The Intolerance of Barack Obama and the Democrats
Obama and Trump: Two sides of the same coin?
Photo Credits: Left: President Barack Obama in Nordea Concert Hall via photopin (license) Right: Flickr.com/WalkingGeek
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial with the title The Donald and The Barack, subtitled Obama is Trump’s more sophisticated, articulate liberal antecedent. In it the WSJ noted that in his Thursday press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Obama refused to take any credit for the creation of the nasty, polarized state of our politics. In particular he would not acknowledge he had anything to do with that campaign phenomenon known as Donald Trump. Not that such a refusal of responsibility is very surprising. Obama always declares his innocence, no matter what the issue!
The WSJ quotes Obama as saying
What I’m not going to do is to validate some notion that the Republican crack-up that’s been taking place is a consequence of actions that I’ve taken. … Objectively, it’s fair to say that the Republican political elites and many of the information outlets—social media, news outlets, talk radio, television stations—have been feeding the Republican base for the last seven years a notion that everything I do is to be opposed; that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal.
I doubt former Speaker John Boehner thought he was reflexively opposed to everything Obama proposed when he sought compromise on the budget to avoid a government shutdown and a budget sequestration in 2013 – a compromise Obama ultimately destroyed by upping the ante in a way that Boehner could not justify to his caucus. After that, Obama never seriously attempted any compromises with the GOP Congress.
Which Side Is the Obstreperous Roadblock?
If everything the President proposes is reflexively opposed by the Republican Congress, whose fault is it that it turned out that way? Former House Speaker John Boehner certainly gave compromise the old college try. The Mainstream Media may always say it is the fault of the Republicans, but the Republicans had certainly been looking for compromise possibilities at the very beginning of Obama’s first term. Obama disabused them of the notion that there were possible compromises very early. Three days after his first inauguration, he called for a White House meeting of Congressional leaders from both parties. There, after hearing some reportedly modest Republican proposals, Obama told the GOP leaders straight out that “elections have consequences and I won.” Even had he disagreed with everything they said, he could have reacted in a way that left open the door for further discussions. That would seem to be something Obama should have learned in Professional Politics 101. Marc Theissen later wrote in the Washington Post,
Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries.
Then, Obama and the Democrats shoved Obamacare down everyone’s throat without a single Republican vote. There did not seem to be any Democratic urge for compromise with that monstrosity.
After all that, Republicans could be forgiven for thinking Democrats were telling them, “What is mine is mine, and what is yours is negotiable!”
The Republican Reaction
Then came a rather nightmarish period for conservatives during which government expenditures rapidly increased to follow the Keynesian prescription of economic stimulus through increased government spending. When Obama first took office in January 2009, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. The two-year budget deal he signed into law last November guarantees that by the end of his presidency in 2017 the national debt will increase an additional $1.5 trillion. This is about 9.2% of last year’s GDP of $16.3 trillion! Adding this increase to the current national debt of $18.3 trillion, Obama’s final national debt will be approximately $19.8 trillion, or an increase during his two terms of approximately 87%! What did Obama buy with this huge increase in the national debt? What he achieved was the most sub-par recovery since the Great Depression in the 1930s, with annual growth rates of around 2%.
While Obama was committing financial mayhem with his spending, we were also treated to a vast increase in federal regulation of private sector financial institutions, helping to kill off small community banks. This increased regulation also discouraged banks from lending to businesses and from originating new mortgages.
At the same time adding injury to insult, Obama’s IRS targeted conservative groups to silence them during elections.
It is hard to imagine what more the Democrats could have done to inspire overwhelming hostility from conservatives in general and from the Republicans in particular. A direct result to the irresponsible spending in particular was the rise of the Tea Party, and its growing influence on the Republican Party. In addition Tea Party sympathizers are incensed about illegal immigration and the federal government’s lack of control over our borders. CBS news has reported that about 18% of Americans identify themselves as Tea Party supporters, and that 53% describe themselves as angry about the way things are going in Washington.
