"Of the 500 promises he's made, he has kept, or at least began progress, on 400 of them." That was Jonathan Alter, citing the Pulitzer prize-winning fact-checking website Politifact on C-Span's Washington Journal last week. I think most independent historians agree that this president and administration has been the best for the middle class and working people since Lyndon Johnson. And yet...
I was thinking about that movie from some years ago entitled "A Time to Kill". The story is set in the south during a time when, let's just say, the racial climate was much worse than today. In the story, a black father kills two white men in retaliation for the brutal attack and rape of his young daughter by these men. He chooses a young, relatively-inexperienced white lawyer for his defense, even though the NAACP had offered to take his case. Why? Because he believes the white lawyer is the only one who can reach into the hearts of the all-white jury who is judging him. At the end of the picture, his lawyer describes, in excruciating detail, the tale of a little girl who is brutally attacked, raped, and left for dead. His last question to the jury is, "now imagine she's white".
I'm not attempting to draw exact parallels to the experience of the character in this movie to that of President Obama's. The analogy I am putting forth is this--imagine a president comes into office under the following circumstances:
--two long and incredibly difficult wars
--a collapsing financial system and an economy on the brink of another great depression
--decades-long structural inequities in the economy, education, healthcare, energy sectors, and trade
--a unified opposition party, unwilling to contribute their votes to solving these big problems and actively blocking any and everything they can, including people simply selected by the president to work in government and help clean up the mess. this party also happens to have a 24/7 p.r. and propaganda machine blaring their message
--a disillusioned, minimally-engaged electorate who are short on patience and shorter on attention span, and who have had a failed philosophy and policy agenda drilled into their psyche for 30 years
Now, imagine this president is white.
Would the self-described progressive left be so willing to assign to him the worst motives and character traits and call him the worst names? Or, would he be given the benefit of the doubt, given a little more space and time to maneuver and move things forward, even at a slower pace than we'd like? Now, I want to make clear that I am not charging racism to anyone who criticizes the president. I have been disappointed with some things that have/have not been done as well. But, the ferocity and tone and the way in which much of this criticism takes place is simply wrong. There is a way in which to criticize someone and still do it respectively and constructively. And, for some reason, I believe President Obama would not receive the level of animosity that he is on a regular and ongoing basis if he looked more like someone that the majority population would culturally identify with.
But..these are just thoughts on a page..make of it what you will.