Obama Efforts To Placate Right Wing Backfire
October 5, 2009 by Sherwood Ross · 11 Comments
By Sherwood Ross
What President Obama has gotten for his troubles "to placate the right wing" is "bailed out banks that wouldn’t lend, huge bonuses paid to Wall Streeters, tens, scores or more thousands of people losing their homes, an ever bigger, ever more disastrous war, and solid, rocklike Republican opposition on health care," essayist Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, writes.
"It is possible that the brilliant fellow who is President cannot grasp that there are people in this world with whom one cannot ‘make nice’ because they will screw you ever time, so you are better off hammering them and pleasing those who are on your side and will assist you instead of fruitlessly trying to placate and/or obtain the help of those who will never help you?" Velvel asks.
"With regard to multi billion dollar bailouts of guilty banks, failure to assist innocent people who were bamboozled into sub prime mortgages by Wall Street, increasing the size of the war in Afghanistan instead of withdrawing from that Godforsaken war, prosecution for torture, health care, and who knows how many other disasters, Obama has tried to make nice to the right wing in hopes that the right wingers will help him. No soap, Barack," Velvel writes.
"Obama says in regard to torture that he wants to look forward, not look back," Velvel continues. "He is a brilliant guy who, despite his brilliance, seems never to have learned the truth in Faulkner’s line that the past is not prologue; it is not even past."
"When those who do evil get away with it because nobody wants to think about what was done, and people instead want to focus on ‘moving forward,’ the door is open, both ideologically and practically, for recurrence of the same evil in the future," Velvel warns.
As examples from America’s past he points to the Civil War and the Philippines Insurrection: "Not for nothing was the desire to begin overlooking the Civil War followed, starting in 1876, by 90 years of Jim Crow—the very Jim Crow which made it a miracle that Obama could be elected as ‘early’ as 2008. Not for nothing was the Philippines Insurrection succeeded by the Viet Nam War, which was succeeded by Iraq II, which has now given way to Afghanistan . Not for nothing was the waterboarding of the Philippines Insurrection followed by the waterboarding of the so-called War on Terror. It has all happened before and history shows it will all happen again if we put it all aside in the name of moving forward."
Velvel concludes, "One wonders whether Obama’s brilliance and articulateness have now played him false. That is, one wonders whether his immense intelligence and skill enabled him to succeed and succeed without ever having to realize and act upon the fact that there are some people who simply will never be placated, who will always be bitter enders in opposition. One wonders whether it is possible that he has never before had to face this fact because, for his entire life, he was always able to persuade so many people by virtue of intelligence, grace and fluency, until he ran up against the hard case Republicans who seem to control that party in Congress and who seem intent on running this nation into the ground."
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I regards to placating the right wing to bailouts of banks that made sub prime loans. Could the author please tell the truth. The sub prime loan program was created by Congress and certain presidents under the Community Reinvestment Act. This act was pushed by President Clinton and his crooked friends at the Fannie Mae and Mack.
In fact they cooked the books, and basically got away with it. Now if they had been Republicans the Mainstream Media would have told us. Well, Fannie Mae and ACORD pressured banks under threat to give loans to purchase homes they could not afford.
Fannie Mae then purchased those bad loans and wrapped them up and sold them to Wall Street investors. They assumed they these loans were backed by the federal government.
What I fail to understand is that certain democratic senators and congessman including the now sitting president prevented President Bush from trying to reform things. Just to think this could have been prevented.
I get a kick out of hearing these same crooks in Congress holding hearings over problems that they created. Especially with Bernie Madoff. I bet they took a few dollars from him. Then they made phone calls or sent memo’s to the SEC to not bother Bernie.
Nonsense, actually bull.
You have ignored the real sources of the financial fiasco in order to launch another false and gratuitous attack on Clinton and the "liberals."
Again bull, that’s all, argument won’t work with you as you exist in a fact free dimension.
Dear Mr. Higgins:
You make mention of real sources what are yours?
Mr. Keerigan actually make a pretty accurate statement, also if you looked into who are amjor shareholders of some of these bank that got the bailouts I am sure you might be enlightened as to where the dollars flowed. You do have Chairs of Comittees, that are the ones that shoudl be investigated, it is easy to shread when you are on top. Also, for your facts check you can go back tot eh Clinton administration as to when the commerical lenders were allowed to apply derivative trades towards saving in loans institution it was this decoupling of leniding institutions that led to the crack supply of funds and the ability to back based on margin. Funny How this admisinstartion makes mention on how they are going to give everything back except hmmm AIG the gloabal insurance giant, it seems MR. Higgins you have much more research to do.
