The self-anointed Tea Party took its name and spirit from the Boston Tea Party, where colonial rebels in 1773 protested “taxation without representation” and demanded tax cuts, decreased public spending, and smaller government.31 The new Tea Party platform was borrowed not so much from the American colonists as it was from the antigovernment playbook of Ronald Reagan. The protests took place on “Tax Day,” April 15, 2009; July 4, timed for Independence Day, to protest Obama’s un-American practices; and then September 11, 2009, to underscore the Tea Partyers’ patriotic mettle and to suggest that all was not quite cricket with Obama when it came to defending American interests. Despite the Tea Partyers’ attempts to portray Obama as anti-American, and to suggest that his policies bordered on communism—“Obama for President of Cuba,” one protest placard read—polls indicated broad American support for Obama’s $787 billion antirecession stimulus package, and for a greater governmental role in jump-starting the fatally flagging economy.
Although billed as populist uprisings, some of the Tea Party protests turned out to be an example of “Astroturf” rebellions: well-organized campaigns disguised as spontaneous grassroots gestures. Conservative lobbyists with deep pockets helped to organize and coordinate the protests, including right-wing billionaire David Koch, who admitted that the Tea Party protest movement was hatched at a summit sponsored by his conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, and by Dick Armey, former Republican House majority leader and board chairman of the nonprofit conservative organization FreedomWorks. Unelected conservative forces attempted to mask their orchestrated “movement” and question the patriotic legitimacy of a duly elected president.
Beyond their dissembling and political machinations, another troubling element emerged: The Tea Partyers have often given the impression that they were angry not simply at Obama’s policies, or even his political character, but at his color, too. Political resistance merged with racial resentment in the Tea Party movement as venomous old forms of bigotry grew new fangs. White nationalism reverberated inside the Tea Party even though a smattering of black and Latino folk participated. While it would be unfair to tag the movement as explicitly racist, it is precisely the implicit character of its racial meanings that permits racial deniability while reinforcing racial animus. Opposition to Obama was supposedly fueled not by race but by political principle. Tea Party rallies were often raucous and vented spleen at anyone to the left of Rush Limbaugh. Tea Party members shouted down various Democratic members of Congress when they held town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Yet it was hard to ignore the signs of racial hostility sprinkled amidst the flag-waving and Tea Partying.
Some demonstrators at town hall meetings that Obama attended brandished weapons: in one case, a protester in Arizona brought an AR-15 military-style semiautomatic assault weapon. It is difficult not to interpret that startling image in racial terms, since no American president before Obama has faced a similar situation. Many of the protest signs suggested the racial character of the opposition to Obama. To be sure, taxes, government spending, deficits, same-sex marriage, abortion, and health care reform were also at stake, but the bile unleashed on Obama went beyond even that of bitter partisan politics. Of the placards, some read “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery” in Madison, Wisconsin; “The American Taxpayers Are the Jews for Obama’s Ovens” at a rally in Chicago; “Our Tax $ Given to Hamas to Kill Christians, Jews, and Americans, Thanks Mr. O” in Sacramento, California. Another read “Obama: What You Talkin’ About Willis? Spend My Money.”
In Chicago, a placard reading “Barack Hussein Obama the New Face of Hitler” featured a photo of Obama imposed on the body of the German dictator, with Hitler’s distinctive mustache superimposed for good measure. In Tampa, Florida, a poster featured a black figure resembling President Obama slitting the throat of Uncle Sam. At several Tea Party rallies, and in e-mails and on websites, too, Obama was portrayed as a witch doctor festooned in a feather headdress with a bone through his nose. And at an anti–health care Tea Party rally led by conservative congresswoman Michele Bachmann on the steps of the Capitol in November 2009, one sign called Obama a “Traitor to the Constitution” and another called him “Sambo,” while still another asked, “Ken-ya Trust Obama?” The racial overtones and racist undertones simply could not be missed.
The skepticism about Obama’s birth unspooled in extravagant conspiracy theories among the “birthers.” The birther movement was born in 2008 after Obama won the Democratic presidential nomination; it resurfaced during his historic inauguration as lawsuits were filed at each juncture to remove Obama from the ballot or to keep him from taking office. Birthers challenged the legitimacy of Obama’s American citizenship and therefore his ability to hold the highest elected office in the land. Article 2 of the United States Constitution says that one must be a natural-born citizen to be president of the United States. Some birthers contend that Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya, and that his birth certificate was forged. Others claim that Obama is a citizen of Indonesia, or that he had dual British and American citizenship at birth, which means that he is somehow not a natural-born United States citizen.
