Of course, that conclusion should have been evident well before Obama took office, but many denied the obvious. However slow Beinart and other liberals were in arriving at this conclusion, they now understand the truth; any hope that Obama would appeal to the centrist wing of his party and “nurture a new generation of centrist candidates,” said Beinart, is “now gone. From top to bottom, Democrats have decided to bet the party’s future on the belief that Americans prefer bold liberals to cautious ones.”62 Either that, or their ideology is more important to them than winning—provided that before they’re thrown out of office they impose permanent foundational change on America’s institutions and founding principles.
TRANSCENDENTLY POLARIZING
Obama’s divisiveness transcends party politics and far exceeds that of President George W. Bush, who liberals still falsely insist was the most polarizing president in history. In delivering the commencement address for the University of Notre Dame, Obama made the subject of abortion a principal part of his speech, apparently believing his boundless capacity for reconciling the irreconcilable would enable him to articulate a unique position that, once delivered, would cause a contagious “a-ha” moment to engulf the university, indeed, the entire Western world. Everyone would instantly realize, to their relief, that there actually is a common ground and everyone on both sides of this life and death issue would better appreciate their opponents’ arguments.
News of Obama’s upcoming speech at Catholic Notre Dame provoked strong opposition, including the Cardinal Newman Society’s gathering of 255,000 signatures protesting Obama’s appearance. It also led former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, a pro-life advocate and Harvard law professor, to announce she would not speak at the university on the same day as Obama, when she was slated to receive the Laetare Medal—an annual award given in recognition for outstanding service to the Roman Catholic Church and to society. Glendon submitted a letter to university president John Jenkins saying, “The task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated. I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree... in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request” that Catholic colleges should not give abortion advocates a platform to speak to students or be honored with special awards and degrees.63
As a result of Obama’s (and the university’s) stubborn insistence on proceeding with his speech, Notre Dame allegedly lost some $8.2 million in donations.64
Similarly, Obama could not restrain his self-indulgence and hyper-partisanship long enough to omit the subjects of politics and—his favorite—himself, from a commencement address at the University of Michigan. Instead of imparting advice about career choices and the future, Obama turned the speech into another platform to whine about the bitter grind of Washington politics—again, as if he were an outsider.
While continuing to portray himself as a nonpartisan pragmatist, Obama is governing as the most committed ideologue in American history. Contemptuous of the will of the people as expressed in every possible medium—public opinion polls, House and Senate elections, the birth and rapid expansion of the tea party movement—the president obsessively pursues his transformative vision like Captain Ahab hunting his great white whale. He does not view those who oppose this vision as potential partners or people worth consulting. No, they are his political enemies—people who, by virtue of their failure to understand Obama’s moral superiority and enlightened vision, must be ridiculed, discredited, and marginalized to make room for his reconstituted America.
Chapter Five
THE BULLY
CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE
Obama is the quintessential partisan, for sure, but he doesn’t reserve his vitriol for Republican politicians. He’ll turn on anyone who stands in his way, and he’ll make it personal through bullying, ridicule, and demonizing. Obama believes he can use his presidential bully pulpit to say whatever he wants about anyone or any group, whether foreign leaders, bankers, or tea party protestors.
House minority leader John Boehner commented on team Obama’s bellicosity, “If you look at these attacks on people who question the administration, you begin to wonder what the real plan is. And it really does, to me, look like Chicago-style politics, like they’re trying to demonize their opponents, and do everything they can to make them distasteful.”1 At one point even moderate Republican senator Lamar Alexander appeared surprised at the administration’s belligerence, remarking, “Street fighting and brawling belongs outside the White House.... I think calling people out, taking their names, threatening to take away their anti-trust exemption . . . I think it’s unpresidential to bring them in the White House.”2
Politico reported in October 2009 that Obama was working “systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party,” unleashing “top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.” Through public taunts, reported Politico, Obama went after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street executives, and FOX News. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs had “mocked Limbaugh from the White House press room podium,” adviser Valerie Jarrett had “disparaged” the Chamber, and Rahm Emanuel and Anita Dunn had “piled on FOX News.”3 Political commentator Michael Barone observed, “Having encountered un-Chicago-like dissent and disagreement, he has responded with classic Chicago brass knuckles. We’ll see how far this kind of thuggery gets him.”4
REPUBLICANS
Consistent with his narcissistic proclivities, Obama is angrily intolerant of his critics. He dismissed President Bush’s rare criticism by snapping, “We won.” Likewise, he lashed out at Senator John McCain for objecting to his stance on Iran, declaring, “Only I’m the president of the United States . . . and I’ll carry out my responsibilities the way I think is appropriate”—completely ignoring the substance of McCain’s criticism.5
While much has been written about Obama’s arm-twisting in trying to shove ObamaCare through Congress, he had done the same thing with his cap and trade proposal some nine months earlier. This is a hallmark of Obama’s governing style: he takes things personally and keeps score. Jane Hamsher wrote in Politico, “The White House is smoking mad at Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who says he’s voting against the climate bill—despite the lobbying of the entire First Family in the Oval Office last night. If the bill goes down, Obama won’t forget Doggett’s role, Democrats say. It’s ‘stunning that he would ignore the wishes not just of his president, but of his constituents and the country,’ said an administration official.”
