I wish I knew why Obama won't fight back

A few days ago, I wrote a piece about Obama's real accomplishments, even if they have to be less than desired in order to get passed by Congress. I have long maintained a support for his compromising, trying to realize and explain to others that he has the larger picture in mind and knows he cannot spend all his capital on any one issue.

But I also wonder if there is something in his psyche -- either ideological and experiential, as the "community organizer," or in his psychic equilibrium as a black man who grew up in a white world and, while loved and cherished by family beyond common expectation, might still have some deep scars from being 'different' that keep him from standing up to fight when attacked.

Miles Mogulescu of Huffington Post says this about the Obama administration:

What's most shameful is that so-called liberals and progressives like the NAACP national office and the Obama administration would be so frightened of the right that they wouldn't wait even a single 24-hour cable news cycle to investigate whether Shirley Sherrod's hateful accusers were telling the truth, and instead jumped to condemn her and deprive her of her livelihood.

There used to be a time when liberals, progressive and civil rights leaders stood up to right-wing bullies like Andrew Breitbart and Fox News, fighting back, sometimes even risking their lives. No more, it seems. Today these chickensh*t liberals run for cover at the first sign of incoming fire from the rightwing media, abandoning fighters like Van Jones, thousands of poor anonymous ACORN members, and now Shirley Sherrod. They seem to have forgotten what every school kid learns on the playground -- If you don't stand up to bullies, you just encourage their continued bullying.

Another HP blogger Russell Simmons wrote this about Obama's allowing gay Lt. Dan Choi, even at this late date in the dismantling of DADT, to be discharged because he has come out:

Mr. President, the time has come for Barack Obama to be Barack Obama. When you know things are not right, we expect you to fix them. We have already lost Van Jones. We might lose Shirley Sherrod. Let us not lose Lt. Dan Choi.

If you don't come out fighting, and take the fight to the right, you'll not only lose elections, but respectfully, also your soul.

Barney Frank is calling on him to have the courage to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the newly created Consumers Financial Protection Bureau, even if he thinks she can't be confirmed by the senate. First, he says, he's not sure he'd want anybody in this job that could be confirmed by the current senate, given the conservative record of opposition to reform. He goes on to say:

"Secondly, I don't think you give in to the threat of a filibuster. I think you make them do it. There would be such strong support for her that she would get confirmed.

But then he also says that, rather than giving in to the fear that she couldn't be confirmed, he should make a recess appointment, because she is by far the best qualified for the job.

What started my thinking along these lines and determined my noticing these particular commentaries was a letter to the New York Times today by Charles Grant about the Shirley Sherrod's debacle:

The Sherrod affair has unfortunately confirmed my suspicion of the Obama administration: it has no backbone.

The administration seems not to realize that American politics is a contact sport, not a cerebral exercise. An attack demands an immediate counterattack. Smearing Shirley Sharrod was an attack; firing her was not a counterattack, it was a misguided attempt at damage control. . . .

The Sherrod affair shows that the right keeps on attacking, even when it's wrong, and the left keeps on retreating, even when it's right.

I think all of them are right. Temperamentally, I tend to be the way Obama has been acting. But I also see that there are times when that is not what needs to be done. Now is the time he must realize this too -- or his presidency is going to be more limited than it needs be. It's one of the reason he has lost support and could conceivably lose in 2014.

Ralph

Rachel is awesome !!

I'm a big fan of Rachel Madow. She has just ripped Bill O'Reilly to shreds in their running network battle. It's worth printing the whole HuffingtonPost blog about it. It has to do with his response to her criticism of him for airing the UNinvestigated, grossly misleading, and cruelly harmful story about Shirley Sherrod -- which has backfired so badly for FOX News. Here goes:

On Wednesday night, Bill O'Reilly had a message and a question for Rachel Maddow.

The message: Fox News "kicks your network's butt every single night, madam" — and the question: "You have to be kidding with this fake ACORN scandal stuff. Unbelievable. Do you live in this country?"

Thursday night, Maddow responded in full to both, taking particular delight in his use of the word "madam" and stating that O'Reilly fell back on ratings to avoid the substance of her argument, which is that stories like the Shirley Sherrod scandal are exactly what Fox News is all about.

"If by this country you mean is my office right across the street from yours? Yes," Maddow said. "Unless there's an unguarded border down the middle lane of Sixth Avenue, yes, I live in what you call this country."

After debunking O'Reilly's claims on the ACORN story, Maddow then homed in on his reliance on ratings to distract from her greater point.

"Mr. O'Reilly, you and Fox get great ratings," she said. "It is so awesome how great your ratings are. You have very big ratings this year."

Maddow then listed a variety of entertainment programs — from "Deadliest Catch" to "The Closer" to "WWE Wrestling" to "Spongebob" and "Hannah Montana" — that beat both her show and O'Reilly's show, and said that facts are more important than TV ratings:

They are more watched than "The O'Reilly Factor," my lord -- which is totally immaterial to the discussion at hand, because when you got all "kicked your network's butt," and "madam" on me, you weren't really trying to tout your network's ratings. You were trying to take the attention off me saying that your network, FOX News, continually crusades on flagrantly bogus stories designed to make white Americans fear black Americans, which FOX News most certainly does for a political purpose even if it upends the lives of individuals like Shirley Sherrod, even as it frays the fabric of the nation, and even as it makes the American Dream more of a dream and less of a promise.

