” Are you suggesting Obama isn’t really black?

A real black man is not timid about making the right decisions, that’s what I meant. Look, I’m not getting into this whole thing about President Obama. It is documented that his mother was white and his father was from Africa. If he wants to call himself black, fine. If he wants to call himself African-American, fine. I’m not going down this color road.

But you’re saying he’s not really a black man.

Not in terms of a strong black man that I’m identifying with. I identify with a strong black man like Martin Luther King Jr., or my dad, Luther Cain Jr., who didn’t have a lot of formal education, but he had a Ph.D. in common sense.

Who's the bigger nerd?

Common sense the son obviously didn’t inherit from the father.

Herman Cain questioning Barack Obama’s Blackness is like margarine questioning the flavor of butter.

This is just the right-wing flip side of the same line of garbage Cornel West was dishing out a few months after his hissy fit where he said the president had a problem with strong Black men.   It is a higher level way of playing the dozens.   All throughout Obama’s political life he’s been called out as not being
“authentically” Black enough.

I’ve grown a bit tired of this game.   Nobody has the right to question Obama’s Blackness.  He identifies himself as a Black man and that’s good enough for me.  Cain is simply repeating a riff already played by racial arsonists like Alan Keyes and Rush Limbaugh.  This is supposed to be the flaw in the president’s armor.  He’s not “Black” enough.   And who is the guy calling him out?  Herm Cain,  who runs around hugging up with White conservatives and proclaiming the Tea Party can’t be racist if they let him show up.

Cain makes a point of saying he’s not an African-American (but he is a “conservative” American) and he wants to call out Obama?  Negro, please!

This creep is a bad joke without a punchline. He is a vanity candidate with zero political experience who ran  pizza stores and is arrogant enough to claim that makes him suited to be the next president.

Cain is not running for president. He’s running for the publicity, the attention and the higher speaking fees he will be able to get from increasing his national profile. In a field of empty suits with experience but badly lacking charisma, Cain has plenty of the latter, if little of the former.  Now is a good time to be popular.  As we move closer to the election being experienced will matter more.  .

I’ll say it flat-out: Herman Cain has NO chance of winning the Republican nomination. NONE. He is a profoundly unserious man who enjoys throwing red meat to the right-wing base, but he’s covering territory Keyes marked long before Cain got there. There’s money to be made telling White conservatives what they want to hear. They will applaud and open up their wallets and even pay thousands of dollars to hear you run your rap.

But make him President? Please. Newt Gingrich isn’t going to be the Republican nominee. Neither is Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson or even Michelle Bachmann. In Cain we have a guy who has never held ANY political office and because he can whisper sweet nothings to the White Right that makes him a legitimate player?

"Where the White women at? Right here!"

Like his Georgia homeboy, Clarence Thomas, Cain is one of the Negro sell-outs who only mention race when it benefits them.   The rest of the time they could care less about the state of Black people in America.   They don’t even acknowledge their existence except when they want to point out how little in common they have with them.

The inference by Cain that he is a “real Black man” though this real Black man hates to be called an African-American. You can be a divider all through the primaries and then pivot in the general election and sell yourself as a unifying moderate. American voters like builders of consensus, not bullying extremists.

Cain will prove to be as appetizing to voters in the GOP primaries as a cold slice of pizza.

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2011 in News & Views, Rantology

 

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Herman Cain: Alan Keyes With Pizza Sauce

24 May

White guy congratulates the Herminator on his nice hat.

This year’s model of the token Negro conservative is Herman Cain, the 65-year-old former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and supposed Tea Party “favorite.”  Meaning:   Another House Negro who tells White folks exactly what they want to hear; an echo of what they already believe.

“It’s time to get real, folks. Hope and change ain’t working,” Cain said during his announcement  he was making a run to replace President Obama. “Hope and change is not a solution. Hope and change is not a job.

The Associated Press summed up Cain’s positions as follows:

Cain supports a strong national defense, opposes abortion, backs replacing the federal income tax with a national sales tax and favors a return to the gold standard. He said President Barack Obama “threw Israel under the bus” because he sought to base Mideast border talks partly on the pre-1967 war lines, and criticized the Justice Department for challenging Arizona’s tough crackdown on illegal immigration.

The problem with rookies like Cain is they have their rhetoric down cold.  It’s their policies that don’t show any thought  put behind them at all.   It’s predictable a right-wing Republican would have nothing good to say about President Obama’s call for Israel to move back to the 1967 borders, but watch Cain’s stumbling response in a Fox News interview and his foreign policy toward Israel can be summed up as Israel gets anything they want and the Palestinians get “nothing.”

