BARACK OBAMA

While President Barack Obama was primarily frequently insulted by white conservatives, black left-wingers also went after him.

The role of a sitting president is always raised at election time. This is typical of the answer that the White House Press Secretary provides. See {583496} for another example.

Keyes was an extreme fundamentalist Christian. Obama was also a religious question but his version of Christianity was not as rigid and extreme as that of Keyes, who was able to determine exactly how Jesus Christ would have voted on every bill before the senate. Obama did not vote for a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and he supported the right of a woman to control her own body and have an abortion of she so decided. Obama won in a landslide including getting the vast majority of the religious vote. Keyes maintained that he had not attacked Obama for his own behavior but for the behavior he voted to enable.

He saw Obama’s name as a fatal problem with the American Electorate which turned out to be more tolerant than Brown gave them credit for.

This quotation shows American tolerance and freedom of speech even for our head of state.

Kristol’s reputation as a political pundit suffered as a result of this assertion. However, Kristol was a very astute observer of the political scene; it indicates how remote Obama’s chances were believed to be even in 2006. Kristol was not alone in his view, just more bold in asserting it.

Romney was then running for the Republican Presidential nomination, and was taking a shot at President Obama.

This is an example of how values in politics can get complex. Family Leader put together The Marriage Vow, a pledge it wanted political candidates to sign. The pledge dealt with marital fidelity and other traditional family values. Two Republican Presidential Nomination Candidates signed the pledge rapidly as many of their competitors had notorious affairs and/or had been divorced. The 2 signers thought that they would obtain a substantial advantage. However, another part of the pledge was dealing with the importance of children being brought up in a 2 parent home, The quotation gives their statement on Black families and illegitimacy. However, they organization was so hung up on the evil of children in single parent households, that they said in the pledge that Blacks were better off under slavery than they are under Barack Obama—the first Black President. As might have been expected, there were no Blacks and even very few racist whites who would claim Black children and families were better off under slavery. They two politicians, Michelle Bachman and Rick Santorum—neither very sensitive to minority issues and perceived by most Blacks as racists—began to back away from their signing, First Leader, then removed the quoted paragraph from all copies of the signed pledges and removed it from their website. However, original copies—including the quoted paragraph—got into the hands of the media and the scandal began. Family Leader, trying to do damage control, wisely apologized. The other Republican Presidential aspirants both monogamous and otherwise, refused to sign but what it is that made them refuse was probably different for each person.

In the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, one of the tactics of conservatives was to accuse liberal candidates and office holders of being un-American, unpatriotic, and disloyal to the country. The tactic goes back to the beginning of the nation when Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans claimed the Federalists were un-American--monarchists and Anglophiles. In the 1950’s, Senator Joseph McCarthy attacked President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, Secretary of the Army Stevenson and many others for “un-Americanism.” Even wounded war hero, paraplegic, Senator Max Cleland was accused by Republicans a of being unpatriotic which led to his defeat at the polls. So accusing the President of being un-American, was that unique an act even though it shocked most Americans.

A number of Conservatives have made and spread the false accusation that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, The purpose was to undermine the legitimacy of his Presidency as Presidents must be born in the U. S. according to the Constitution. With enough money behind them the rumor mongers were actually able to persuade a large part of the American population about something that was totally untrue, Obama was not only born in Hawaii but the newspapers there carried announcements of his birth to further support his birth certificates and statements of his family. It was a time when the media would carry a story regardless of how ridiculous or how little evidence existed. Many people believed that “where there is smoke, there is fire.’

This hyperbole was typical of the conservative wing of the Republican Party who in modern times had fought any Federal Involvement in the American Health Care system including even Medicare when it was introduced. This claim was “over the top” and even people in her own party distanced themselves from her accusation. Despite major opposition and mistruths about the legislation. It passed—the most important health reform since Medicare.

While there were many Americans who were not ready, the majority surprised most of the world, and even many who disagreed with his policies approved of him and liked him.