You can insult us all you want about television ratings, Mr. O'Reilly, and you'll be right that yours are bigger for now and maybe forever. You are the undisputed champion. But even if no one watches us at all, except for my mom and my girlfriend and people who forgot to turn off the TV after Keith, you are still wrong on what really matters and that would be the facts, your highness.

I would love to see a live debate between them. Rachel is so smart and articulate. Bill is so full of bluster and bull.

The moral: never get into a debate with a quick-thinking, liberal, lesbian Rhodes Scholar. That's right. That's Rachel. And, actually, being lesbian doesn't have anything to do with it. Or maybe it does. Maybe learning early that she could deal with negative stereotypes by being just a little better at what you do than others was her way of coping. It doesn't mean you have to be gay -- straight people have their own ways of learning to deal with bullies.

Ralph

A human tragedy

Not everyone will share my concern with the middle-aged, closeted gay or bisexual man whose life gets turned upside down when he gets caught having sex with another man. Often they become the butt of jokes and scorn -- but also loss of jobs and family and public esteem.

Politicians seem especially vulnerable because there are always opponents who comb over every possible dirt to tarnish them with. It's hard to feel sympathy for those who have worked to disadvantage gays in spite of struggling with the same desires themselves. Even I can feel some satisfaction at seeing the anti-gay crusaders get caught and ridiculed. But not all closeted men try to keep everybody else in the closet too by pushing punitive laws. For some, getting caught is just sad and often tragic.

The latest to make the news is a tragic one, and with what we know so far no reason to poke fun -- and plenty of reason to try to change the situation.

Thus far, here is what is known. Dean Gaymon, a Gwinnett County man, CEO of a credit union and by all accounts a man of character and community service, with no known blemishes, went to Newark, NJ last week to attend the 30th high school reunion that he had organized for his classmates. He is said to have had a model family, married to his high school sweetheart and had four children. Ambitious and successful in his career, he was well-liked and respected.

Friday night, he was shot and killed by a Newark police officer in a known gay cruising area -- allegedly caught in the act of having sex with another man. According to the officer's account, he pulled his badge and Gaymon panicked and started to run away, but then began running at the officer, threatening to kill him. After telling him three times to stop, and he didn't, he shot him one time in the abdomen. And he died.

First, let me say, this may not be all the facts. But the officer has not claimed that Gaymon was armed or that he was threatening him with any weapon other than words, or presumably fists. But he did not strike him. He just ran at him and said, "I'm going to kill you."

So, first of all, this sounds like a completely unnecessary shooting of an unarmed man who, at most, had violated the "public indecency" laws. That is not a killing offense. At least not in this country; not even in the Muslim world without at least a mock trial.

But there is a larger problem that runs through all these cases: NJ governor McGreevy, evangelical mega-pastor Ted Haggard, Congressman Larry Craig, psychologist and anti-gay expert witness against gay adoption cases George Rekers, and countless others -- middle aged men who obviously have been struggling with sexual attractions toward other men but who have tried to suppress those feelings and lead a closeted double life -- or simply a very suppressed smothered existence while denying their desires.

It so often ends badly like this. For generations, my profession, psychoanalysis, was at the forefront of the problem: confusing the attempt to repair with the underlying problem. It is not that homosexuality itself predisposes men to engage in such risky behavior, as they claim. It is the effort to suppress the feelings, because of shame and stigma; and then when the pressure from within gets too strong to resist, they try to scratch the itch in some surreptitious way -- like cruising in the bushes where other such men meet, or taking rent-boys on European vacations -- or wind up having sex in public places -- and get caught.

I'm not arguing for the right to have sex in public. I'm arguing against our society's continued (albeit improving) attitudes that place these confused, desperate men in the position of having to hide a part of themselves, with so much at stake when they get caught.

I was one of the lucky ones.

Ralph

GA guv's race

Roy Barnes ran away with the Democratic nomination for governor, and I would be glad to have him in office again. I voted for former Attorney General Thurbert Baker, however, because he is a good and honorable man; and I wanted to thank him for his principled stand against Sonny Purdue's pressure to add Georgia to the states whose AGs are suing the federal government over the health care reform bill.

The politically interesting race was the Republican primary. Oxendine had been front runner all along, polling first with 30% just 10 days ago but finishing in fourth place with only 17%. Most likely he was riding on name recognition and impressive fund-raising until voters really began to focus on the other candidates in the final two weeks.

Did Sarah Palin's endorsement of Karen Handel swing the vote for her? If so, she has demonstrated an amazing political power that she wields with Republican voters. All she did was endorse Handel on her (Palin's) face book page and then record a robo call that reached 400,000 Republican voters just before the election. She didn't make a joint appearance or hold a fund-raiser. And, except that she is a woman, Handel would not seem Palin's natural choice from this group. Although moving to the right for this election, Handel is easily the most liberal of the pack.

