During last year’s American presidential campaign, President Obama’s supporters expostulated that racist conservatives would moderate their opposition to the second-term Obama since he would be ineligible for a third stint. This claim served as the preferred incantation in conventional liberal circles and within the increasingly stolid black elite. The claim was oft stated not because it was true but because its proponents wanted it to be so. While beauty may lodge in the eye of the beholder, truth does not necessarily reside in popularly-held opinion.
Far from airtight and more akin to a bucket of many holes, this fake amulet vanished quickly after the inauguration. During the election, a few observers questioned this conventional wisdom and were berated for their heresy. Subsequent events have told their tale. Vindicated are those who questioned convention. The points are raised not to embarrass or exalt any one but so that we may better understand the politics dynamics at hand to better glean what is to happen next, be it to avail ourselves to the approach of good tidings or brace ourselves for a coming storm.
Those who believed Republicans would sheathe their weapons underestimated conservative animus. Discord and discourse regarding race stand as the most important traits of the nation’s political history. For conservative Republicans to relent in the hunt against Obama would be to forfeit their way of life and self-definition. It would be akin to asking them to inaugurate the local chapter of the Black Panthers or the Black Muslims. This was never in the cards.
Conservatives want the President out of the White House not because of what he has done. The man has been a loyal servitor, catering to elite interests. He has done the objective interests of the racists no harm. Not seeking meaningful change in the political economy, he has been a custodian of the unfair way things are not a visionary attempting to turn them into the equitable things they could be.
Conservatives detest President Obama for the future their racism makes them fear he represents. The very idea of a black leader, no matter how loyal, incites racist fear of rebellion and fire on the plantation. They need to stop Obama not because of what he may do but because of what may come after him.
Should Obama succeed, other Black commanders-in-chief will come and they might not fit the pliable mold of Barack Obama or Colin Powell. One may have the humanitarian zeal of Martin Luther King or the progressive fire of Malcolm X. If this happens, all will be lost from their standpoint. Thus, they seek to end the procession before it gains unstoppable momentum. They believing turning Obama into an abject failure will make the nation abjure the very thought of another Black president for a long time to come. This is their obsession. It would be easier to coax a mule to bray the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” than to dissuade racists from this crusade. This psychology propels the current Republican trolling to simultaneously implicate President Obama in three current scandals. They seek to batter the man like a human piñata. Instead of using a blunt bat, their preferred instrument shall be the pickaxe.
Those who read this column know I carry no water for President Obama. He is too fixated on quarter-steps and petite, half-measures given the situation at hand. As such, he has been a mellifluous troubadour for the powerful forces threatening to lay American democracy low while promoting military imperialism abroad. Yet, he is no worse that the rest of the political lot and comparatively better than most.
Therefore, when the racists start playing the game of lynching-the-loyal-Black servant, the rest of us must stand at alert. Blacks must do this not because Obama is a savior; he is not. He unwittingly plays the role of a doorman for progressive Blacks as much as he does so willingly for conservative Whites. Progressive Blacks and racist Whites peer at each other across a great chasm. What is condign for one is grotesque to the other. Conservatives hope to crush Obama to preclude progressive figures from rising to national prominence. Black progressives must recognize that racist success in painting Obama as an abject failure could cripple Black political aspirations for a generation or longer. Given the generally threadbare condition of Black America such a pratfall would visit a disaster as heavy as that imposed by the premature abortion of the Civil Rights Era. Black progressives may not like Obama but they cannot stand idly as racists encircle him. They must lend targeted political aid not because Obama in and of himself is worth saving. They must do so because Obama is a symbol. He must be preserved from gross failure so that we can maintain the hope of a subsequent better coming along who holds closer to heart the interests of poor and working people, both Black and White.
The initial scandal by which the racists seek Obama’s throat is the Benghazi consulate tragedy. The second involves the Internal Revenue Service. An office within the IRS placed conservative groups to a higher level of scrutiny before approving their non-profit tax exempt status. The third involves the Justice Department seizing the communication records of journalists in order to track down leaked classified information regarding terrorism. The three matters have a few common strands. Senior level officials erred in all three. However, the mistakes occurred at the department level. No evidence implicates the president. Yet, Republicans consistently howl that each scandal is more ominous than the Watergate scandal that felled President Nixon four decades ago. Taken together, the conservatives claim, the scandals represent the specter of American democracy being manacled by the nation’s fist Black president.
Something sinister lies at the heart of the accusations. The racists portray the three situations as either nefarious criminal cover ups masking Administration incompetence or abject signs of an Obama assault against the fundamental tenets of American governance. The claims are outlandish but dismissing them as post-election distemper underestimates Republican mastery of racial politics. The Republicans don’t need to prove anything to achieve their objective. Their goal is to stoke racist ire by constantly harping on themes such as this Black president with a Muslim name and African father allowing four White Americans to fall to the sword wielded by crazed North African Muslims. The subliminal message is that White males, who once ran the nation, become endangered once non-whites take leadership.
Republicans portray the IRS and Justice situations as evidence of a vengeful president unable to restrain himself from using the vast instruments of government power to target opponents. This supports the myth of Blacks lacking the self restraint necessary for leadership. The message is that a Black leader will impale democracy by turning a system that took two centuries to build it into a third world dictatorship within the span of a few brief but intensely decadent years.
Against this backdrop, President Obama made two speeches demonstrating that he remains a conflicted man lacking a unified theme. One speech revealed him still trying to negotiate with and succor intractable political enemies at the expense of a Black community that so strongly supports him. The second speech showed glimpses of a man painfully aware America has been walking the wrong path too long and wary that he risked his personal legacy should he continue blindly along the trail set before him.
