CORRECTION: A previous version of this article mistakenly referred to Judge Learned Hand as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. Hand never served on the Supreme Court; the highest court he sat on was the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
With his approval rating approaching the portentous 50 percent mark, President Obama’s survival mechanisms are kicking in. When we’re talking about Chicago-style politics, however (we all remember Blago), calling them survival mechanisms might be putting it too gently. They smack of something more predatory than self-defensive.
It has not been long since Obama was wooing us with promises about a “new era of bipartisanship” and ““ as he said in his inaugural address ““ “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”
How people ever believed that from a man who spent the formative part of his adult life in the cesspool of Chicago politics is beyond me.
It is not a year into his presidency, and Obama has already created an enemies list that would make Richard Nixon blush. Think about this: He called a white police officer (James Crowley) stupid for arresting a black man (Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) who was reportedly being belligerent.
His Department of Homeland Security issued a report warning that veterans were at risk of being recruited by “right-wing extremists.” He read the riot act to people protesting government-run health care at town hall meetings, and his party’s Senate leader Harry Reid accused them of trying to “sabotage” the democratic process.
He vilified Chrysler bondholders for resisting a deal that gave de facto power over to unions. His supporters exposed the location of the home of an insurance executive with the audacity to speak out against the public option. For its reluctance to support Obama’s health-care program, White House aides have even taken steps toward blacklisting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Then of course, there is the war on Fox News. While there has been an undeclared war going on between the White House and Fox for quite a while, the Obama administration has only recently made it official.
White House communications director Anita Dunn delivered the formal declaration when she recently slammed Fox as “opinion journalism masquerading as news.”
Obama’s senior advisor David Axelrod solidified the White House’s position by saying that Fox was “not really a news station.”
At the risk of appearing truly juvenile, the White House Blog even set up a link pointing its readers to a site that purportedly expounds on “even more Fox lies.”
Forget that Fox has far and away the largest audience of any cable news network around. The White House has made up its mind that Fox, the only network with the journalistic integrity to call the president’s bluffs, is not to be dignified with its presence.
Hence, Fox was the only major station not to be graced with an interview from the president on his recent media spectacle to promote his health-care agenda. It was also given the distinction of being the only outlet not to be invited to a recent question-and-answer session with executive pay czar Ken Feinberg.
What is especially grabbing about this is that it is taking place in a world where liberals have cartelized the vast proportion of industries that shape public opinion ““ that includes the universities, the entertainment industry, newspapers and, of course, the networks ““ NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the piece de resistance, MSNBC.
Let’s not forget the left-wing blogosphere (think Daily Kos, ThinkProgress and Media Matters) which is devoid of any semblance of journalism whatsoever. The jewel in MSNBC’s tinsel crown, a man named Keith Olbermann, has compared FOX News to the Ku Klux Klan.
That Obama thinks he can get away with ostracizing Fox while letting Olbermann get away with calling Bush an “idiot-in-chief” (and far worse) is an act of splendid self-deception.
So too is the notion that he can keep on blaming his predecessor for every problem he runs into.
The line “we inherited a mess” may have been deserving of some sympathy at the beginning of Obama’s presidency, given the two wars and economic contraction, but nearly a year later it looks like whiny political desperation. The fact that Obama seems to go back to this whenever he is forced to make a tough decision is not lost on people.
When White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says (as he recently did) that the administration is “beginning at scratch” on Afghanistan, it does not take a mind-reader to see that the administration is trying to wheedle its way out of taking responsibility for its actions in the future.
Obama has decided to pursue an agenda for which consensus on all the issues important to him is all but impossible.
Rather than taking steps toward that goal, however, he and his allies are finding it easier to barrel through the opposition.
While there is no Constitutional prohibition against this, it is certainly repugnant to our rules of civility.
Former U.S. Circuit Judge Learned Hand once said that the First Amendment “presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection.”
This principle was expressed in many different ways by our Founding Fathers.
If for no other reason, however, pulling in the horns makes sense for Obama in terms of self-preservation. According to the Gallup Poll, his average job approval rating suffered the worst third-quarter decline of any elected president in history. As I noted earlier, it is closing in on 50 percent, which is symbolic.
If Obama is to recapture his former glory, he will have to put away the brass knuckles and begin being the man he said he would be: bipartisan and transparent.
E-mail Pherson at apherson@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.