One way of looking at the success of Donald Trump’s campaign is that it is the expression of the total revolt of conservatives against growing government control and influence over their lives. Since the Tea Partiers believe professional Republican politicians, i.e. the “establishment”, have been cooperating with Democrats far more than they should, their revolt is as much against the Republican establishment as it is against Democratic Party policies. Tea Partiers tend to believe Obamacare should have been repealed last year, if not sooner. Attitudes like this are, I believe, more than a little unrealistic since current Republican majorities are not enough to override a presidential veto of any Obamacare repeal. In fact the Republican House has passed a repeal of Obamacare more than 60 times, but each time the repeal usually fell to Democratic filibusters in the Senate. In the last attempt, the GOP leaders were finally able to pass a repeal through both houses of Congress to send it to the President’s desk, where it was of course promptly vetoed. Because Republicans lacked the votes to override the veto in the House, the repeal failed.
The Connection With Donald Trump
So why would the Wall Street Journal claim “Obama is Trump’s more sophisticated, articulate liberal antecedent”? Given Trump’s crudeness, it is hard to argue against the proposition the President is more sophisticated and articulate, and I do not believe most people would disagree that Obama is more “liberal” (meaning progressive). I would cavil at this last characterization myself for reasons I gave in the post Donald Trump’s Uncertain Trumpet, but I will let that go.
However, the word “antecedent” implies the WSJ editorial writer believes Obama was a primary cause in the rise of Trump. The WSJ writer opines,
One irony is that even as Mr. Obama denied any liability for Mr. Trump, he lapsed into the same rhetorical habit that helped fuel the businessman’s ascent. For Mr. Obama, principled opposition to his policies is always illegitimate or motivated by bad faith.
Like the President’s nonstop moral lectures about “our values” and “who we are as Americans,” by which he means liberal values and who we are as Democrats, he reads his critics out of politics. No wonder so many Americans feel disenfranchised and powerless.
In fact Obama’s constant moralizing tells us about how un-American he thinks conservatives are, and how much he thinks his opponents must not have any respectable objections to his beliefs and policies. In this, Obama is but a reflection of progressives in general, who have become increasingly intolerant toward any opposition with the passage of time. As general evidence for this proposition, read the posts here and here and here and here and here and here.
One should not be surprised then that many conservatives are answering progressives’ intolerance with an intolerance and hostility of their own. The result is the outpouring of Republican interest in the primary campaign season, compared to the more tepid response of Democrats for their own primary season. Another result is the dominance of Donald Trump in the Republican race. I entitled this post The Intolerance of Barack Obama and the Democrats, but sad to say, the all too-human reactions of conservatives to their oppressors would make the title The Mutual Intolerance of Progressives and Conservatives just as applicable. I would strongly suggest the issues revealed by this mutual intolerance, which I discussed in the post The Need for Dialogue, are something that should be of great concern for all of us, progressive, conservative, and undecided alike.
Another Interpretation of the Political Conflict
There is another interpretation one can put to the American political conflict throughout the Obama period that I find extremely compelling. The standard interpretation one sees, hears, and reads in the Main Stream Media is that although there are reasonable compromises available to the GOP, they refuse to take them to rob Democrats of accomplishments to tout. People who accept this standard interpretation seem to view the dysfunctional political conflict to be like a sports contest, and that if one side should lose occasionally, it would not be an event of great significance. Those who refuse to compromise are then viewed as selfish, thinking only of themselves and their party, and not for the country’s well-being.
I would like to suggest the very strong mutual intolerance discussed in the previous section demonstrates each side considers their positions in Congress to be of vital importance, and not trivial at all. More than that, I think they are absolutely correct! Each side strongly believes that if the other side can establish its programs, then great and possibly catastrophic damage would be inflicted on our country. That being the case, it would be the height of irresponsibility for one side to compromise to the other. Any expectations on the part of the electorate for compromise between progressives and conservatives would then be greatly unrealistic. When Obama declared the following, he was merely stating the nature of reality:
The Republican political elites … have been feeding the Republican base for the last seven years a notion that everything I do is to be opposed; that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal.
This is because not only the Republican elites, but conservatives and Republicans in general, view almost all of Obama’s programs to be abhorrent and catastrophic for the nation.
If a Republican president should succeed Obama, I suspect Democrats in Congress would view the effects of his programs in exactly the same way.
What can possibly be done in a situation like this? If one side can not persuade the other of the correctness of their views (not hardly likely), there is only one other resolution I can envision: There will be a resolution of our dysfunctional politics only when a majority of the electorate decides which side has the more accurate picture of reality.
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