President Obama gave the commencement address at Morehouse College, the school that produced Dr. King and other Black leaders. While talking to a largely Black audience, Obama was really giving reassurance to White America. The underlying message was that he served to keep the Black community in check despite their dismal, depression-like economic predicament. For him, the speech was an opportune defensive moment countering the Republican tirade that he sought to transform America into a big Kenya. For the Black community, the speech was an offense; but given the continued euphoria over his reelection, little offense was taken by most Black people. However, a growing number of Black intellectuals are starting to condemn the obvious presidential penchant for speaking down to Black people.
To us, he preaches a harsh, strict sermon reserved for no other group. His address gave credence to the racial stereotype of Blacks being underachieving shufflers demanding favors instead of seeking fair opportunity to prove their worth. He said what White conservatives love to hear and wished they could publicly say without being labeled racist. Obama sought their favor by taking on the curious, incorrect responsibility of expressing their racist thoughts for them.
Given that his Administration is being hurled against the jagged shoals by opponents who seek noting but to practice their racist creed against him, the height of irony was how the president soft-shoed around the issue of extant racism during his Morehouse address. In all, the speech was a subtle exercise in self-hate, an excursion unbecoming the first or any Black president. If he seeks greatness, he must stop using his own community as a whipping post. This practice does not speak of greatness. It speaks of opportunism joined by an ample sprinkling of political cowardice.
The second speech was more visionary and statesmanlike. In this address, he raised the need to temper the fight against terrorism lest America mortgage its democratic soul in the effort to secure itself against terror.
The speech had its blemishes. His defense of the drone bombing and targeted assassinations of key terrorist figures rang hollow. He can boast of killing bin Laden but to boast that the world is safer because of it is a questionable claim better left unspoken. The network bin Laden spawned has gained strategic foothold in more nations now (add Libya and Syria to the list) than when the man was alive. Moreover, the guidelines the President outlined for restricting civilian deaths from drones will likely prove ineffective because of the inhumane way the Administration determines who is a terrorist. (By their definition anyone within close proximity of a notorious figure is also presumed to be a terrorist. This included unarmed women and children.) Also, allowing the CIA to retain some of its drone program is a dangerous loophole. Overtime, the CIA can ramp its program without public scrutiny or knowledge of the escalation.
Yet, the speech was a solid attempt to steer America from the overly militaristic approach it has adopted toward political terrorism. This implicitly acknowledging the threat cannot be answered by force alone. Statesmanship and wiser policy toward both friend and foe in troubled regions are necessary. This may prove to be the most important foreign policy speech the President will give.
His harshest critics have already harpooned the speech as a slick attempt to divert attention from the triplet scandals. On this matter, President Obama deserves the benefit of the doubt. This policy shift was occasioned by something more than a wily effort to avert public attention from the scandals three.
Perhaps President Obama had a foretaste of history and was startled by its bitter sting. He looked in the future and saw the future glaring back, asking why a Black man and a lawyer fully aware of the nation’s checkered history concerning injustice to non-whites would brand his name to a shadowy policy condoning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens without judicial review of the action. Such a policy is unprecedented and shall stain the legacy of any leader who vigorously pursues it.
Even more profoundly, President Obama probably fears America is losing its moral balance by engaging in this amorphous, indefinite war against terror. A nation constantly at war with others becomes a nation not at peace with itself. Democracy becomes choked when placed in such hostile soil.
America may be more secure now than prior to 9/11 but it is also more afraid. The spirit of the nation has shrunk. A nation that once prided its open national character has become petulant and suspicious. In the quest to cocoon itself from harm, it risks distancing itself from the virtues of liberty as well as from the practical and concrete achievements these virtues have helped wrought over the years.
In the end, the usually detached Obama may have sensed this transformation of the American psyche and decided he did not want his name on it. Yet, this partially visionary stance on one issue, albeit encouraging, does not a good legacy make. He needs to invoke the same perspective to materially alter his domestic policies for it will be on domestic policies that his name will either be etched in stone or dragged through the mud.
This past week a deadly tornado ripped through the state of Oklahoma. The sad event was a metaphor for the destruction of middle-class America. Conservatives and liberals harangue in bitter debate over gay rights, gun control and other emotive social issues. In so doing, they engage in major wars on minor battlefields. These social issues will never determine the fate of America. Nor will the war on terror. No modern nation or ancient empire has ever been brought low by gays undermining society or by fringe groups plotting sporadic violence against it. However numerous empires have been brought to destruction by the naked avarice of their elites.
Overconcentration of money and power in the hands of an increasingly smaller elite has doomed republics and kingdoms alike. When the rich and powerful are allowed to become too much themselves, they seize control of nearly all instruments of government then impose laws that allow them to profiteer without risk at the expense of the many who are left without hope. Eventually, the people become thralls to debt. No matter how subtly camouflaged, debt is a sure footpath to a servitude incompatible with democracy. So it was in ancient Greece and so it is with modern America. In a certain sense, the quality of American democracy has more to fear from decisions taken in the boardrooms of its largest financial firms than from gay marriage on the domestic front or from violent jihadists abroad.
The national security speech offers the slight hope that events may push President Obama toward greater recognition of the role he should play in both international and domestic affairs. He has taken a first step in the foreign policy arena. He must now shed timidity in the domestic arena and approach the transformation of the American political economy in bold strokes. Only then will he become the agent of change his campaign trumpeted. Until then, he remains correctly accused by progressives of false advertisement and falsely accused by racists for being a progressive.
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