Tags
"A More Perfect Union", Ferguson, Hilary Clinton, Polarization, President Obama, Race in America
My daughter asked me last weekend, “Don’t you think {President} Obama should go to Ferguson?”
I immediately said, “No. I don’t think he should.” And I talked briefly about the issue of local and state control. Although there was increasing tension and violence (on both sides), I didn’t believe it was the President’s role to go to the scene of the turmoil in that city.
But I also felt that Pres. Obama could not go, even if he wanted to.
For a variety of reasons, he has become a polarizing figure in our country. (See Why Obama Won’t Give the Ferguson Speech His Supporters Want).
A number of years ago, perhaps it was in early 2007, I was spending a good deal of time in Orlando, FL, visiting my aging parents. In the evenings, after they had gone to sleep, I turned on the radio and was stunned to hear what was being said about Hilliary Clinton, then the leading Democratic candidate for the Presidency (Sen. Obama was not yet an announced candidate).
Both the talk show hosts and the callers seemed to me to be salivating at the thought of having Hilliary Clinton as the Democratic opponent to a Republican candidate. It is not an exaggeration to say that what I heard was “vile.” After listening for a few evenings, I felt sick by what I was hearing and stopped tuning into those stations.
When Obama announced his candidacy and began to challenge Clinton, I was intrigued. Tho I knew he hadn’t had the experience that Clinton had, I felt he was a fresh face and could possibly be a less polarizing candidate.
When Candidate Obama gave his ‘race’ speech in Philadelphia in 2008, A More Perfect Union, I was convinced he was the best shot we had as a country to move beyond our racial divide. After all, he was very different than a Jesse Jackson and had spent much of his life walking that thin line between a white and a black world. (You can read the full text of his speech or you can watch a video of it, 37+ minutes.)
How naive I was.
Now, six over seven years later, even if it was determined that a President’s presence in Ferguson was called for, Pres. Obama could not go. He is simply too polarizing and likely would only add to the tension and to the crisis. Not calm nor help it.
And so the question I’ve been wondering about, not only since Ferguson but for quite a while now is this:
Why has President Obama become such a polarizing figure?
A number of possible answers come to mind for me, but I would be interested in what readers of this website would say about that question.
As always, if you weigh in, and I hope you will, please keep your responses civil, no matter how strongly you may feel about this President, this Presidency, or what is happening in our country.
My hope is that we can have a thoughtful conversation in the Comment section of this post.
Ed Scholl said:
I’m not sure Pres. Obama is any more of a polarizing figure than Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. I just finished reading Nigel Hamilton’s 2nd book on Pres. Clinton (Clinton: Mastering the Presidency) and was reminded how hated Clinton (and Hillary, especially for her effort to reform health care) was by so many on the right, esp. Congressional leaders like Newt Gingrich and the Special Prosecutor Ken Starr…). Bush was surely reviled by the left, though perhaps less so than Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think our political polarization can be traced to the advent of talk radio and cable news that gain viewers and revenue, not by presenting balanced, nuanced, versions of the news, but by looking for scandals (or inventing them) and presenting extremist points of view. Sadly I don’t think a Walter Cronkite would be hired by any news program today. So I think the political polizaration we see is less about Obama and more about the kind of society we are and the type of news media we have chosen to consume.
Land Wayland said:
It isn’t Mr. Obama who is doing the polarizing but a desperate political culture whose leaders who know full well that they don’t represent anywhere close to a majority of the electorate, a culture that does not have one issue where they can gain leverage, a culture that has not one idea that will actually advance the national dialog.
All political leaders seek to lead their followers to some place other than the present, either forward to a glorious future or backward to a golden past. Because the leaders of this political culture have no hopes for the future, all they can do is try to lead a return to yesterday, but this would be a trip to a past that never existed.
And since they have no new ideas to offer, they follow one of the oldest pieces of advice in the political handbook: “If you have nothing to say, abuse the opposition’s leader. And if there is nothing bad to say about the leader, abuse his wife or make it up. All is fair in love and war and politics”.