Not to be out-celebrity-ed, Nathan Deal got a late endorsement from Newt Gingrich. Did this help him leap into second place? He had been vying for third in the polls.

Both endorsements are getting a lot of play in the news. Huffington Post headlined it on their news home page -- leading me to wonder about the run-off. Here's my prediction:

Palin and Gingrich -- rivals for de facto leadership of the Republican base -- will use this race as a surrogate contest between them, a test of strength. I predict each will visit the state and make a joint appearance (Palin with Handel, Gingrich with Deal) before the run-off. Even if neither Palin nor Gingrich winds up as the presidential nominee in 2012, this could be a test of their king-maker power.

Ralph

Outrageous and silly -- but serious, too

We've been so inundated by the outrageous and silly shenanigans of the political side-show that it is hard to quite bring into focus the serious conversation that needs to be happening and that, indeed, may be happening somewhere underneath this morass.

The serious question that deeply divides this country is the role of the federal government in our lives. You would hardly know it from what grabs the attention of the news media, but as E. J. Dionne pointed out (quoted here on Sunday the 18th): "Most of the opposition to President Obama comes from people who are against his policies, not his race."

The confluence of a terrible recession, high unemployment, financial collapse, two wars, oil-spill disaster, immigration crisis, and a reform-minded administration with plans for regulating finance, health care, and energy -- all come together to arouse the fears of "too much big government," meaning too much federal government. It's not just about cutting taxes or putting the reins on Wall Street -- it's the larger picture of government control.

The conservative base doesn't even seem so single-minded anymore about abortion and gay rights. There was hardly a murmur from them about the recent court decision in Massachusetts that said that some parts of the Defense of Marriage Act are unconstitutional.

A New York Times editorial today focused this argument about the power of federal government as it is playing out in the opposition to Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's confirmation. What upsets Republicans the most about her (forget the "lack of judicial experience," and the faux-flap about military recruitment at Harvard) is that she refused to agree with their more limited interpretation of the commerce clause of the constitution.

What? The Commerce Claus? Think about it, the editorial says. The commerce clause gives the federal government the right to regulate commerce among the states. And this is at the heart of the argument over federalism. How much can the federal government force state governments to do or override state laws? It goes back to the States Rights rallying cry during the desegregation struggles. But it has gone far beyond that issue.

It is the liberal interpretation of the commerce clause that has been the legal basis for: The Clean Air Act, The Endangered Species Act, the laws that set minimum wages, the Civil Rights Act, and it is at the heart of recent controversial decisions about federal vs state laws about gun control and now about health care reform.

The next big test of this will come when the court has to decide whether the mandate that everyone purchase health insurance is constitutional. The Democrats were careful to insert the phrase in the bill that the insurance mandate "substantially affects interstate commerce." And the Republicans will be fighting that as a way of gutting the bill.

And this is why, according to this editorial, seven Republican members of the Judiciary Committee wrote to Ms. Kagan after the hearings demanding to know the extent of her involvement, as Solicitor General, with crafting and passing the health care reform bill.

What they are hoping is that there will be a basis for them to demand that she recuse herself from any court decisions about it -- meaning the Dems would lose a crucial vote on the Supreme Court when this case gets heard there.

These guys are not as dumb as they sometimes sound.

But wouldn't it be nice if we could simply have a serious and a lively national debate about the role of the federal government and then take a vote to decide that issue -- instead of all of this flailing about, screaming about silly trifles and meaningless trivia?

Ralph

Is the Tea Party racist?

No. Despite the brouhaha that has erupted since the NAACP's president said there are strains of racism and hate speech in the party, and he called on the leaders to:

Expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take the responsibility for them and their actions. We will no longer allow you to hide like cowards.

But, as E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post wrote:

The minute you say there are racist elements in the Tea Party -- reflected in signs at rallies, billboards and speeches from some of its major figures -- the pushback goes from cries of persecution to charges that those who are criticizing divisiveness are themselves the dividers.

So let's dispense with the obvious: Most of the opposition to President Obama comes from people who are against his policies, not his race. The Tea Party is motivated primarily by right-wing ideology, not by racism.

But Sarah Palin was among the first out of the block, posting on her FaceBook page her usual claptrap babble, claiming how she was "saddened by the NAACP's claim that patriotic Americans who stand up for the United States of American's constitutional rights are somehow 'racists.'"

As Dionne points out, the NAACP only did what conservatives have always done in demanding that liberals separate themselves from left-wing extremists who burned flags, for example. Or, one need go no further than their demand that Obama denounce the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and disown any close relationship with Bill Ayers -- or else he would be tarred as a fellow traveler along the routes of socialism, violent anti-Americanism, and angry racial hatred.

I think we just have to accept that the current opposition to Obama from the leaders of the Republican party on down to the Tea Party crowd are just saying anything in knee-jerk opposition without any rhyme or reason.

It reminds me of nothing so much as what happens when you poke a wasp's nest with a stick -- the wasps come zooming out and sting the poker, if he doesn't run fast.

Ralph