noble promises of compromising to reach genuine solutions ran up against the cold, hard realities of a political institution—media, politics, and government—polarized and locked into place.
After the election, conservative columnist Ann Coulter sarcastically wrote that Republicans should show President Obama the same amount of respect that Democrats had shown President Bush over the past eight years—meaning not much. Coulter and others in the conservative media often refer to the president as “B. Hussein Obama.” The clear intention is to cast him as a foreign influence, as someone different and potentially dangerous.
As a result of this polarizing scare tactic, a segment of our country now believes Barack Obama is not a Christian but a Muslim. According to public opinion polls, the number of Americans who believe he is a Muslim has increased since he has been in office.
Another group, the “birthers,” believes that Obama is an illegitimate president because he is not really an American citizen. In their world, led of late by Donald Trump, the president was born not in Hawaii but in either Kenya or Indonesia. The facts are that Obama’s birth certificate and archives of birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers show that he was born in Honolulu, the capital of the fiftieth state. The birthers maintain that these documents are forgeries, part of an elaborate conspiracy to conceal his true identity. How can the American people collectively make a fair, informed evaluation of President Obama and his performance when a growing number of them are wildly misinformed about the basic facts of who he is? What these extreme groups do is use these tactics as a way of dismissing any discussion of President Obama’s ideas or agenda. It’s far easier to paint them with scandal than seriously debate them on their merits. President Obama himself captured this frustration in April of 2011 whenthe White House released his long-form birth certificate. In a press conference held at the time, President Obama said, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.”
The speed with which the hope and goodwill inspired by Obama as candidate evaporated during his first two years in office has to be one of the more remarkable tidal turns in modern American political history.
Once again it was driven by the power of polarization. The entrenched, moneyed interests maintain fierce control over what we can and can’t say or debate. We are forced to pick column A or column B, one side or the other, limiting the gene pool of our thinking, leaving us with two sides that are equally inbred and unsustainable.
Again, our politicians’ partisan views are bolstered by the money they generate—Representative Joe Wilson benefited handsomely from yelling, “You lie!” during Obama’s address to Congress regarding health care in 2009. New Deal–era criticisms of federal government initiatives have been resurrected as surefire solicitations in e-mails, newsletters, and direct mail because they bring in the money every time. The mantra “big-government takeover” has been applied to actions ranging from banking regulations to the rescue of GM to health-care reform to Internet regulation (i.e., “network neutrality”).
Media, of course, make money from our nondebate too. During the 2010 campaign, Sharron Angle, the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, claimed that unemployment benefits for people who had been out of work for ninety-nine weeks should not be continued because they would create “a spoilage system,” and she refused to do interviews with any media other than Fox News. Rather than debating the accuracy and meritsof this claim, the media focused on her taunts to her opponent, Harry Reid, to “man up.” Christine O’Donnell endorsed the ideas of partial privatization of Social Security and turning Medicare into a voucher program. Yet the media focused on a comment she had made on Bill Maher’s
Politically
After the election, conservative columnist Ann Coulter sarcastically wrote that Republicans should show President Obama the same amount of respect that Democrats had shown President Bush over the past eight years—meaning not much. Coulter and others in the conservative media often refer to the president as “B. Hussein Obama.” The clear intention is to cast him as a foreign influence, as someone different and potentially dangerous.
As a result of this polarizing scare tactic, a segment of our country now believes Barack Obama is not a Christian but a Muslim. According to public opinion polls, the number of Americans who believe he is a Muslim has increased since he has been in office.
Another group, the “birthers,” believes that Obama is an illegitimate president because he is not really an American citizen. In their world, led of late by Donald Trump, the president was born not in Hawaii but in either Kenya or Indonesia. The facts are that Obama’s birth certificate and archives of birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers show that he was born in Honolulu, the capital of the fiftieth state. The birthers maintain that these documents are forgeries, part of an elaborate conspiracy to conceal his true identity. How can the American people collectively make a fair, informed evaluation of President Obama and his performance when a growing number of them are wildly misinformed about the basic facts of who he is? What these extreme groups do is use these tactics as a way of dismissing any discussion of President Obama’s ideas or agenda. It’s far easier to paint them with scandal than seriously debate them on their merits. President Obama himself captured this frustration in April of 2011 whenthe White House released his long-form birth certificate. In a press conference held at the time, President Obama said, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness.”
The speed with which the hope and goodwill inspired by Obama as candidate evaporated during his first two years in office has to be one of the more remarkable tidal turns in modern American political history.
Once again it was driven by the power of polarization. The entrenched, moneyed interests maintain fierce control over what we can and can’t say or debate. We are forced to pick column A or column B, one side or the other, limiting the gene pool of our thinking, leaving us with two sides that are equally inbred and unsustainable.
Again, our politicians’ partisan views are bolstered by the money they generate—Representative Joe Wilson benefited handsomely from yelling, “You lie!” during Obama’s address to Congress regarding health care in 2009. New Deal–era criticisms of federal government initiatives have been resurrected as surefire solicitations in e-mails, newsletters, and direct mail because they bring in the money every time. The mantra “big-government takeover” has been applied to actions ranging from banking regulations to the rescue of GM to health-care reform to Internet regulation (i.e., “network neutrality”).
Media, of course, make money from our nondebate too. During the 2010 campaign, Sharron Angle, the Republican Senate candidate in Nevada, claimed that unemployment benefits for people who had been out of work for ninety-nine weeks should not be continued because they would create “a spoilage system,” and she refused to do interviews with any media other than Fox News. Rather than debating the accuracy and meritsof this claim, the media focused on her taunts to her opponent, Harry Reid, to “man up.” Christine O’Donnell endorsed the ideas of partial privatization of Social Security and turning Medicare into a voucher program. Yet the media focused on a comment she had made on Bill Maher’s
Politically
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