In the Meltdown of 2008, the American Auto Companies were in dire straights and faced bankruptcy with no certainty that the industry could stay alive., They were running out of money and President Obama decided to make loans, take stock and control and force modernizing on the industry. As a result, and with some Toyota mismanagement, the companies returned to profitability and paid back their government loans early and as a result the bailout had not cost the taxpayers any money. Creditors however were outraged that the lost their preferred advantage had their been a bankruptcy.

This was a particularly heinous insult. In this campaign, some Republicans began claiming that President Obama was not a legitimate President because he was not born in America as the Constitution requires. Despite the fact that the State of Hawaii validated his birth certificate and the local newspapers carried announcements of his birth, many continued to make the accusation along with the parallel accusation that he was a Muslim and not a Christian despite his Church Membership all of his adult life. For many the purpose was to delegitimize Obama and they added the claim that he was anti American. So when Sununu, a major party leader said this the implication was particularly egregious. Sununu, to his credit, did apologize for the language he used and the implication thereof, but the quote is an excellent example of what has happened when campaigns get hyper-partisan. Even senior, veteran politicians get carried away and say things they regret. The 2012 was a particularly hyper-partisan campaign.

The letter was prompted by President Barack Obama changing his position and favoring gay marriage. Many fundamentalist Black clergy, like many white clerics, viewed gay marriage as an attack on the institution of marriage itself.

In 2011 nd 2012 a right wing extremist group—the Tea Party-were able to intimidate the Republican Congressional leadership to take the extreme partisan view that why would allow no significant legislation to pass as it might strengthen Democrat president Obama’s chances of getting reelected. Therefore there was to be no cooperation or even negotiations with the Democrats in Congress. Lugar a highly respected Republican Statesman, and expert on Foreign Affairs, followed his usual pattern of trying to develop legislation that would benefit the country. The Tea Party and some of the more partisan regular republicans then ran a candidate in the state primary election sending huge amounts of money to defeat Lugar who was a sure winner in the general election as he was very popular with all groups in Indiana ecept the right wing extremists, racists and fascists. Lugar never had the chance to win the election. He was defeated in the primary for working with Democrats.

There were some left wingers who were not happy with President Barack Obama’s centrist positions and complicity with some Republican ideas. Many wanted to sit out the election. Mitt Romney and the Republicans at the time advocated a more balanced budget by reducing benefits that helped the middle class and poor while giving tax cuts to all including billionaires. To prevent that, the left wing would have to vote for Obama even if they did not like many of his policies.

Obama lost his first political campaign badly

The President, like most Americans, was outraged at the immoral, insensitive, and incompetent behavior of the financial industry in the Meltdown of 2008. However, the President learned how dependent the economy of the entire country was dependent on having solvent banks and how vulnerable the entire nation was to major failures of the investment and regular banks. So he was faced with very poor options. The government could have nationalized the banks, but that would produce an economic system which in the long run would not be very sound. Of the banks could be allowed to fail or risk failure in which case the entire population would suffer. Or he could lend money to the banks to stabilize and strengthen them while the bank executives were paying themselves huge bonuses even though they performed so poorly. He chose the latter and Warren was typical of criticism he received from many of his supporters. Even though the banks had broken the law and forged documents and committed perjury in tens of thousands of mortgage foreclosures, the President, as a practical matter, could not even prosecute the bank officials who were responsible because there were thousands of bank and other company officials who had committed the same crime. The guilty included almost every senior officer of the major banks, and jailing all these people was deemed impractical. So, to recover the economy, justice and fairness suffered.

Some of the Right Wing attacks in President Obama were without any foundation of facts. All presidents have to work extremely hard, and if they were not “workaholics” they could not even get nominated for the post. Many critics saw a racist element in this attack. In Sununu’s youth there was a slander by which racists used to refer to Blacks as “lazy and shiftless”. Obama was the first Black President and whereas that demonstrated that the nation had gotten past much of its racism, some still remained and this might have been a vestige of it.

