I can tell that I must be getting old from all the people
telling me how young I look. At fifty-two I may look like
forty-seven but I certainly don’t look like twenty-seven. The
compliment does not help me very much, other than to reassure me
that I’m wearing my fifty-two-ness lightly. But their need to say
it serves as an ominous reminder of the clock ticking merrily away
towards oblivion.
This in a way disturbs me about Barack Obama more than
anything else. We hear so much about what a new breed of politician
he is that it drives home the reality of his dreary oldness.
Beneath the dashing façade, the insouciant wink, the casual wave,
beats the heart of the dreariest old political hack imaginable. He
is a card-carrying member of the cliché clique, the bromide
brigade, the platitude attitude and the banal cabal.
Uggh!
Case in point, his latest contribution to the national
conversation, quoted in a new book by Kenneth Walsh. Obama says
that the Tea Party movement is inspired by race, by a sense that
minorities are getting all these goodies from Washington. They are
motivated, the President thinks, by “a subterranean
agenda.”
This is such a piece of hackery and flackery, of puffery
and guffery, of foolery and fakery. Politics at its rankest
masquerading as analysis at its frankest. There is so much dirty
laundry being aired here that I simply had to make a list. Every
trick in the old, old playbook is on display.
1. ZERO PROOF. There is no
evidence to support such a contention, nor is any offered. The most
powerful man in the country picks on a bunch of little people who
put their lives aside at great personal cost to make a political
statement and he accuses them of base motives without
proof.
2. WHY NOW? If the issue is
that these people feel shortchanged by all the government largesse
to minorities, this is hardly the time to organize. None of the new
laws, like Obamacare or the wall Street reforms, are designed to
help minorities in particular. Believe me, if there was a stat
showing that blacks were more likely to be uninsured than whites,
we would have heard it repeated ad nauseam.
3. WHY NOT BELIEVE THEIR
WORDS? The Tea Party is a movement with very definite ideas,
expressed in a spate of books and articles. This is not a group of
conspiracy thinkers or Trekkies. They offer a straightforward
“terranean” explanation for their positions. These positions are
certainly defensible at the very least; nothing contrived or
suspicious about them. In fact, the Tea Party gave up the best shot
at Republican Senate seats in Nevada and Connecticut to be true to
their ideology.
4. WHY IMPUTE AN EVIL IDEAL? It is one thing
to observe that people are abandoning ideals in favor of
self-interest. It is certainly arguable that Tea Party commitment
to fiscal conservatism is a case of liking their money better than
they like the wonderful improvements in society wrought by activist
government. But to say that they care more about an anti-minority
evil ideology than about their own pocketbook —
to skip selfishness as an easy motive and choose
malevolence instead - is gratuitously offensive.
5. WHY NOT ASSUME NORMALCY? It would be very
classy for the President to say he has no doubt the opponents of
his legislation only want what’s best for the country. He
understands their concerns about massive shifts in lifestyle. He
empathizes with their fears. He realizes the pressures felt by
ordinary citizens during tough economic times. But he is confident
they will look back later when things are more settled and they
will see it his way. Why treat them as creeps?
6. WHY NOT PRAISE THEM? It would be even more
classy to laud folks for getting involved and learning more about
the political process. Imagine if he made a surprise visit to a Tea
Party rally in Washington and asked to speak. Keep up the good
citizenship, he would say, but keep an open mind and promise me
that if things turn out well you will be receptive to change. His
poll numbers would jump ten points in five minutes, and he would
lose nothing.
Instead, we get this garbage about the Tea Party being
prejudiced against coffee and trying to keep the leaves at the
bottom of the cup.
What a shame! They offer hope and change, but what we get
is bad faith and ill will and mean spirit. When it comes to
subterranean agendas, all I see is the POTUS calling the kettle
black.
