The Last Black President

Barack Obama has the distinction of being the first black President of the United States. He will also be its last black President.

Yes, the guy can be a gifted orator when he has memorized a decent speech or has one projected in front of him on a teleprompter, but if he’s speaking off the cuff and the question can’t be answered by a “talking point” scripted by his staff, he’s lost in a sea of ums, ahs, uhs, and y’knows. Maybe that’s why he captured the youth vote… they can “connect” with him.

Last March, during the primary campaign, former Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro had the courage to say what half the country was thinking, that Obama was in the race only because of his race. Ferraro told a newspaper reporter that “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman – of any color – he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Ferraro knows the rules of the political game, and she knew she herself had benefited from her gender in 1984 when she ran as Walter Mondale’s Vice-Presidential candidate. She admitted that “In 1984, if my name were Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would never have been chosen as the vice president.”

For being honest, Ferraro was excoriated by the media and was forced to resign from her fundraising post in Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obama may have feigned hurt at Ferraro’s comment, but inside he was thrilled that someone prominent had finally made such a statement. The story made the news and gave the media a chance to go to bat for Obama, criticizing Clinton as much as Ferraro, and everyone was put on notice that race could not be an issue in the campaign. That, of course, was exactly what Obama wanted. With the media’s instantaneous pouncing on Ferraro and Clinton it served notice that race was not to be an issue in the campaign. That meant, of course, that it was going to be an issue – but only Obama could use it. From that point forward Obama had free rein to indirectly imply that any attack against him was about race, while his underlings and the media could directly charge racism.

If someone raised a question about the anti-American, anti-white remarks made by Obama’s fiery minister, Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, the person asking the question must be a racist. (During the 20 years he attended Wright’s church Obama apparently slept through the most fiery and controversial sermons, while paying rapt attention to the benign “love they neighbor” passages.)

“Won’t you destroy job-creation by raising the capital gains tax, Senator Obama?” Sorry, I won’t answer that, it’s a racist question.

“What are you going to do about Iran’s threats against Israel?” Hey, race has no place in American politics!

“Where are you going to get all the money for everything you’re promising, Senator?” What? Get that racist out of my town hall meeting!

“How does it feel to be the greatest human being ever to walk the planet?” How dare you introduce race…oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize it was Chris Matthews asking the question.

For an agonizing 20 months or so we listened to Obama promise he would solve every personal problem anyone has ever had, balance the budget, end the war in Iraq, lower the allegedly rising sea level, get all the nations in the world to like us as much as they really like Sally Field, and make Christopher Reeve walk again. (Oops, sorry, that last one was a John Edwards promise from a previous campaign.) Then came November 4, and all objective reality went out the window. Yes, John McCain is old and his teeth are yellowed, but he wasn’t touting a national health plan that would make us pay for 32 new pearly whites. (And he didn’t have an extreme makeover team looking after him while he sat on the floor of a Vietnamese prison.)

It is now March 10 and we’ve had the services of the new occupant of the Oval Office for about 50 days. For some reason the media makes a fuss about a President’s “first 100 days,” as though something changes on day 101. (Perhaps by then one is expected to know how not to insult visiting Prime Ministers from the United Kingdom.) Obama had better do some great things in the next 50 days, because if his first 50 are any indication he’s either listening to some very bad advice or he’s not listening to any at all.

After 50 days in office the taxpayers have had a $787 billion waste-filled “stimulus bill” rammed down their throats, which will do little to stimulate the economy but a lot to bail out debt-laden states so they can go out and rack up even more debt. It will also reestablish the massive welfare state bureaucracy which took almost 35 years to trim.

Obama placed in charge of the Treasury Department a man whose plan to save the investors and the banks is so brilliant that no one has been able to find it – let alone figure it out. In two months Tim Geithner has managed to make Gilligan or the Skipper look like a viable replacement. (CNBC viewers may recall analyst Jim Cramer saying, before the inauguration, that if Geithner “…gets a top spot in… Barack Obama’s cabinet, we are done, finished, kaput. It is that simple.”) A lot of people must have changed to Cramer’s point of view, because the Intrade prediction market already has a “future” on whether Geithner will be out by the end of 2009. As of March 10 the odds were 22 per cent.

While the nation has thousands of banks that are doing just fine, Obama and Geithner insist on continuing to throw money we don’t have into Citigroup. Let it fail. Its assets will be bought up by others at sale prices, but that will be done with private money – not tax money.

When it’s obvious to everyone that General Motors has become one of the worst run businesses in America, the aforementioned dynamic duo insists on throwing good money after bad there as well. Let GM file for bankruptcy, restructure, and abandon the atrocious and expensive union contracts that are killing it. If it re-emerges from the ashes, it will be a better company. But Obama can’t let that happen, because he owes the big unions favors. He can’t survive in 2012 if the unions are angry with him, so he’ll spend everyone else’s tax dollars to placate them.

