Race Card
The moment has arrived for President Obama to start working on his legacy as the first post-racial president. Either that, or to face a legacy of having the most racially divisive presidency in modern American history.
With the opposition to his health-care proposal and its imminent failure, the race card is being heavily played on Obama’s behalf by a wide and somewhat prominent array of people on the left … from comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd to U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., to former President Jimmy Carter … to smear dissent.
With the latest loss of fringe GOP support in Olympia Snowe, it increasingly looks like Obama’s health-care initiative is going down. The first black president is facing the prospect of losing his major domestic agenda item. Not only will he look weak and inept, but so will his majority party.
The nation is consumed by white racist rage (Dowd), which is on the verge of violence, with dissent signalling a KlanRead more at www.julescrittenden.com
resurgence (Johnson), and under threat of other varieties of violent, disaffected white supremacist extremism (U.S. Department of Homeland Security).
Barack Obama is smart enough to know this is not true. He knows he has sold his initiative poorly, that his timing is bad and his politicking is worse.
At some point in the not-too-distant future, whether his health-care plan continues to crash and burn or is resurrected in a new figleaf evolution, the president needs tell the nation that it is OK to disagree with him, that political dissent and even anger do not equal racism. [...]Not simply as a throwaway remark in an interview with a TV news anchor, or an aside in speech. He could invite U.S. representatives Joe Wilson and Johnson, former President Carter, New York Times scribbler Dowd, shrill standup act Garfalo and a lot of Tea Party organizers over for beers, but that approach was trite before he tried it last time, and this situation is more serious than a Harvard professor’s attention-grabbing antics. Given the level to which Democratic race-baiting has now risen, it is becoming apparent that Obama is going to have to do it in a more purposeful and sober manner, possibly in a major prime-time speech.
The good will has since been squandered by a string of actions, inactions and utterances, but mainly, apparently, by his insistence on pushing his bad ideas about health care at the wrong time, without preparing the ground.
Obama can let a growing chorus of prominent Americans call his failure racism and his opponents racists, a development which is itself driving a deeper partisan wedge and heightening the rancor and bitterness. He can let it further demean our national dialogue and intimidate speech. He can let it be his excuse, a smear in the history books. Or he tell America and the world firmly that in this country, political dissent does not equal racism. He will then have shown himself to be a statesman, who is worthy of respect no matter whether you agree with his politics and policies or not.
It is time for President Obama to take the race card off the table.
Read more >>>
