Animosity & Presidential Credibility

The widely scattered accusations of racism against the President's opposition don't always bother with any kind of argument, but when they do it usually goes like this: the intensity of anti-Obama passion proves racist motives. My favorite example is my Keloland Colleague, David Newquist, who concedes that a lot of Democrats hated George W. Bush about as much as a lot of Republicans hate President Obama. But that, he argues, is because Bush betrayed the country. Since Obama didn't, the anti-Obama passion must be racist. I think I got his argument right. If I didn't, I apologize in advance.

One trouble with that argument is that is amounts to this: our passions are okay, your passions are suspect. Another problem is that it is forgets the fact that all this has happened before. Bill Clinton was the focus of almost as much animosity as his two predecessors. I remember conservatives that I know claiming that Clinton had arranged murders back in Arkansas. Some also argued that Clinton had used the State Highway Patrol to act as procurers for his sexual appetites. Oh wait, that one turned out to be true. Anyway, the collapse of the Clinton's health care reform generated enough animosity for anyone.  Despite some rumors to the contrary, Bill Clinton was White. 

I do not and never have hated any of these Presidents. How could I? They keep me ceaselessly entertained. I thought that the animosity against all three was frequently over the top. But what does explain the animosity against the current President?

Mickey Kaus at Slate has an explanation:

The more I think about it, the more the townhall anti-Obama anger isn't explained completely by the issues. There's also something about Obama himself-. But that something (or the main something) isn't his race. It's that he's a relative newcomer, as Presidents go--an unknown quantity, an enigma, with a short track record and patches of that record left fuzzy. That means opponents can fill in the blanks with ominous possibilities. It makes paranoia more rational, if you will.

I certainly think that is part of it. Obama is more of a blank that Presidents usually are. When people can't figure out what someone is doing or saying, they often figure that that's because the person is question is hiding something unpleasant.

But I think a more important reason is that President Obama has given us a lot of reasons to doubt his credibility. Stephanie Condon at CBS News has a list of five health care promises that Obama doesn't intend to keep. For example, candidate Obama promised that there wouldn't be an individual mandate to purchase health insurance. He surely isn't going to keep that one, if the Baucus plan passes!

But if he is willing to break a lot of the promises he made when campaigning, what about the promises he is making now? Many Americans think that you can't believe anything the President says, and they have a point.

And then there was his manifest refusal to be honest about taxation during his flurry of appearances this weekend. Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar (AP and Real Clear Politics) has this:

Memo to President Barack Obama: It's a tax. Obama insisted this weekend on national television that requiring people to carry health insurance — and fining them if they don't — isn't the same thing as a tax increase. But the language of Democratic bills to revamp the nation's health care system doesn't quibble. Both the House bill and the Senate Finance Committee proposal clearly state that the fines would be a tax.

And the reason the fines are in the legislation is to enforce the coverage requirement.

"If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code, and you tell the IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax," said Clint Stretch, head of the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm. "If you don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be from the IRS."

The President's Clintonesque refusal to acknowledge the plain meaning of the word "tax" in an exchange with George Stephanopoulos is a mini-comic routine. You can get it at the Wall Street Journal. If you require someone to pay money to the government, that's a tax, even if the money is spent only on you. If part of the money raised is spent on anyone or anything else, that is undeniably a tax. But the President steadfastly denied that a tax was a tax.

We all think we don't like to be lied to. Most of us, maybe, don't mind it nearly as much when someone is telling us what we want to hear. When they aren't, that is reason enough to get very angry. A lot of the animosity toward the President comes from the fact that he has no idea how to talk to us honestly, or how not to make promises he can't keep.

Comments

[Dick]

Geez, Blanchard, I thought that was a cartoon of you! Silly me.

[KB]

Obviously you are a very careless and uniformed person. My jester hat has four bells.

[A.I.]

And there are plenty of Republican politicians who have cut "taxes" only to find themselves short of revenue so they then impose "user fees". Also comical, no?

[A.I.]

As to the racism thing, I don't know to what degree it plays a role in the animosity directed toward Obama. I do know there seem to be a few elected Republicans giving credence to Carters statements, the latest being Roy Blunt: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/roy-blunt-r-mo-tells-raci_b_292260.html

[KB]

A.I.: Yes, Republicans who promise not to raise taxes and then raise taxes and call them something else are just as comical. But just right now it's a Democrat on the main stage.

As to Roy Blunt's monkey joke, I'm sorry but you guys on the left have turned into an inquisition, pouring over every word for evidence of heresy. There was nothing the least bit racist about the joke itself. The idea of playing the ball where the monkey throws it is clearly about the frequent absurdity of bureaucracy and political compromise. It has nothing in particular to do with President Obama. And it's actually rather funny.