On the heels of his $787 billion “stimulus bill,” Obama proposed a $410 billion spending bill and a $3.6 trillion budget. His henchperson Nancy Pelosi has already hinted at yet another stimulus bill. (The term “henchperson” is used because Pelosi’s gender is unclear. Plastic surgery works wonders nowadays, and when you’re from San Francisco, who knows?)

Where will all the money come from? Even some of Obama’s supporters are beginning to wonder. With each passing day one hears more and more of the Obama fans saying things like, “Well, I like the guy but…” or “I still want him to succeed, but he shouldn’t be doing…” or “I voted for him and I think he’s great – except I don’t like much of what he’s done so far.” At some point the first part of those statements will be left out. (The problem some people have is that they voted for Obama based on emotions rather than reason, and it is now difficult for them to accept that they were fooled. They keep holding out hope for the band instruments and uniforms to arrive.)

To pay for at least some of his extravagant spending Obama is hiking taxes on the wealthy. There are not, of course, enough wealthy Americans to pay for all the goodies he has promised, so the rest of the loot has to come from either borrowing money or printing it. Borrowing money means raising interest rates high enough to attract investors. Printing massive amounts of money will produce hyperinflation. Look for both to occur.

When he’s not busy looking for ways to spend money or raise taxes, Obama tries other ways to handicap American businesses. He has already promised the unions that he would sign a bill that does away with secret ballots in organizing drives. He also wants to make it illegal for businesses to hire replacement workers during strikes by union workers. The result will be a dramatic increase in union power. That will force wages up at previously non-union companies and will, in turn, lead to dramatically higher prices for consumers – in the best of circumstances – or more companies going out of business or fleeing overseas – in the worst of circumstances.

Obama’s proposed “cap and trade” fees and regulations will be another nail in the coffin of American businesses. Obama may talk about “ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology,” but he’s already jumped firmly on Al Gore’s global warming bandwagon even though the science is not only undecided, it keeps moving in the direction of disproving the global warming theorists. Obama doesn’t care. He’s going to tax carbon emissions whether or not that is justified – because he needs the money. Enjoy your higher utility bills.

Obama pours billions into mortgage assistance programs while insisting that the money will only go to homeowners who have acted “responsibly,” completely failing to understand the total lack of logic in his argument. Homeowners who were, in fact, responsible do not need to be bailed out. The bail outs will, by definition, only be going to homeowners who borrowed irresponsibly!

The list goes on and on, and Obama hasn’t been President two months. The evidence is mounting that the occupant of the Oval Office is in way over his head. His media fans still can’t quite accept that, however, so they’ve started using “the government” instead of “Obama” as the perpetrator of the evil deeds. When something positive happens, “Obama” of course gets his name used in connection with the event. When something negative takes place, however, notice how the newspapers now blame “the government,” rather than pinning the blame on Obama, Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid. Their wording is intentional because they are not willing to blame Obama for anything.

If Republicans have the sense to field conservative – not “Democrat-lite” – candidates, they stand to win a respectable number of House and Senate seats in November of 2010. And if Republicans field an actual Republican in 2012, they have a good chance to win back the White House.

Although it seems unlikely now, some will not be surprised if Obama faces a serious challenge from his own party in the 2012 primaries. Lyndon Baines Johnson would clearly have faced such a challenge in 1968 had he not decided to retire after only one term. Jimmy Carter faced challenges from Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy and California Governor Jerry Brown in 1980. It does not stretch the imagination too much to suggest that Obama may be as unpopular in 2012 as Johnson was in 1968 and Carter was in 1980. A 10 per cent unemployment rate, a 10 per cent inflation rate, stagnant stock market, and mishaps with Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan can do that to a guy…

After Obama is ousted from the White House, it will be difficult to imagine a scenario in which another black candidate can win the Presidency. To some observers 2008 was a grand experiment. Americans knew Obama was young and untested. Those voters with half a brain knew he was the most unqualified, inexperienced, and liberal candidate ever to run for the office. On paper, he had no business running, let alone winning. The voters knew that Geraldine Ferraro’s observation was correct. But Matthews, Olbermann, Couric, Smith, the New York Times, and thousands of other writers, commentators, talking heads, and pundits insisted that Americans had to “rise above race” and vote for the unqualified con-man. (Granted, they didn’t use the words unqualified or con-man.)

So vote they did. And now America is paying the price for placing in the White House a man with socialist ideologies and fascist tendencies, who will sign every piece of leftist legislation Pelosi and Reid shove in front of him – regardless of how many nails it places in the coffin of capitalism. The Obama-Pelosi-Reid triumvirate (the “axis of OPRah”) fails to recognize that you can “share the wealth” only as long as there is wealth. Destroy the incentive and the ability to create wealth, and you’re left with Cuba.