These claims persisted even as the Obama campaign supplied a certified copy of his Certification of Live Birth in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Birthers claim that the certificate was not sufficient proof since it was a copy, but the director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed that the state possesses Obama’s original birth certificate. That assurance failed to quiet the birthers’ attacks on Obama’s American citizenship and identity. The effect of the attacks was not limited to the lunatic fringe; a 2009 Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll showed that 58 percent of Republicans either did not believe Obama was born in the United States or were not sure, compared to 7 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of independents. The White House released copies of Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011, and his reelection campaign even sold “Made in the USA” mugs with a photo of Obama and the image of the birth certificate. The reelection campaign reasoned that there is “really no way to make the conspiracy about President Obama’s birth certificate completely go away, so we might as well laugh at it—and make sure as many people as possible are in on the joke.”32
Face of the Nation
While Obama endured attacks on his patriotic pedigree inside America, he became the welcome face of the nation to the world. In his first year in office, Obama traipsed across the global geography more than any president before him in a comparable period and worked diligently to restore America’s standing in the international community. The country’s image had been greatly tarnished by George W. Bush’s penchant for turning foreign policy into an extended display of America’s “strategic narcissism,” the notion “that what the United States does is the most important aspect of every development” in foreign policy punditry and policymaking.33 This includes declaring war in Iraq, a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11, but which had captured American economic interests in the region tied to the oil market. Obama also had to make amends as much as possible for Bush’s aggressive philosophy of preemption, which really amounted to “prevenge”—getting back at someone he feared might even think about harming our nation before they could act. Obama’s tour of redemption began in Europe as the president acknowledged American arrogance as a flaw in foreign policy. Obama was hammered by conservative critics for admitting that America had not been perfect; they dubbed his visit to Europe “the Apology Tour.”34
The previous administration’s John Wayne bravado gave way to Obama’s kinder, gentler approach. The conservatives failed to see that by admitting American error, Obama intended to reinforce American truth—that by being strategically vulnerable, he could reassert American strength. Obama knew that the rest of the world wanted to see America be a bit more humble and carry its huge influence with grace. Obama was the perfect pitchman for graceful dominance. For critics on the right, Obama did not have the necessary chutzpah and imperial swa
gger before the global community. For many progressives, such an approach proved Obama’s seductive danger: that he was an affable figure who nonetheless carried the big stick of American power. For critics on the left, his very geniality foreshadowed his potentially troubling role as a smiling emissary for empire’s dirtiest deeds.
As Obama made his way around Europe and sprinkled his share of mea culpas for America’s past sins, he pledged goodwill and resources while commanding respect and demanding some show of responsibility. For instance, in an April 2009 speech in Strasbourg, Obama dramatically criticized the United States on foreign soil in a way no previous president had ever done. Speaking to a town hall crowd composed largely of four thousand students from France and Germany, Obama expressed his candid views. “In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” he said.35 “Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” But Obama also chided the Europeans for “an anti-Americanism” that is both casual and insidious, while taking them to task for failing to recognize “the good that America so often does in the world” and instead blaming “America for much of what is bad.” No other American president in history could have delivered this criticism to this audience.
Obama noted that attitudes on “both sides of the Atlantic” threatened to “widen the divide across the Atlantic and leave us both more isolated” even as they obscured “the fundamental truth that America cannot confront the challenges of this century alone, but that Europe cannot confront them without America.” The bold and self-confident gesture of acknowledging American flaws overrode for many critics Obama’s demand that there be mutual respect between Europe and the United States. His “Apology Tour” was unconscionable to conservative critics who felt that it was treason for Obama to admit to America’s failings on foreign soil. These same critics likely would not agree with Obama’s national self-criticism even on American terrain. But their anger toward the president only underscored their deep doubts about his true love for America and his genuine patriotism.
Obama made a remarkable speech to Turkey’s parliament in early April 2009 seeking to end the ongoing hostilities between Islam and the West by publicly embracing an ancient faith that had been soiled by fundamentalist extremists. Obama acknowledged “difficulties these last few years” and a binding trust that “has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced.” But Obama was emphatic in his insistence that Bush’s war on terror would no longer set the agenda for relations between Islam and the United States: “Let me say this as clearly as I can: the United States is not at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical in rolling back a fringe ideology that people of all faiths reject. But I also want to be clear that America’s relationship with the Muslim world cannot and will not be based on opposition to al Qaeda.” Obama pledged “broad engagement based upon mutual interests and mutual respect.” He insisted that America would “listen carefully, bridge misunderstanding, and seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. And we will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better—including my own country.” Obama publicly embraced his Muslim heritage in a way he could not possibly have done during a bitter campaign that sought to portray him as a secret Muslim when he claimed that the “United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country—I know, because I am one of them.”36
In June 2009 in Cairo, Obama acknowledged Western “colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.” Obama lashed out against the exploitation of these tensions by violent extremists that led to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He confessed that he had “come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition” but share common “principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”37 Obama was widely praised for his balance in seeking to right the horribly off-kilter relationship between Islam and the West.