Obama exudes a sense of entitlement about his agenda, expecting legislators to vote as he commands, as opposed to, say, their consciences or the wishes of their constituents. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald wrote, “This has become an emerging theme among both the White House and House leadership: that progressive members of Congress have an obligation to carry out ‘the wishes of the President’ even when they disagree.” Greenwald lamented the “subservient mentality” of Congress and the “bullying tactics” of the president. “The duty of Congress,” he noted, “is not to obey the wishes of the President.”6
For Obama, it’s more than just a matter of political power. There’s also his egotistical sense that he is absolutely right about everything, that everyone else is wrong, and that if given enough time, he can persuade the rest of the rubes of the superiority of his positions. We’ve seen how he attributed the public’s repudiation of his agenda via the Massachusetts Senate election to his failure to sufficiently explain his healthcare position—though he had talked ad nauseam on the issue. But it was true of other issues as well—even strong moral issues for which there would never be a consensus, as with his attempt to confront pro-life forces at Notre Dame.
He took the same tack with the issue of homosexuality. At a White House celebration of Gay Pride Month—a controversial act in itself—Obama said he aspired to persuade all Americans to accept homosexuality—as if the issue were simpl
y about “accepting homosexuals,” and that anyone opposing special legal classifications for homosexuality was prejudiced, discriminatory, and as Obama claimed, possessed of “worn arguments and old attitudes.” He added, “There are good and decent people in this country who don’t yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters—not yet. That’s why I’ve spoken about these issues—not just in front of you—but in front of unlikely audiences, in front of African-American church members.”7
CONSERVATIVES
In a celebratory speech following passage of ObamaCare, the president proved he is also an ungracious winner. “I heard one of the Republican leaders say this was gonna be Armageddon! Well, two months from now, six months from now, you can check it out, we’ll look around. And we’ll see. You don’t have to take my word for it.”8
Believe me, we won’t. But Obama must have quickly forgotten that he acknowledged it would take some time to assess the critics’ predictions. Just a week later he implied that if Republicans were correct, then Armageddon should have already arrived. In a speech at a healthcare rally in Portland, Maine, on April 1, he complained about the “misinformation,” “fear-mongering,” and “overheated rhetoric” about ObamaCare. He said that if you turned on the news you’d hear people “shouting about how the world will end because we passed this bill.”
He wasn’t exaggerating, he assured his audience. “Leaders of the Republican Party have actually been calling the passage of this bill ‘Armageddon.’ They say it’s the end of freedom as we know it.” So, he taunted, “after I signed the bill, I looked up to see if there were any asteroids headed our way. I checked to see if any cracks had opened up in the ground. But you know what? It turned out to be a pretty nice day. Birds were chirping. Folks were strolling down the street. Nobody lost their doctor, or was forced into some government plan.”
It’s inconceivable Obama was unaware that the provisions of his bill have yet to go into effect, rendering his entire rant irrelevant. In fact, he revealed that very thing in his next statement, when he attacked his critics. “Every day since I signed the reform into law, there’s another poll or headline that says ‘Nation still divided on health reform. No great surge in public support.’ Well, yea, it’s only been a week! Before we find out if people like health care reform maybe we should wait until it actually happens. Just a thought.”9 Yes, and where was that thought in his previous, incoherent sentence?
At a fundraiser for Senator Barbara Boxer in April 2010, Obama, on the warpath to bullying the nation into passing yet another transformative package of regulations—his financial overhaul legislation—unleashed his venom on Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. He told the group that McConnell “paid a visit to Wall Street a week or two ago and met with some of the movers and shakers up there. I don’t know exactly what was discussed. All I can tell you is when he came back, he promptly announced he would oppose the financial regulatory reform.”
