The Vilification of Barack Obama
by At the halfway point of Obama 1.0, myths designed to alienate the president from the American people persist. In this article, the author debunks the most sinister.
The Extreme Right also casts Obama’s politics and economics as socialist or communist. Again, these terms conjure up images of non-western authoritarian regimes such as the Soviet Union and Maoist China whose association with communism is tainted by their violation of human rights. The president, on the other hand, has stated his commitment to the free market and to human rights. There is little doubt that the president’s policies moved America to the left as a response to the economic crisis generated by unregulated banking and insurance industries. But even Republican George Bush started the process of bailing out the banks, and the auto industry bailout resulted in the stabilization of that industry and its ultimate re-privatization at a profit for the American taxpayer. The passage of the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 expanded the federal government’s role in providing health care to America’s uninsured, but Obama had to abandon the public option that would have made America’s health care system look more like Canada’s or that of western Europe. Obama can’t win for losing since he also received criticism from his party’s Left Wing when he agreed to the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. It seems that the president is not so much interested in a socialistic redistribution of wealth than a compromise with the forces of Wall Street and America’s business class in the hopes of increasing economic output and a reduction in the stubborn near-10% unemployment rate.
It’s time for the president’s opponents to think about governing for the good of the American people rather than devising ways to vilify the democratically elected president of the United States. The president is still immensely popular among his own party and independents, and if the Right alienates the center of the electorate, they may be setting themselves up for the thing which they diametrically oppose: four more years of a popular, progressive, President Obama.
Image by George Cassutto
Copyright 2010
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