This was before Obama announced on May 2, 2011, that “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”38 Obama insisted that “we must also reaffirm that the United States is not—and never will be—at war with Islam . . . Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims.” In 2014, while addressing the nation about his plans to destroy the so-called Islamic State terror organization, Obama underscored his two-pronged approach toward Islam, suggesting it had no truck with terror and that terrorists murder Muslims too. “Now let’s make two things clear,” he said. “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.’ No religion condones the killing of innocents. And the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”39
A Native Son Scrambles Africa
When Obama headed to Ghana in July 2009, the tune got dissonant and the tone got much harsher. Gone was the elegant balance between acknowledging American fault and European responsibility. In its place came a stony defensiveness that put most of the blame for Africa’s suffering—especially war, corruption, and tribalism—on its own poor management of its affairs. Obama left untouched the role of America and the West in the African plight. He may have admitted that colonialism’s brutal legacy choked Muslim life elsewhere in the world, but he denied its role in Africa’s present problems. “I would say that the international community has not always been as strategic as it should have been,” Obama said in response to an interview question about whether Africa’s woes resulted from a failure of U.S. policy or a failure of African governance. “But ultimately I’m a big believer that Africans are responsible for Africans.”40 He did not say the same thing about Europe; instead he generously offered American assistance while demanding European cooperation. Responsibility was shared. In Europe, Obama acknowledged colonialism’s consequences and offered apologies to ward off skepticism about looming American empire.
In Africa the native’s son seemed restless. Obama appeared unwilling to shoulder America’s fair share of responsibility on the continent of his father’s birth. Of course Obama is partly right: the horrible consequences of corruption and unprincipled leadership have unquestionably hurt Africa. But Western policies, practices, and perspectives have done great damage too, a point Obama seems to dismiss. “I think part of what’s hampered advancement in Africa is that for many years we’ve made excuses about corruption or poor governance; that this was somehow the consequence of neo-colonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism,” Obama said in his speech in Ghana. “I’m not a believer in excuses.”41 In an interview a week before departing for Africa, Obama, in one fell swoop, ignored the lingering effects of neocolonialism and absolved America and the entire West of any blame for Africa’s predicaments. Claiming he was as knowledgeable as any American president has been about Africa—a status not difficult to achieve—Obama said he could cite “chapter and verse on why the colonial maps that were drawn helped to spur on conflict, and the terms of trade that were uneven emerging out of colonialism.” Obama made quick work of that tortured history: “We’re in 2009. The West and the United States has not been responsible for what’s happened to Zimbabwe’s economy over the last fifteen or twenty years. It hasn’t been responsible for some of the disastrous policies that we’ve seen elsewhere in Africa. I think that it’s very important for African leadership to take responsibility and be held accounta
ble.”42
Obama made the same points when he spoke to the Ghanaian parliament, playing up his African identity just as he had highlighted his Muslim heritage a month earlier in Cairo: “I have the blood of Africa within me, and my family’s history reflects the tragedies and triumphs of the larger African story.” But Obama quickly pointed to Africa’s flaws and lectured his Ghanaian audience about the measures it would have to adopt to sustain American interest and stimulate American support—and satisfy American demands. “Development,” Obama told Ghana’s parliamentarians, “depends upon good governance. That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long. That is the change that can unlock Africa’s potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans.” Obama repeated his mantra that “Africa’s future is up to Africans” before issuing a barely veiled threat: “We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don’t, and that is exactly what America will do.”43
Obama’s tough love for his African kin was little more than a rehash of problematic policies promoted by previous presidents. It is an error to insist that good governance has been the basis of investment and development by Western countries. Obama was essentially demanding that in order to receive aid, Africa comply with policies that benefit the U.S. government and American corporations. In sharp contrast to Obama, George W. Bush at least offered token gestures of support—including the Millennium Challenge Account and increased funding to combat AIDS and malaria. Obama simply appealed to his African ancestry to extract a political quid pro quo of African deference in exchange for American support.
The Black Presidency Page 17