You have to realize that the right wing bankers that they are talking about were educated in Ivy league schools. The wall street people run the government and have for years, these people also move from the top positions in wall street and the banking industry to cabinet positions in the government during both parties adminstrations. I think Obama is doing a good job, just get off his back.
DA WHITE says; “I think Obama is doing a good job, just get off his back.” WHAT…tell me, what he has done?
Here, here Deltdoc. He’s bailed out GM and big banks and used our tax dollars and increased the federal deficit to do it. Now he’s trying to shove socialized medicine down our throats. He’s caused the American people embarrassment and humiliation with his apology to Castro. The world is laughing at us and him. Our enemies call him “son”. I have no respect for this man and am looking forward to the day when he is either impeached or elected out of office.
KAsdrummergirl :……spoken like a true faux noise watcher when are you going to turn off that” corporate communist propaganda ” channel ? OH THE POOR INSURANCE COMPANIES the ceo might have to take a pay cut to 20,000,000 a year but that’s OK he will just deny more claims and make it up in bonuses
I think it is just possible that Obama is setting the Right Wing of the American political spectrum up for a fall. Maybe. Maybe not. I cannot quite tell yet.
In order for the Obamites to go their own way during this Administration and the next one, he has to make it a matter of public record that he tried to bring the GOP along. He has to be able to say to the American people "I tried to get GOP ideas for a common front against our problems. They would not cooperate. I tried and I failed. Now we will do it my way." I am fairly sure that is what he is doing here.
So far, the GOP has paid a very small price for being completely obstructionist. That will not go on forever. Within months, the American people will sorely tire of that "no-government" approach to government. They are tiring of it now. The backlash will come and the GOP will suffer it. I am fairly certain. I am not sure, but I suspect this is a setup.
This is exactly what Pelosi and Reid would do in Congress. Ask for help, have the GOP go down on record as providing nothing but ridicule and derision of the Democratic Party’s efforts, and then "wham!" they get slammed for being obstructionist.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Obama is an idiot.
I strongly doubt that. I think he is setting the GOP up for an embarrassing and very public fall.
See, right there is the “Strategy” excuse and yet I’ve read articles you’ve written that belie that very argument.
Follow the money and its obvious Mr. Obama is a Corporate whore just like nearly every politician in D.C., perhaps the Country as a whole.
We get our version of the purple finger election charade every four years, whereby we get to choose between two people put forward by the monied elite, and both have been carefully vetted to ensure loyalty to the Ruling class.
The fact our Country elected its first Black President is nothing more than a testament to the horrific job Bush did. Our ruling class knew that they had to present something more than another rich white guy or risk losing their heads to the proverbial “guilotine”.
You could be absolutely and unequivocally right Dan. I just don’t know. This guy Obama could truly be an idiot. But something tells me "no".
I just smell a setup here. I grew up in Republican politics in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My maternal grandfather was a ward leader there for decades. I have siblings still heavily involved in GOP politics there.
I took my politics from my father’s family. My paternal grandfather had been an alderman in Pottsville, PA for awhile and that side of the family was heavily Democratic, of the FDR type. They have very different approaches to politics.
I am involved in Democratic Party politics here in Alexandria, VA and have been since I retired from the Coast Guard in 1999. It is an eye opening experience.
In short, Democrats kill flies by using a slip of paper and a dab of honey. Republicans kill flies by using a sledge hammer. They both kill flies but one is overkill and the other does everything it can to make the death surge look like a feast. It is more style than substance.
I see Obama as possibly luring in the GOP, getting them either to sit at the table or to refuse to sit at the table and then saying to the American people, "See! I told you! I asked them to help me govern and they refuse. Now I will govern my way because I have no other choice."
Is Obama a whore? Sure he is. Do you any politician that is not? But whether or not he is dumb and clueless or dumb like a fox is not apparent yet. It is too early.
I hope I am right. If I am wrong, we should know by about the middle of January. It takes about a year to figure out a President’s course and heading. If he is off course and this is not politics but a real hole in his administration’s strategy to govern, we should know by then.
excuse me, “Guillotine”. My bad.