This quotation demonstrates the intense venom that some conservatives had for President Obama. He was not just a “bad” president or a “terrible” president—Obama was in his words not even “real” president.

The right wing hatred of President Obama hit a low point in 2012, when a very wealthy Republican zealot could make a statement like this and not get repudiated by the Republican party leaders. Rarely before in modern times had a President been accused of not acting like an American by a responsible politician or political leader. The irony is that the American voters totally repudiated Forbes, and selected Obama for President, Senator and other posts, and despite Forbes’ attacks was recognized by most people as a great American. Forbes, in contrast, one of the wealthiest men in America could not get elected to any public position thought he ran several times.

Reference to the comparison of candidates Barack Obama andMitt Romney.

A Southern Republican congressman with a voting record that was against minority interest, for the first time in American, interrupted and insulted the President of the United States in the midst of an invited Presidential Address to Congress given by Barack Obama, calling him a liar. Carter, himself a Southerner, recognized the motivation.

This may be one of the most anti-intellectual, anti educational statements made in the history of American campaigns. Santorum was one of 9 Republicans seeking the 2012 Presidential nomination. He was a favorite of the radical religious right which was an important constituency of the Republican Party at that time. The 9 candidates tried to outdo each other in how they could attack President Barack Obama, then running for a second term. While Obama had a very large percentage of Americans who “liked him” even when they disagreed with his policies, the right wing base of Republicans literally hated the man and would see evil in anything Obama did or said. One of the main positions of the President had been making college affordable for every American young person. Normally, this would be approved by almost all citizens and voters. However, this quotation illustrated the degree of hatred and paranoia. The audience, instead of laughing at the absurdity of Santorum’s accusation, roared its approval. There were not enough Republicans who shared the same degree of Paranoia about Obama, and Santorum was not elected as the nominee. There has always been in America a fundamentalist religious minority who feared college and higher eductation as not adhereing to the literal reading of The Bible, even when the colleges were Christian religious institutions which the early Ivy League colleges were: Brown, Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia. As these schools have become secular, some religious fundamentalists opposed sending their children to them and saw the institutions in a negative light. Santorum’s constituency included those Americans.

Actually a few minor characters were prosecuted for financial crimes committed during that period but none were prosecuted whose behavior caused or accelerated the meltdown, and no bank officers were prosecuted despite the FBI reporting that hundreds of thousands of Mortgage Foreclosure involved perjury by bank officers in a pattern that was used by most of the large major banks. The Obama administration was in the dilemma of either choosing one or two bank officers of whom to make an example or if all those who had committed serious crimes were prosecutors, it would involve thousands of the officers of almost every major bank and tens of thousands of officials and mortgage related firms. These were among the wealthiest and most influential people in the country, and there would be few left to build the American Banking System back up when that was one of our most important national priorities. They were also amongst the largest political contributors to both political parties. So the government bailed the bankers out financially, allowed them to maintain million dollar of more salaries and bonuses, and gave the entire batch of people who broke the law a de facto immunity from criminal prosecution. A further complicating factor was that many of the most egregious, greedy, and publicly harmful were not illegal as a result of much change in the law as a part of financial deregulation or were new schemes that the financial industry had successfully lobbied to prevent regulation as with Derivatives.

The Prime Minister of Turkey was visiting the White House and the two leaders were giving an outdoor press conference when a hard rain began. The Turkish Prime Minister had other meetings at the White House but had only one suit with him. The President noted that and asked the Marine Guard to provide an umbrella which they did and also brought one for the President. The Marines held the umbrellas while the press conference continued. Ms. Palin in one of her many attacks on the President in this quote chastised him for not holding his own umbrella—in her view the American way. Palin, known for her poor memory and disregard for facts, apparently forgotten that when she was a vice presidential candidate, she was photographed emerging from a plane in the rain while an assistant held the umbrella over her head.

