We interrupt our regularly scheduled circular firing squad discussion of health care reform to ponder briefly the uproar over President Obama’s planned address to schoolchildren on Tuesday, September 8.
As you doubtless have heard by now, President Obama intends to deliver an address to schoolchildren on Tuesday, urging them to commit themselves to their studies and stressing the importance of hard work. The announcement has sparked a maelstrom of criticism from parents and politicians concerned that the President intends to use the opportunity to indoctrinate their children with evil, Democratic Party values.
In response, some of us have accused those who object to the President’s speech of disrespect for the office of the presidency. Indeed, it pains me to say, that some members of the Daily Kos community have gone so far as to suggest that those attacking the President may have been motivated in part by racial animus. Some note that both President Reagan and the first President Bush addressed the nation’s schoolchildren without creating such a controversy, even when President Reagan's comments proved to be explicitly partisan political.
Now I’m sure that there are some who object to President Obama’s address because they fear the effect on our youth when children see an African-American commanding the respect of white people by dint of his office and by the power of his words. But I’m equally certain that it’s only a few bad apples who are reacting in such a way. Indeed, the many members of the Republican leadership who have raised their voices to insist on paying due respect to the President demonstrates that the GOP continues to hold to the highest standards of political discourse and that disrespect for the President, let alone racially-motivated disrespect, has no hold on the party of Abraham Lincoln.
“But Houndcat,” you say, “there’s been virtually no reports of Republican leadership criticizing people whose actions and words demonstrate disrespect for President Obama.”
To which I reply, “Precisely!” Had there been no outcry from Republican leaders condemning disrespect of the presidency, the lack of such an outcry would be the subject of dozens of stories in the liberal “gotcha” MSM. The absence of all such reporting definitively proves that Republicans have acted fully honorably with respect to this matter.
No, there is only one reasonable explanation for Republican concern that President Obama will use his office to attempt to indoctrinate our children. Republicans sincerely disagree with the President’s message. Such disagreement, of course, is the lifeblood of democracy. Republicans have every right to oppose the President’s emphasis on the importance of education and hard work. Our forebears risked everything, even their lives, so that we could express our disagreements freely, even when our opinions are unpopular. As committed Democrats and, indeed, as patriotic Americans, we owe it to ourselves and to our country to provide those who disagree with the President’s message with a forum to state their opposition and to thwart any attempt to indoctrinate our precious schoolchildren with un-American ideology.
My proposal, therefore, is a simple one: Equal time for the loyal opposition. Nothing more and nothing less than Republicans get whenever the President gives a national address. They could, for instance, counter the President’s insistence on the importance of hard work with an address from former Governor Palin explaining how quitting is a crucial method of refusing to quit. Former Vice President Cheney could rebut the President’s message of commitment to one’s studies by reminding children that his failure as a student at a so-called top-flight university did not prevent him from ultimately leading the nation's valiant abandonment of quaint notions with respect to enhanced interrogation techniques, if only temporarily. Or Senator Inhofe could remind our youths that excessive study can cause increased susceptibility to fraudulent pseudo-scientific concepts like catastrophic climate change and evolution. It matters not who the spokesperson is. The only requirement should be that the Republicans have a fair opportunity to explain why they disagree with President Obama’s message of hard work and the importance of education.
As Americans, we owe them nothing less.
You may now resume attempts to blame each other for the failure of health care reform. I trust that this interruption will not force you to wait to see if it actually fails before engaging in the crucial apportionment of blame.