This year’s Alan Keyes is just like the previous year’s model.  A rank amateur who has never held any elected office (he ran for the U.S. Senate in Georgia and lost in a three-way race) and while he doesn’t have any solutions, could he interest you in some nice slogans?

But unlike Keyes there is much to admire about “the Herminator.”  He’s an entrepreneur from Atlanta who when he worked for Pillsbury turned around a number of Burger King franchises and took on the challenge as CEO of raising the status of Godfather Pizza to third behind the Pizza Hut and Domino’s chains.  He’s also a right-wing radio host who survived Stage 4 colon and liver cancer.   The Herminator ain’t no wimp.

Which isn’t to say he’s not above sinking to the most tired of right-wing themes like President Obama not being an American citizen (“I respect people that believe he should prove his citizenship … He should prove he was born in the United States of America”) or how liberals aren’t simply wrong, but evil (“The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country. The objective of the liberals is to make America mediocre. … That’s their objective. Well, let me tell you something about mediocrity. It’s not in an American’s DNA to be mediocre.”)

Cain will be an entertaining figure at the Republican presidential debates, but if he really thinks the Tea Party or the Republican establishment is really going to conclude, “the best way to beat a Black liberal is with a Black conservative” he’s slammed one pizza too many.   Obama painted the White House black and the GOP desperately wants it back.  If Cain is lucky, he’d be considered for Secretary of Commerce in a President Romney or Pawlenty’s Cabinet.  His more likely fate is to be just another afterthought in the lower strata of the Republican also-rans.

Can Cain turn his long-shot bid into a serious contender based upon his ability to send a tingle up the leg for the White right (as this love note from Michael Medved illustrates)?  Unlikely in 2012 because outside of that narrow base, he barely merits a “Who he?” nationally. But in what is a pretty dull group of White guys running against him, Cain adds diversity and possesses a booming baritone that can reach the back of the room sans microphone.  At the very least he will raise his national profile.  That’s probably as good as its going to get because with only $13 in his campaign’s war chest the pizza man doesn’t have the dough to be much more than the bused-in entertainment at Republican debates.

"And when I'm elected there will be coupons for Godfather's Pizza for everyone. Except Muslims."

The problems of this country and this world are too big, too complex and too much for Cain who is short of policy and long on rhetoric.  If talking tough fixed anything Donald Trump would still be the GOP front-runner instead of just another guy who quit even before he started.   There are some whom believe we need a businessman elected president since we’ve tried politicians and that hasn’t worked out.

The reality is we just had a president with a M.B.A. and spent the surplus, slashed taxes in a time of war, created a massive new entitlement program for the elderly without funding it, ran up huge deficits and led the nation into near economic ruin.   Now Cain wants to the latest non-professional politician to advance the absurd notion that America can be turned around like an underperforming pizza joint?

Forget it.  Herman Cain can’t deliver.

 
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Posted by on May 24, 2011 in News & Views

 

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Cornel “the Crab” West Pulls Barack Back in the Barrel.

19 May

Hey, Barack, where's my invitation?

There is a tug-of-war between the Black Elites and the rest of Black America for the soul of Barack Obama. The issue is most Black folks believe Obama has one. The Elitists like Cornel West don’t think he does. I’ve talked about Princeton professor Cornel West going one from an admirer of the president to one of his most embittered critics.

In an interview West called Obama, “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”

Sympathy for Osama bin Laden?  That’s bad, but West made it worse.

“I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men. It’s understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation. When he meets an independent black brother, it is frightening. And that’s true for a white brother. When you get a white brother who meets a free, independent black man, they got to be mature to really embrace fully what the brother is saying to them. It’s a tension, given the history. It can be overcome. Obama, coming out of Kansas influence, white, loving grandparents, coming out of Hawaii and Indonesia, when he meets these independent black folk who have a history of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow and so on, he is very apprehensive. He has a certain rootlessness, a deracination. It is understandable.”

“He feels most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want,” he says. “He’s got two homes. He has got his family and whatever challenges go on there, and this other home. Larry Summers blows his mind because he’s so smart. He’s got Establishment connections. He’s embracing me. It is this smartness, this truncated brilliance, that titillates and stimulates brother Barack and makes him feel at home. That is very sad for me,”

West’s amateur psychoanalysis provoked sharp responses from Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart denouncing West as part of the “Blacker than thou” crowd and his slam of Obama making him “no better than a Birther.” 