Ironically, the Republican Presidents who had no business experience did much better with the American economy—Nixon, Eisenhower, and Reagan than the Republican businessmen. And the one Democrat who was a successful businessman—Jimmy Carter—presided over a terrible economy. The key variable seems to be business experience which gives leaders a false sense of being able to control things more than is real and develops an empathy with a narrow slice of the electorate—other businessmen—who are much more interested in short term profits rather than the health of the economy as a whole.

The president had not only sunk I the polls, but for the first time only a minority then thought that he was trustworthy. The Congress was even lower in public esteem. The approval for the Congressional Republicans was down to only 9 percent—the lowest since the poll had been taken.

In the economic meltdown of 2008 and the aftermath, there were so many criminal violations of law in the financial industry that even the Democratic administration of Barack Obama chose not to jail the violators but to levy some large token fines albeit ones which were very affordable for the institutions who had to pay them—in many cases paying them with money made as a result of profits on no-interest money they received in bailouts after the 2008 Meltdown.

The Republicans had, in the view of most Americans at the time, refused to pass the legislation to provide money for the government to function unless President Obama would cancel the Health Care Reform that was his major legislative achievement of his first term, and passed over the objections of most Republicans who claimed it was unconstitutional. Then the Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of Obamacare, and the Tea Party Republicans pressured the regular republicans to shut down the entire government until the President relented and cancelled his own legislation. The American people resented this unprecedented of interfering with the Constitutional methods by which laws are passed, and after over a week of taxpayer additional costs for less service, the regular Republicans made a deal with the Democrats and produced a majority to reopen the Government.

Obama was a President who believed deeply in the concepts of checks and balances and separation of powers. He did not punish members of Congress who opposed him by closing federal installations in their state of district, not giving government contracts to companies in his district and in the case of member of his own party who were “recalcitrant” supporting opponent in primary elections and failing to support in general elections. Presidents Nixon and Johnson used these techniques particularly effectively. As a result they pushed their legislative programs through Congress very effectively. All other modern Presidents have done this to one degree or another, but Obama did not. He believed that pressure on member of Congress should be limited to persuasion and public debate moving public opinion. Many seasoned politicians and political observers however thought that this was Obama’s biggest weakness as a President. Lyndon Johnson did not have to actually punish many member of Congress, as his willingness to do so was well known and thus few opposed him when he called or met with them and “gave them the treatment.” But Congress knew that Obama had taken punishment and retaliation off the table, and many opposed him including member of his own party.

on the decision of whether to use military force against the Assad Syrian regime for their using chemical warfare against their own people

This was a classic criticism of Barack Obama—namely that he was an intellectual who could only communicate in a rational, academic, unemotional style and was reluctant to express outrage and publicly chastise other parties or counties.

While the existence of many racists who tried to delegitimize our first Black President is clear, the good news is that they were a minority of Americans and despite the lies and slanders, the majority of American chose Obama—a Black man—as their resident, not once but twice.

And the New York press is probably the most difficult and cynical in the world.

West, a very articulate, personable and accomplished Tea Party Candidate had won one of the 2010 congressional races in Florida. After two years in office, his rhetoric was so negative, vituperative, hateful and obviously untrue that the voters turned him out.

There are many who do not agree with Hayden’s thesis that there was a national consensus about the degree of compromise with Constitutional rights. It is the case that the 3 Presidents maintained a continuity, but there was no great outcry of public opinion for roundups and arrests of Muslims after 9-11. The government never at the time revealed the data on what they were doing. When that became public, it was clear that there was no consensus as was the case with torture. The military authorities who interned American Citizens of Japanese Origin argued that there was little public opposition but many citizens did not even know it was happening, and the ones who did, for the most part, thought that it was only the suspected saboteurs and spies who were interned, not American citizens who were suspected of nothing; not little children; not 90 year old men and women. When the facts were known Americans did form a national consensus—that it was one of the worst practices in which the United States ever engaged.

