Commanding Presence Quotes
He did not originate this line. A French Politician did -- {608886}
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.
The Sikhs had lived for hundreds of years in the Mughal Empire—under Muslim domination where they had been not only like second class citizens but they were periodically persecuted for practicing their religion, including the torture and murder of their Guru. Jinnah himself was a strong advocate of religious toleration and freedom of religion, and proclaimed that for Pakistan. He promised that to the Sikhs as well as total equality with no second class citizenship. However Master Tara Singh was very familiar with the Koran itself and the history of minorities in Islamic nations. The only Muslim country in all of history that had not treated minorities as Second Class Citizens and curtailed the minorities' ability to practice their religion on an equal status was Turkey after the Ataturk revolution, and he knew that most orthodox Islamic clerics considered Ataturk a heretic. They did not see Jinnah as an Ataturk who could revolutionize not only a country but a culture as well. As it turned out, even in the 21st century every month or so another minority person was killed in Pakistan for violating some Koranic prescription—actual of imaginary. The Sikhs turned Jinnah down and he then had Sikhs targeted for mass terrorist attacks and murders.