But the epic smack down came from a Princeton colleague,  Melissa Harris-Perry, who wrote of West’s remarks,  “This comment is utter hilarity coming from Cornel West who has spent the bulk of his adulthood living in those deeply rooted, culturally rich, historically important black communities of Cambridge, MA and Princeton, NJ. And it is hard to see his claim that Obama is “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they” as anything other than a classic projection of his own comfortably ensconced life at Harvard and Princeton Universities. Harvard and Princeton are not places that are particularly noted for their liberating history for black men.

Princeton vs. Princeton: Let's get ready to rumble!


West is setting himself up as the arbiter of another man’s Blackness and some folks are just as full of spite applauding it like trained seals.

West is rapidly transitioning from being petty to being stupid.   Perhaps the most annoying thing about him is how he calls everyone a “dear brother” just before he tries to rip them a new asshole.   And West isn’t above being petty.  He’s still raw over not getting an invitation to the inauguration.

His questioning of the president’s Blackness got the most attention.  But it is his reaction to how he perceives Obama snubbed him during his inauguration that tells you best what playground West is on.

“I used to call my dear brother [Obama] every two weeks. I said a prayer on the phone for him, especially before a debate. And I never got a call back. And when I ran into him in the state Capitol in South Carolina when I was down there campaigning for him he was very kind. The first thing he told me was, ‘Brother West, I feel so bad. I haven’t called you back. You been calling me so much. You been giving me so much love, so much support and what have you.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re busy.’ But then a month and half later I would run into other people on the campaign and he’s calling them all the time. I said, wow, this is kind of strange. He doesn’t have time, even two seconds, to say thank you or I’m glad you’re pulling for me and praying for me, but he’s calling these other people. I said, this is very interesting. And then as it turns out with the inauguration I couldn’t get a ticket with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration. My mom says, ‘That’s something that this dear brother can get a ticket and you can’t get one, honey, all the work you did for him from Iowa.’ Beginning in Iowa to Ohio. We had to watch the thing in the hotel.

“What it said to me on a personal level,” he goes on, “was that brother Barack Obama had no sense of gratitude, no sense of loyalty, no sense of even courtesy, [no] sense of decency, just to say thank you. Is this the kind of manipulative, Machiavellian orientation we ought to get used to? That was on a personal level.”

What that says to ME is Cornel West has a sense of entitlement a mile wide, an over-sized (and easily bruised) ego a mountain high and a personal shallowness that is a mud puddle deep.

There’s nothing remotely “intellectual” about such petulant, infantile whining.    West is acting like a spurned lover mad because Obama hasn’t called him on Friday night, not like a critically thinking intellectual..

Somehow the professional crybabies like West and his booty boy, Tavis “Subprime” Smiley and their amen corner think Obama can propose a jobs program or an education program or a free bucket of chicken program that benefits ONLY Black folks.   Yeah, let’s see how long it takes Faux News to lose their minds over that.   Then let’s see how fast John Boehner and the rest of the Republican controlled House (where ever dime of the federal budget comes from) bust their humps to help Obama galvanize the Black vote for 2012.

Anybody see Cornel West's Afro in this barrel?

You can climb up to the top of the Empire State Building, jump off singing “I Believe I Can Fly” and the last thought that goes through your brain before its turned into mushy street pizza along with the rest of your dumb ass will be, “Damn, I Believe I CAN’T Fly.”

Gravity doesn’t care what lie you tell yourself.  Gravity always wins.   Well, the same principle applies to politics.  Politics doesn’t care what West or Smiley and their amen corner wants.  Politics only cares what is possible and it is IMPOSSIBLE for this president or any of his 43 predecessors to push through legislation for a job program that ONLY benefits 12 percent of the population.

West and Smiley can jump off the Empire State Building if they want to.  I hope there’s enough of their amen corner looking up to break their fall when they come crashing down.

This is not a conversation most people enjoy having and conversations people don’t enjoy having are precisely the kind true intellectuals should compel us to hold. But not the way West did running from one White man (Chris Hedges) to another (Ed Schultz) to denounce Obama as not being authentically Black enough. That’s NOT his call to make and he damn sure doesn’t need to be pandering to White liberals who enjoy watching the Negroes play “crabs in a barrel.”

I’m sorry, Dear Brother West, but you’re thinking emotionally, not strategically. Starting this kind of drama does nothing but get people irate. It sure won’t nudge them around to the perspective you’d like them to get to.

Maybe it’s time for Dear Brother West to bust out the Afro.  It seems to be cutting off the fresh air circulating to his brain.

"How come you don't call me anymore, Barack?"

 
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Posted by on May 19, 2011 in Rantology

 

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