George W. Bush was very bright, but ineloquent to the distress of many of his supporters who found it embarrassing for the leader of the Free World to be so ineloquent.

President Obama was a true Constitutionalist who, unlike other modern presidents, truly believed that members of Congress had a right to express their views and act on them and the President should not retaliate against them for opposing him on major issues. Unfortunately, this was interpreted by most people as weakness. It also hurt his legislative initiative, as no one feared his retaliation or was intimidated when he asked for their vote.

There are few national organizations who would keep a director who made statements as vicious and racist as this about anyone much less the President of the United States. The use of the Nazi slogan of “subhuman mongrels” was stunning at the time. However, the National Rifle Association is a single issue organization and of the racists and neo-Nazis in America many have affiliated with the NRA so forcing Nugent out would have caused a split in their ranks. The larger problem was for Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, running for Governor, who kept campaigning with Nugent and even refused to repudiate Nugent’s language or facts. He too wanted the votes of the racists, KKK and Nazis of Texas and did not want to anger them. However, many of the independents and conservative Democrats who otherwise might have supported Abbot will likely not. One of the biggest problem for every candidate is what to do when one of his extreme supporters makes extreme and reprehensible statements. The strongest candidates repudiate them right away and if that loses a few votes from the base, so be it. The weaker candidates try and play the middle and remain silent. A month later, after a huge press story covered the media, Nugent made a half-hearted apology.

This quotation illustrates a peculiar situation with regard to President Barack Obama. Among some subgroups of the United States, there are people who hate President Obama. And some of them, throughout his Presidency, has described Obama in these obviously false phrases. They manage to hold these false belief’s despite the fact that the refuting evidence is very easy to find. Obama was a very devout Protestant. And his political world view was not communism or Marxism, but middle of the road. He was not even in the left wing of his Democratic Party. However what De Varona and others with these seemingly absurd views discount the data because it is part of a communist conspiracy to plant false information so they can put their man in the White House.

A minority of Jewish Israelis do not recognize the United Nations 1949 partition boundaries of the land creating modern Israel. They believe that God gave all the land to the Jewish people—as described in the Bible. Therefore, to them, the West Bank is a part of Israel. No Israeli government has ever maintained that position. However some governments which depend on settler and ultra-Orthodox support do not publicly disavow the position. Palestinians, look with alarm, on this view and the constant attempts at encroachment on West Bank land that the settlers attempt. Like the extremist Palestinians who want to sabotage any two-state solution, there is a minority of Israelis who do the same. These two groups made the peace process very difficult as their adherents are not only very passionate about their views, but have political influence out of proportion to their relatively small number of voters.

He had spent a great deal of time traveling and observing President Barack Obama. While he and many others appreciated the contemplation that Obama gave to serious issues, there were many people who saw it as a lack of courage to act swiftly or an elite intellectual proactice.

When called upon to resign by members of the town council, he refused on the grounds that he had a right to freely express is views of President Obama or anyone else. There was no impeachment statute at the time in Wolfeboro and people were not happy about waiting for the next election. There was much pressure brought to bear including some who boycotted the town. He resigned 2 monnths later.

Zacharia read the quotation which the audience was sure was another of the many Republican attacks on Barack Obama’s foreign policy and his decision making. The Republicans came up with the same type rhetoric that they did in earlier years with Democratic Presidents starting with Harry Truman. There have always been some politicians and pundits who regard any President (or other leader) who takes time to gather facts, hear alternative views, consider and reflect upon them, and then reach a decision as week and indecisive—an intellectual. To them, a real man—a real leader—listens looks at an issue before him and shows decisiveness by not vacillating and making his decision relatively quickly. To them if it took that much time and thought to reach a decision the President is not confident that his is the right decision and that shows weakness. Of course, every senior leader knows that if the decision reaches him, there is no clear good solution. If there were, it would have been decided at a lower level. Ideologues however don’t like to acknowledge complexity.

