In Which The White House Follows My Advice In The Usual Manner …
Which is to say, half-assedly. NYT, White House flack Gibbs says Obama doesn’t share Carter’s views:
While saying that he didn’t believe Mr. Obama had read or heard Mr. Carter’s assessment that much of the opposition these days to Mr. Obama was “based on racism,” Mr. Gibbs offered:
Well, let’s take a look at what former President Carter said. The answer that I’m going to give is the same answer that I gave on Sunday, when I was asked this question. The president does not believe that that criticism comes based on the color of his skin. We understand that people have disagreements with some of the decisions that we’ve made and some of the extraordinary actions that had to be undertaken by both this administration and previous administrations to stabilize our financial system, to ensure viability of our domestic auto industry.
You know, I told them they needed to continue the Bush war policy and they have … half-assedly.
I told them socialized medicine was a bad idea. They’re arriving at the same conclusion … half-assedly.
Then I told them Obama needed to repudiate the race-baiting of our bat-shit crazy America-bashing ex-president. And he did, half-assedly. Which is to say, his guy did, sort of. But wait, there’s more:
When pressed by the White House press corps as to why the president wouldn’t engage on a discussion of whether race is playing into the foment against Mr. Obama’s policies — which has surfaced palpably in recent days among prominent lawmakers and now former President Carter — Mr. Gibbs said he believed the former president’s words added to the dialogue. But the spokesman didn’t agree that this more-than-nascent uproar would become another of Mr. Obama’s “teachable moments.”
Mr. Gibbs added: “Obviously the president has and has always had great concerns about race relations in this country. He’s talked about them in speeches. He’s talked about them throughout his career in politics; believes we’ve made great strides, and obviously we’ve got work to do. But I don’t — I’m not sure I see this large national conversation going on right now.”
No, I’m not looking for any credit, thanks, just saying. But you know what, I haven’t seen much evidence the president does in fact have great concerns about race relations in this country. In the recent past, his expressions of concern have been highly situational, and triggered by his own narrow political interests. Specifically, when his own ox is being gored. The big teachable moments of the Obama era to date have been (1) when his minister was revealed as a flaming bigot, and Obama needed to defend himself, and (2) when he himself said something stupid and bigoted, from ignorance, about an honest cop, and he needed to defend himself. The rest of it has been just adulation on Obama, which is fine because he is after all a historic figure.
What Obama doesn’t get is that, as long as this opposition = racism story line is allowed to continue unchallenged, it ultimately reflects badly on him. Because it is an insult and a condescension for his prominent supporters to refuse to let him govern as anything but a black man. It is a failure of leadership for Obama not to come out himself and state firmly, purposefully and in a prominent venue, that opposition to his policies and even virulent opposition with sometimes offensive imagery do not represent racism, absent any actual expressions of racism. They represent American politics as usual. Much as we saw in the last eight years, and the eight years before that.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:52 pm on Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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