President Obama has chosen his battles. Not the battles in Afghanistan or Iraq. No, he is dithering and indecisive there. Instead, the president has identified and declared war on enemies much closer to home: free speech, the free press, and free enterprise.
President Obama is not the first American president who has had to deal with large numbers of Americans protesting his policies. Anti-war protesters in America, and all over the world, held demonstrations against President George W. Bush's entrance into the Iraq war. President Johnson had to deal with American protests against the Vietnam war. Today, President Obama is encountering widespread protests against his domestic agenda. How he is reacting to those protests is what separates him from many of his predecessors.
When thousands of tax day tea parties were held in cities all over America and attracted large numbers of people, the president made it clear how he felt about them. In a town hall on April 29th, video of which was posted on YouTube, he dismissed the protesters outright when he made remarks about "folks waving tea bags around..." Not only were his words condescending, but the tone of his voice and tension in his face when he spoke about the tea parties betrayed an ugly disdain for those Americans who stood up to protest his economic agenda.
Obama's rhetoric was even more strident when he spoke about the Americans who packed town halls conducted by their elected representatives to express their disapproval for government run health care and massive deficits. He accused them of being angry mobs who expressed manufactured outrage. Because they were getting in the way of his ability to sell government run health care to the American people, he attempted to discredit and marginalize them, hoping others would think twice about following their lead. He implied they were merely a rabble of out of touch radicals who were standing in the way of progress. There is little precedent for an American president's wholesale demonizing of the electorate in the history of the presidency.
Fox News was the only news organization that treated the tea party movement as a serious news event. Fox also covered the health care protests that sprung up at various Congressional town halls around the country, which provided those who attended the opportunity to voice their concerns to the rest of the country. President Obama was clearly not happy about Fox's coverage. The widespread broadcasting of video of Americans angrily confronting their elected officials for supporting the president's health care agenda put him in the very awkward position having to forcefully defend it, prompting Obama to give his September 9th health care speech to a rare joint session of Congress.
A week and a half later Obama went on every Sunday morning talk show, except Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. That was followed by White House communications director Anita Dunn appearing on CNN and accusing Fox of not being a real news organization like CNN. A few days after that David Axelrod and and Rahm Emanuel were guests on This Week with George Stephanopolous and CNN's State of the Union respectively and ramped up the accusations against Fox. Axelrod insisted that not only was Fox News not a real news organization but that "the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way." The message was loud and clear.
These brazen attempts were meant to intimidate Fox into backing off their reporting of the protests, while making it clear to the other news organizations that they had better continue toeing the line on Obama's agenda. They are also the tactics of a heavy handed autocrat, not of a democratically elected American president. It seems President Obama has a serious problem with a free press as well.
Unfortunately, the president is not done launching attacks against those who resist his plans. The newest addition to the president's hit list is the United States Chamber of Commerce. The offense: its multi-million dollar, multi-year campaign to educate America's citizens, particularly its younger citizens, that free enterprise is the key to unlocking the door to America's economic recovery and job growth. Educating Americans about free enterprise is anathema to the president's agenda. Therefore, the US Chamber of Commerce has become his enemy.
The president's strategy is to go around the chamber and get its member-businesses to turn on the organization. If he can do this, then it might not just hurt the US Chamber's efforts but it could defang the organization altogether. The absurdity of an American President attacking his own Chamber of Commerce is almost breathtaking. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki tried to justify the administration's tactics: "it does give us pause that they continue to throw millions of dollars against productive efforts under way to reform the regulatory structure, provide access to affordable health insurance for more Americans and reduce the impact of greenhouse gas emissions -- all plans essential to the continued growth and recovery of our economy." In the president's upside down world, his agenda is the the only path to what he considers to be real progress.
It is becoming abundantly clear as the weeks and months go by that the only "free" this president prefers is the type that is associated with government largesse. If the word is associated with freedom from government largesse, then, in President Obama's mind, it stands in the way of "progress" and must be discredited, if not destroyed.
Kim Priestap's Bio
Kim Priestap is a business owner, freelance writer, and contributing editor at Wizbangblog.com. Kim has been published in the Washington Examiner and Pajamas Media. She lives in northern Michigan with her husband, Steve, their three kids, and two dogs.
Posted
10-22-2009 12:01 AM
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