SALON

Thursday, Sep 17, 2009 10:17 AM UTC

Obama gets the Clinton treatment

Anybody shocked by nasty GOP attacks on Obama must have forgotten what happened to the last Democratic president

By

Topics: Barack Obama, Republican Party, Al Gore, Paul Shirley

Obama gets the Clinton treatmentPresident Barack Obama in April, 2008

From a political standpoint, the worst thing about blaming President Obama’s perceived difficulties on racism is that there’s not a damn thing anybody can do about it. Determined bigots can’t be shamed, while many see invoking race as more an excuse than an explanation.

Democrats who cry racism risk looking like whiners fearful they’re losing the argument. Not to mention illogical. If Obama’s approval rating among white voters has dropped from 63 to 43 percent, as the Los Angeles Times recently documented, it’s not because they suddenly heard about his African father.

Nor should there be any reason to panic. As Joan Walsh has pointed out, 43 is the exact percentage of whites that supported Obama in 2008. Rep. Joe Wilson’s, R-S.C., rude outburst during the president’s speech to Congress spoke for itself, along with his longtime support for flying the Rebel flag over South Carolina’s capitol.

No, Democrats won’t win South Carolina’s electoral votes in 2012. Nor Alabama’s or Mississippi’s. This should not come as a shock.

Besides, there’s absolutely nothing new about the abuse directed at Obama. Pundits like the Washington Post’s Colbert I. King, as my friend Bob Somerby never tires of pointing out, have arrived rather late at the party.

“There’s something loose in the land,” King opines, “an ugliness and hatred directed toward Barack Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, that takes the breath away. The thread of resentment is woven through conservative commentary, right-wing radio and cable TV shows, all the way to Capitol Hill.”

So where was King when Bill and Hillary Clinton were accused of murder by Rush Limbaugh and in videotapes peddled by the Rev. Jerry Falwell? The latter’s sanctimonious mug nevertheless continued to appear constantly on network TV talk shows as an honored representative of America’s devout Christians.

(I once got to ask Falwell, on camera, if the Ninth Commandment against bearing false witness was more or less important than the Sixth, forbidding adultery. He had little choice but to affirm that Scripture accorded them equal gravity. He alibied that he didn’t know if the grotesque charges in “The Clinton Chronicles” were true or not.)

How about when Democratic nominee Al Gore was depicted as a fraud and serial liar through the use of phony allegations (“invented the Internet”) and manufactured quotes on the front page of, yes, the Washington Post? Where was King then? Studiously polishing his fingernails, evidently.

The same is true of establishment pundits such as the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, who participated gleefully in sliming the previous several Democratic candidates. (Dowd and Rich invented the myth that Gore falsely claimed to be the inspiration for the novel and movie “Love Story.”) So now they don the shining armor of multiculti liberalism? Please.

“King and the rest of his cohorts drank the Kool-Aid during (the 90s),” writes Somerby. “Now, they pretend that the era never occurred — and they express their vast surprise when the same lunacy is aimed at Obama. They are amazed to see what’s being said about this new Democratic president. And they diddle their cowardly brains: It must be his race, they proclaim.”

Actually, I’d bet a lot that Rep. Joe Wilson’s a big Condoleezza Rice fan — or would claim to be. And sure, we left-leaning intellectuals know how to deconstruct that pose; I sometimes think detecting covert racism must be all they teach in American universities anymore. In my day, we searched for hidden phallic symbols in Emily Dickinson poems.

But I digress. It’s important to remember that the same hysteria attended FDR’s creation of the New Deal. America was going communist! Abandoning the Constitution! Casting aside our sacred freedoms! That’s how the GOP’s Henny Penny faction reacted to Social Security.

Panic may abate after Congress passes healthcare reform — although if Obama signs a law requiring mandatory health insurance without a public option to restrain industry price gouging, there could be hell to pay.

But unease runs deeper. In my hometown paper today, there’s word of a factory manufacturing stainless-steel sinks shutting down, a sawmill cutting production to one day a week and Eli Lilly & Co. announcing the elimination of 5,500 jobs.

Meanwhile, Obama’s on Wall Street, talking about financial reforms, which mainly reminds people that these jokers damn near gambled the economy away, took billions in taxpayer bailouts, then kept awarding each other obscene bonuses as if nothing had happened. Fear and anger won’t diminish until sawmills and factories start hiring again.

Alas, it appears to be considered bad form in the Obama White House to keep reminding voters that it was President George W. Bush’s economic and tax policies — the very miracle cures now championed by Fox News celebrities, politicians like Rep. Joe Wilson and “Teabaggers” alike — that caused this economic Katrina to happen.

It’s the economy, stupid.

© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association

Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 115 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Journalists file suit against Manning's trial secrecy: Plaintiffs including Glenn Greenwald and Julian Assange demand press, public access to trial and documents
143 points144 points | comment
vote
Report: Nearly a quarter of Americans struggle to afford food
123 points124 points | 12 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
121 points122 points | 86 comments
vote
Kaitlyn Hunt refuses plea offer, will go to court over high school relationship - The 18-year-old rejected a deal that would have labeled her a sex offender and placed her under house arrest
113 points114 points | 31 comments
vote
Ted Cruz against the world - How the Junior Senator is igniting the GOP civil war
75 points76 points | 19 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: Chekhov's story mirrors Russia's own

Recommendations