There are two countries located in the middle of the North American continent and they have been here for more than 200 years. One country is a progressive country that believes in the future and the idea that things can be made better, a country that is located primarily in the northern and western States that believes in collective efforts and believes in the ability of government to solve large scale problems. The other country is a conservative country that believes in the past and the idea that things used to be better, a country that is located in the south and middle States that believes in individual effort and believes that government is the enemy and has no ability to do anything except oppress and steal.
It has been thus since the United States was born and was the conflict that led to the Articles of Confederation, the Civil War, and the prolonged fights over Income Tax, Prohibition, Social Security and now Obama Care .
The names of their political parties have changed several times (the Whigs are now the Republicans and the Dixiecrats and Ku Klux Klan are now the Tea Party) but it is still the conflict between those who have hope for the future and those who are highly skeptical. It is the conflict between those who believe that government can be led by good leaders and is the best way to solve big problems and those who believe that government will only be led by incompetent corrupt leaders and cannot be trusted to do anything except provide police, fire and military protection.
It is the conflict between those who believe that education for all is the best way to move into the future and those who believe that education, beyond learning to read and write and do basic math, is dangerous.
It is the conflict between the culture/country that has its roots in farming and the culture/country that is technological and industrial. This is a conflict that has existed since those who built the first castle or pyramid or mastaba or temple tried to unite the hinterlands to form a collective that would be responsible for the welfare of all and who were rejected by those who believe that only one’s family can be trusted and every one else is highly suspect.
It is no accident that MIT and Cal-Tech and Harvard and Stanford and Yale and the huge majority of outstanding colleges are located in the “Yes We Can” States and there are no such schools in the “No We Can’t” States. It was no accident that Washington D.C. was located on the border between these two countries.
Because Mr. Obama so effectively represents the culture of the North and West and is so clear about what he means when he speaks, and because the culture of the South and Middle has nothing to say in return, they have chosen to try to shout down this calm and civil man.
But when the discourse reaches this stage, it has become a campaign of desperation and, as has happened time and again in American history, it will fail. The only question is when.
Land Wayland
Bill Plitt said:
Thanks for this opportunity Rick. I concur with the responders above, especially Ed’s perspective on the role of talk shows, the media and the like. I have to remind myself, that we live in a 50-50 society. We are in fact polarized by our politics, even before Obama became President.
I think the responses by the Republican party leaders in the House and Senate soon after he was elected for his first term, set the stage. They called for defeating him at ever turn. Their rhetoric inflamed any common ground that may have been there.
Some would say he erred on the side of reconciliation early on by offering to accommodate some of the demands of those leaders, and in doing so lost the respect of his base, disappointed those who had voted for change from both parties and wasted valuable time in doing so. He was blindsided of course, with an economic crisis of huge proportions, and some say the actions of his administration saved all of us on both sides of the table from disaster.
Perhaps the jury is still out on Obama’s responsibility for our division.
BP
Anonymous said:
Your (first) respondent is correct that the noisy new news media are part of the problem.
But we liberals underestimate how racially bigoted the nation remains. It’s closeted and repressed; but it’s absolute. Obama is half black–that’s polarizing to an immature nation.
I grew up aware that Nixon was a bad man. He had slandered Helen Gahagan Douglas who was married to a Jewish actor. He helped HUAC persecute Americans. But the immature nation did not want to believe that a glad-hander who played the political game could possibly be bad, so it elected him twice. NOW we know he was an anti-Semite racist criminal. The proof exists in the tapes.
Americans love surfaces–shiny toys that buzz and ring and that can be swiped instead of understood; people who can afford overpriced clothing and cars; people who think that fame=significance; people who can carry a tune for 6 seconds on a website; substances which create insensibility; and, above all, hysteria rather than reason; stimulus rather than response; exaggeration rather than truth; zombies rather than people; guns rather than life; “legitimate rape”; ice bucket challenges rather than social welfare programs; surface rather than substance. Teenage nation.