He and his brother were the largest political contributors in the United States, so they had enormous influence on Republicans (they only made political contributions to conservative organizations).

He was a veteran reporter who had worked with many different administrations.

“Blue” and “Red” were the color codes for Democratic and Republican controlled states. This Congressman, part of the extreme conservative Tea Party wing of the Republican Party tended to somewhat paranoid about President O’Bama—the first Black President, who although a moderate Democrat was far to left for them and they suspected him of evil motives whatever he did. What was silly about this theory was that the “illegals” could not vote, and even if Texas were swamped with undocumented aliens, they could not change the political balance of power one bit. But conspiracy theories are never based on serious analysis and scientific logic.

ground troops fighting in Iraq & Syria in addition to air power Quote A was made in June of 2014. Quote B, 3 months later in September. In June there are rumors that the Obama administration might commit more military assets to the situation in Iraq and Syria and Graham was afraid that the President might be considering ground troops. Three months later, President Obama announced a policy of making a serious military commitment to the area, but stated that he would not be using ground troops. Graham then criticized the President for NOT deploying ground troops reversing his previous position. This is a marvelous example of the hyper partisanship and the virulent anti-Obama action by the Republicans. Actually, Graham was better than most of the Republicans. He was always polite. He criticized the President’s policies and actions even if he had to twist around to do it. Many of his colleagues made vicious personal attacks on the President and kept spreading rumors that he was not a Christian but a Muslim who was not born in America and was indoctrinated in Islam as a boy. Graham’s flip flop was explained by him as a change that was made necessary by the rise and military aggression of ISIS which he also blamed on the President for not committing more resources to the Syrian insurgents.

The historian was comparing Obama to other historical presidents who either had a majority of both Houses of Congress or had an opposition party that was generally quite cooperative and willing to compromise for the sake of running the country smoothly. At this point in time there was a Tea Party wing of the Republican that was particularly negative and obstructionist. They tended to threaten and intimidate the main stream Republicans who used the filibuster to block legislation the majority of Senators had voted for more times than all the other Congresses in American history. And that was only in Obamas first 6 years.

Rothkopf had a dislike of the middle much like the classic Hightower quotation, {603453} .

The two young girls, 16 and 13, were in the background of the White House ritual Pardoning of a Turkey for Thanksgiving. Lauten, one of the extremist right wing hyper partisans of the day became the first political figure to attack the children who had been prior to that “out of bounds” even for the Tea Party Partisans. This attack was so petty and cruel that she was forced to resign the next day. However, many of the rabid Republicans reading the attack agreed showing how far the anti-Obama feeling had spread amongst some on the extreme right. Many other rightists condemned the attack as both immoral for attacking young children who really had no part in politics and incorrect and petty in her criticism. It was a time of hyper partisanship where any attack was a good attack, independent of whether or not it was true or justified.

This appears to be the first time in American history where the losing opposition did not at least claim that they wanted to work with the elected president to better the country. In this case, the partisanship was so bad that the major goal of the Republicans was to do what they could to have the president fail in his first term. To achieve their objective, the Republicans opposed almost every presidential legislative initiative of Obama’s including those that they had supported in previous ones. In several cases, the President proposed to accept previous Republican programs and ideas, and must Republicans then voted against the proposal so that they could deny the president any legislative success even if it moved the Republican programmatic agenda ahead. The Strategy worked in the sense that that Congress passed fewer bills that any in history, but failed to keep Obama from a second term. While the voters were not happy that the President was not able to persuade the Republicans to compromise and pass needed legislation, enough of them realized that the Republicans were more responsible, and reelected the President. The constant opposition to anything Obama advocated and the drumbeat of accusations against him drove his public approval numbers way down. In the process the Republicans drove their own approval percentage under 10 percent. The Republicans followed McConnell’s leadership, hurt the President badly, hurt themselves worse, and hurt the country.

April 2012 Speech