In his Alinskyite outburst, Obama once again accused anyone who stood in his way of dishonesty. He said McConnell’s objections to the bill were “just plain false” and “cynical.” Taken together, he was clearly suggesting McConnell was lying about the financial bill because he had been bought off by Wall Street. That’s Obama, the paragon of civility and partisanship.10
“DOMESTIC TERRORISTS”
Obama’s intolerance of criticism filters down through the bureaucracy, finding expression in unexpected, disturbing places. For example, a Department of Defense manual identified “protests” as a form of low-level terrorism.11 Likewise, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security released a report to the nation’s law enforcement officials titled, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” According to the Washington Times, the report warned the “economic recession, the election of America’s first black president, and the return of a few disgruntled war veterans could swell the ranks of white-power militias.”12
The characterization of war vets as potential racist terrorists was bad enough, but the report cast suspicion on other conservative-leaning groups as well. In a footnote, the department defined “rightwing extremism in the United States” as including not just racist or hate groups, but also advocates of states’ rights, and possibly “groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single-issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.” Americans for Limited Government (ALG) filed a FOIA request demanding to know how DHS had arrived at that conclusion. In the administration’s response, officials admitted they had relied mostly on websites and didn’t do any statistical analysis or interview any of those it defined as terrorists. As ALG noted, they “did not conduct even the most rudimentary research or investigation.” They just “cruised the Internet” and cherry-picked information from “disreputable sites” to stage their “attack” on “rightwing targets.”13
The administration’s report vilifying veterans and ordinary Americans outraged the American Legion. “I think it is important for all of us to remember that Americans are not the enemy. The terrorists are,” said David K. Rehbein, the Legion’s national commander. 14 Due to the public outcry, the report was recalled within hours from state and local law enforcement officials.15
On the heels of that controversial report, the Obama administration compiled a terrorism dictionary that tied “antiabortion extremists” to racism. It defined them as “a movement of groups or individuals who are virulently antiabortion and advocate violence against providers of abortion-related services, their employees, and their facilities. Some cite various racist and anti-Semitic beliefs to justify their criminal activities.” Republican congressman Peter King, the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, was infuriated by the dictionary, which he said “causes further concern that Congress needs to get to the bottom of exactly how DHS determines what intelligence products to distribute to law enforcement officials around the country.”16
The administration denied any political motivation behind the DHS documents, protesting that they had drafted reports on the dangers of leftwing extremism as well. But that’s not quite accurate. Michelle Malkin pointed out that past DHS reports had “always been very specific in identifying exact groups, causes, and targets of domestic terrorists.” By contrast, wrote Malkin, the DHS report on rightwing extremism constituted “a sweeping indictment of conservatives.” The “intent,” she said, “is clear. . . . It is no coincidence that this report echoes Tea Party-bashing left-wing blogs . . . and demonizes the very Americans who will be protesting in the thousands on Wednesday for the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party.”17
Perhaps even more damning, however, was that it was Obama’s own political action group, “Organizing for America,” that dubbed opponents of ObamaCare “Right Wing Domestic Terrorists.”18 The administration and its leftist enablers sought to distance themselves from this sordid event, but they are the ones who for years have been trying to connect conservative speech—especially talk radio—with violence, in order to lay the groundwork for chilling and censoring such speech. Former president Bill Clinton’s attack on conservative talkers and so-called hate speech at his 1995 commencement speech at Michigan State University, his speech at the Center for American Progress in April 2009, and his April 2010 interview with the New York Times, in which he connected tea party-type anti-government rhetoric with violence like the Oklahoma City bombing, were not mere spontaneous utterances.
Indeed, from its very inception, the tea party movement was a prime target of team Obama’s demonization campaign, with its members accused of being lawless extremists. In a private pep talk to Democratic congressmen, Obama, according to Congressman Earl Blumenauer, posed this question: “Does anybody think that the teabag, anti-government people are going to support them if they bring down health care? All it will do is confuse and dispirit” Democratic voters, “and it will encourage the extremists.”19 (For the uninitiated, the term “teabag” or “teabagger,” used by liberals to slander the
peaceful protestors of Obama’s radical agenda, is a vulgar epithet involving a sexual act.) On another occasion White House press secretary Robert Gibbs demeaned tea party protestors as an irrelevant fringe group, telling CBS News’s Harry Smith, “I gotta tell you, Harry, I think most of what you’re seeing on TV, no offense, is good TV and that’s about it.”20
Senator Chuck Schumer joined the White House’s campaign against dissenters, calling then-Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown a “far-right tea bagger” in an e-mail.21 Obama himself couldn’t resist taking unpresidential jabs at Brown, repeatedly ridiculing his pickup truck (which, as it turns out, was a GM). “Anybody can own a truck,” Obama snidely remarked. Brown shot back, “Mr. President, unfortunately in this economy, not everybody can buy a truck. My goal is to change that by cutting spending, lowering taxes and letting people keep more of their money.”22
Aside from deriding tea partiers as unruly rabble, the administration constantly portrayed them as vaguely threatening. Addressing the movement on CBS’s Face the Nation, presidential adviser David Axelrod said, “I think any time you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy.” Demonstrating the administration’s obliviousness to the public’s concern about its explosive acceleration of our national debt, Axelrod expressed bewilderment that protestors would even be concerned by such issues, since “this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that people face.”23 On his 100th day in office, Obama personally ridiculed the tea party protestors, admonishing, “Let’s not play games” and pretend out of control federal spending is just a matter of “the Recovery Act, because that’s just a fraction of the overall problem we got.”24
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