Over the next decades, the architecture of the campaign against a sitting Negro US President will be revealed; there will be “schock and dismay.”
HE is not a polarizing figure–this country is polarized. He didn’t cause it; he’s as much of a victim of it as everyone else.
If/when a woman is elected president, SHE will become the victim of the same forces.
Remember, corporations are people.
(Jon Stewart has been on vacation since before we lost Robin Williams; my support system is on vacation. )
Todd Endo said:
The previous writers have made the points on my list. Whoever was president in 2008-16 would have faced a barrage of attacks.
Who would have had less? Maybe Romney as a mainstream Republican, wealthy, white–but Mormon? Maybe not. Biden, maybe not (but, maybe in the George W. Bush mold). One of the endangered Democratic senators might have escaped the vicious attacks, but they couldn’t get nominated.
One characteristic that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that besides being half-black, Obama is half-foreigner, half-immigrant. I’m quite amazed (and shouldn’t be) about the vitriol that is spewed on undocumented immigrants, and, in fact, immigrants in general. “Birther” movement?! One little indication is that in this morning’s Post online, there are a series of comments about the LL World Series, and two commenters managed to work in their view that players should be required to be citizens of the US in order to qualify to play on an American team. Really! I guess the idea of a nation of immigrants from all over the world (meaning of all races) just doesn’t sit well with some people—a large segment of the American population.
Todd Endo
Ellen Kessler said:
I have to agree with the previous posts–a divided, vitriolic Congress is looking for a scapegoat and what is better than an African-American president? A group of disgruntled people who want the “good ol’ days” (but fails to define what was good about them–we know that to them it means a white Protestant minority in power and a multi-racial majority that is silent) and a large group of white millionaires want more power than they have already–and of course they can all blame an African-American president. Not only is Obama the ultimate “other” to these groups, but he speaks like a white man, was educated with the best WASPS, has a brilliant, impressive wife and beautiful children whom he protects……in other words, he frightens those above and below him because he is so much like them, only better.
Not that Obama is completely blameless–perhaps he compromised too much at first, gave in too quickly in the hope of workable compromises which never came, and made naive foreign policy pronouncements and decisions. Perhaps he was too distant, too cool, too superior, especially at first. Some skepticism is warranted–Obama is neither a perfect man nor perfect president–and some disappointment seems inevitable and warranted. But as the previous writers have observed, our country is divided and I doubt that Mother Theresa could have satisfied those on the Far Right (“What–more money to treat the poor? They should be working, supporting themselves and not demanding benefits from us!”) I do believe that Obama cares for all the people, especially those whom we all should help; his health care bill is critical for our country, and if it is inartful, clumsy, and needs revision in part, we must have it nonetheless. The fact that it has been proposed and passed by a black President only makes it more of a target for the opposition.
I supported Obama enthusiastically. I am disappointed in some of his decisions and some of the paths he has taken, especially not more overtly supportive of Israel against the world. I am frightened by radical Muslim terrorists who want to change the world into a Califate and will stop at nothing to do it; Israel is only its first focus, and after that, the world. I don’t think Obama is aware of the threat to society (perhaps because of his background). But he is a victim, nevertheless, of the hatred permeating our society in general and the bigotry directed at black Americans specifically.
Carrie said:
Several of the previous comments show that this is a hard issue to discuss. Any criticism of Obama is called racism. Not accepting all new ideas is called holding on to the past. The new media is a joke. The major sources never give both sides fairly. I find it is better to listen to BBC or other foreign networks.
I keep thinking about when Obama or any of his associates like Nancy P.or Reid ever compromised. Over the years, I have found that decisions are better when people work together and come to a common agreement- neither extremely right or left. To me and many of my friend we see Obama behaving more like dictator then a president.
I have not seen as much racial, religious , intellectual or class hatred since the 50s and 60s