Salon's Joan Walsh has a column out today noting the Right's delegitimizing President Obama.
"He is not acting presidential. He is behaving in a way designed in my opinion to divide us, to make us look at each other with skepticism, with suspicion. That is the end of America as we know it," Langone fulminated. "The destruction he is inflicting by his behavior will carry on long after we settle the debt limit."
I don't know who Langone is describing, but it's not Obama. Sure, he's taken a jab or two at fat cats, and quickly retreated. Mostly he's reached out to Republicans time and again, only to be rebuffed and humiliated, from the earliest days of his term. On "Hardball" today we discussed the extreme reaction this conciliating president has triggered in the GOP, from the earliest moments of his presidency.
But as we talked, I felt I had to point out: Demonizing Democratic presidents didn't start with Obama. Racism makes the Obama attacks uglier, but the attacks on President Clinton were plenty ugly, too. Leaving aside the sex scandals, Clinton's civil rights history earned him the animus of Arkansas right-wingers while he was governor. When Clinton became president, Jerry Falwell and friends promoted "The Clinton Chronicles," a "documentary" claiming he'd run an Arkansas racketeering operation responsible for cocaine smuggling, bank fraud and murder. He was accused of having a hand in the suicide of his friend Vince Foster; the Wall Street Journal demanded an investigation into whether it was actually murder. Sen. Jesse Helms warned him that if he visited military bases in the South, "He better have a bodyguard." All that on top of fruitless investigations into Whitewater, "travelgate" and allegations of improper Chinese fundraising -- and then impeachment.
She has a point. |
| I recall being a child and hearing the angry anti-Truman speeches on the radio and hearing Joseph McCarthy's accusations of former Roosevelt and Truman staffers as being Communist spies and of how Truman let "China become Red".
These stories kept on going to delegitimize Democratic presidents in 1961 when Kennedy was accused of stealing his election, ignoring the down state Illinois vote manipulations opposite Chicago's. I recall being at parties on the North Shore and hearing about how the "Reds were going to take over the country" with the full support of that sympathizer, John Kennedy and his brother. In other parties with family members and friends, I recall hearing how Kennedy let Cuba go Red and how he faked his injuries in PT109 (sound familiar?). After November 23, 1963, those who wanted him dead, would say, "I don't want to say anything bad about the dead, but...". They did the same thing to Carter who was ridiculed by the right wing Republicans who were gaining strength after Nixon's removal.
They tried to go after LBJ, but his Texas twang and raw power held them back, so they let the war opponents damage him and they went in for the kill with his Vice President, Hubert Humphrey.
Who can not remember the personal attacks on Clinton beginning with his election? He was accused of murdering his friend, Vince Foster, though that was always seen by law enforcement as a suicide. He was accused of drug dealing, and eventually, the radical Republicans tried to impeach him (which inoculated their boy GW, by the way) with phoney accusations of lying. As the press was far right in the forties and fifties, it became more and more so during the 90's and into the next 1 1/3 decades.
How many remember that Limbaugh said he wanted Obama to fail on Inauguration Day, 2009? How many recall Sen James DeMint (R-SC) say that the goal of the Republicans in Congress was to see the failure of Obama's presidency? What has been the medium for helping this along? I suggest that a major portion has been funding for the Tea Party, the faux political organization of "fed up citizens" who just happen to have been given bus rides and free meals on their way into a town hall meeting they intended to disrupt.
Watch the video and think about the previous personal attacks to make any Democratic government illegitimate. They are going to try it again, even if It Can't Happen Here. |
