Tag: Barack Obama

Looks like we’re back in Kansas, Toto

Oh, my. A first-term Republican congresswoman from Kansas named Lynn Jenkins told folks attending a town meeting recently that her party needs to find a “great white hope” to do battle with President Obama. According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Jenkins told the crowd:

Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope. I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington.

Jenkins proceeded to rattle off the names of several Republican up-and-comers, all of whom were, uh, white. She later apologized through a spokeswoman.

Sounds like the classic definition of a gaffe. That is, she accidentally said what she meant. As Charles Pierce observes, when they say it’s not about race, it’s about race. (Via TPMDC.)

Spying on the antiwar movement

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at a disturbing, underreported revelation: that a public-records request in Washington State revealed an antiwar activist was, in fact, a military spy whose activities may have been a violation of federal law. And I argue that President Obama can no longer ignore calls to investigate the Bush-Cheney White House.

A couple of Gates-related odds and ends

I want to make it clear right up front that I know neither of these tidbits speaks directly to the matter of Professor Henry Louis Gates versus Sgt. James Crowley. But I’ve been thinking about both of them, and have decided they’re worth passing on as being indicative of a certain cultural mindset.

First, can we agree that 1999 wasn’t that long ago? Good. Because it was during that year that the Cambridge Chronicle discovered the Cambridge Police Department was training its officers to believe Mexicans and members of other ethnic groups who routinely eat spicy foods were immune to pepper spray. Apologies ensued.

Second, why on earth would Crowley give his first major interview to John Dennis and Gerry Callahan on WEEI Radio (AM 850)? The officer was trying to make the case that he’s not a racist — and yet he talked with two guys who were once suspended for comparing black kids to “gorillas.”

I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that Crowley is a racist. On the other hand, the evidence that he’s “clueless,” as Boston Globe columnist Adrian Walker put it yesterday, continues to build.

As for President Obama, his week was like the Red Sox’ — really bad, ending on an upbeat note, but leaving you wondering whether he can shore up some fundamental flaws (lack of message discipline, combined with a disconcerting habit of having to revise his remarks) that weren’t evident when he was winning.

Obama, Gates and racism

President Obama stepped on his health-care message last night when he said more about the Henry Louis Gates arrest than he should have — especially since, as he himself admitted, he didn’t know the facts.

But critics who tut-tut whenever Obama reminds us that he is indeed an African-American who has experienced his share of racism might want to consider the debilitating effects of crap like this and this.

White House blocks visitor logs

The Obama administration is continuing George W. Bush’s policy of arguing that logs of visitors to the White House — health-care executives, of all people — are not public, Bill Dedman reports for MSNBC.com.

David Kurtz has a withering take on the news at Talking Points Memo: “Cheney Obama refuses to release visitor logs showing which energy health care company executives visited the White House.”

OK, we get it that we’re not suffering through Barack Obama’s economy or his war in Iraq — at least not yet. But governmental openness is not only something the president promised, but it’s also under his direct control. Enough already.

Another good day for Mitt Romney

Now that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s national ambitions are a thing of the past — left behind on the extreme southern stretch of the Appalachian Trail — it’s interesting to think about the number of up-and-coming Republican stars who’ve been taken off the board in the past year. Five (including Sanford) come quickly to mind.

Two — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — were damaged by their own party, pushed in front of the public long before they were ready. Hype-versus-reality questions aside, Palin and Jindal were routinely described as rising stars until, suddenly, they weren’t.

Jindal can certainly recover from his poor performance in delivering the Republican response to President Obama’s national address last February. All he has to do is not act like a dork the next time. But the arc of Palin’s post-running-mate political career has already been determined: hero to the right wing of her party; pariah to everyone else.

Sanford’s finished. So is Nevada Sen. John Ensign, although at least his sexual indiscretions do not include a secretive flight to Argentina. I must confess I’d barely heard of Ensign before learning that (1) he’d been unfaithful in his marriage and (2) he was a possible presidential candidate.

Finally, there is former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, chosen by Obama as his ambassador to China. Huntsman hasn’t been tainted (except possibly in the eyes of a few partisan Republicans), but he’s not going to challenge Obama in 2012.

As Rich Lowry observes at National Review (via Talking Points Memo), Mitt Romney may be the last candidate standing by the time the ’12 campaign rolls around in earnest.

Share your thoughts on Obama’s presser

Friend of Media Nation Jon Keller has written a post at Beatthepress.org in which he endorses Dana Milbank’s account in the Washington Post of President Obama’s “prepackaged entertainment” at Tuesday’s White House news conference.

As you may already know, Obama called on Nico Pitney of the Huffington Post, saying, “I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?”

I don’t want to provide too much set-up before turning this over to you, but here is what Pitney wrote for HuffPo about what happened. Pitney says that though he was invited to prepare a question based what Iranians had been talking about online, no one at the White House knew what he was going to ask; and that though he was, indeed, escorted into the briefing room, he had been told ahead of time that there was no guarantee he’d be called on.

Now, I have two questions for you, which I want you to answer only after reading Keller, Milbank and Pitney.

1. If you relied solely on Milbank’s account, would it be your understanding that Obama knew what Pitney’s question would be?

2. Since, according to Pitney, Obama neither knew the question nor had promised to call on him, did either the president or his press operation do anything wrong, unethical or even disrespectful to the other reporters in the room?

Obama and openness

Bill Dedman of MSNBC.com reports that the Obama administration is following George W. Bush’s policy of refusing to release the logs identifying visitors to the White House — despite two rulings that such records are public.

Good story, though Dedman doesn’t say whether Bush’s policy was a reversal or a continuation of what previous presidents had done. I hope he’ll clarify.

Update: Dedman writes that “the story makes clear that only in limited cases have these records been released. And that apparently only the Bush and Obama administrations have stood up in federal court to argue that White House visitor logs are not public record.”

Critiquing Obama’s speech in Egypt

They don’t come any dumber than U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. In a piece on local reaction to President Obama’s speech in Egypt, Inhofe tells his hometown newspaper, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo” and “I just don’t know whose side he’s on.” (Via TPMDC.)

On the other hand, New York Times columnist David Brooks gets right to the heart of the contradictions in Obama’s speech, writing:

This speech builds an idealistic facade on a realist structure. And this gets to the core Obama foreign-policy perplexity. The president wants to be an inspiring leader who rallies the masses. He also wants be a top-down realist who cuts deals in the palaces. There is a tension between these two impulses that even a sharp Chicago pol is having trouble managing.

My own reaction: underwhelmed, despite the characteristically first-rate craftsmanship and delivery. I couldn’t really articulate why, but I definitely think Brooks is on to it.