So the demise of Obama is near. He will not win a second term. But why will he be the “last black President?” Why does his failure mean all future black Presidential candidates will suffer defeat?

The answer is that Attorney General Eric Holder was right in his recent criticism of Americans and their attitude toward race. He was markedly wrong to call America a nation of cowards, of course, but he was right that after Americans punch the time clock and go home they spend their time with their own families and close friends. That has nothing to do with race or cowardice or prejudice, it simply has to do with how normal people live. Whites tend to marry whites, blacks tend to marry blacks, and their families tend not to go through a lot of angst worrying about why they may not be integrating on the weekends. They’re not perpetrating racism, they’re just living their lives.

That leaves blacks and whites (and Hispanics and Orientals and any other group you can list) knowing more about themselves than about others. The only real “mixing” between different groups is between men and women – and one can argue that they don’t know a lot about each other either.

Thus, rightly or wrongly, people put a lot of faith in stereotypes. Yes, there are white people who believe most blacks are lazy and living on welfare because they have no initiative. They got those mental pictures from others, not necessarily from their own experiences. But the stereotypes work both ways. There are no doubt black people who spent 20 years listening to Reverend Jeremiah Wright and whose negative perception of whites was molded primarily by his racist rants.

A substantial number of white voters had doubts about Obama not because of his race but because of his leftist leanings. They thought – or at least hoped – that he would “govern from the center” after being sworn in, and was saying those “liberal things” just to wrest the nomination from Hillary Clinton. Now, 50 days into his administration, they know better. To paraphrase Obama (who lifted the line from Malcolm X), “They were hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray.” Americans paid Professor Barack Obama for the band instruments and the uniforms but they never arrived on the Wells Fargo wagon. They will not be burned again, and will forever be skeptical of traveling salesmen.

Obama’s biggest failure is that he has perpetuated a stereotype, and in doing so he has doomed all future black Presidential candidates. What, after all, do white Americans know about blacks?

Whites may have heard of a few prominent black authors, like James Baldwin, who believed that America was hopelessly irredeemable. If they know about Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and W.E.B. DuBois, they know they were socialists or communists.

They know about Rodney King, who was beaten by white cops in Los Angeles. They don’t remember what crime King committed, but they remember that he said, “Can’t we all just get along?” after having committed it. And they remember that angry blacks did not march on City Hall or the police headquarters to protest the unjustified abuse of King – they remember that they rioted, set fires, looted stores, and attacked innocent people.

White people know about O.J. Simpson, who killed two people and got away with it because a jury voted on the basis of emotion rather than a mountain of evidence. And they remember being stunned by the sight of their black co-workers jumping up and down and celebrating because a murderer was set free.

They listened to actress Halle Berry’s acceptance speech when she won an Academy Award and wondered why she kept rambling on about race if the Oscar was for acting, and thought she should have refused to accept the award if it was about skin color.

Whites know that Jesse Jackson has made a career out of blackmailing businesses into hiring more blacks, and shoving his face in front of every television camera that is not already tied up with New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

They know about Al Sharpton and how he tried to get Bernard Goetz prosecuted for shooting four black attackers who attempted to rob him on a New York subway. They know that Sharpton lost a slander case when he kept insulting the prosecutor in the case of Tawana Brawley, a young black girl who had fabricated a rape attack by six white men.

They know about retired General Colin Powell, who publicly endorsed Obama with a convoluted and nonsensical statement that left most assuming it was all about race.

They know about former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a foreign policy scholar who speaks fluent Russian and plays classical piano, and who was ridiculed in the media and in political cartoons for being an “Uncle Tom” and a traitor to her race for “acting white.”

Whites know about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was subject to a “high tech lynching” by Senator Joe Biden’s Senate Judiciary Committee for the crime of being a black conservative who believed in the U.S. Constitution.

They know about actor and comedian Bill Cosby, who came under attack from fellow blacks for daring to suggest that parents should teach their children morals at an early age and make education and hard work higher priorities than sports, drugs, rap music, and having children while still unwed teenagers.

They know that 90 per cent of blacks who are murdered are killed by other blacks. They know that the black high school drop-out rate is more than 50 per cent in many urban schools. They know that 70 per cent of black babies are born out of wedlock.

Whites know that George Washington Carver had something to do with agriculture and peanuts.

They know that all American slaves and slave owners died a long time ago.

Whites know that what’s important is the content of one’s character and not the color of one’s skin, yet are constantly being bombarded with the importance of race when the media focuses on someone who is “the first black this” or the “first black that.” They thought the election of Obama was supposed to put all of that nonsense in the past. And then the media made a fuss about the nation’s “first black Attorney General” – who promptly insulted them for not looking for black bowling partners on the weekend.

Beyond that, whites don’t know much about blacks. If they don’t know many of them personally, what they know is from stereotypes and caricatures – mostly provided and spread by the media. Perhaps if the media put less importance on Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and rap stars and more on high-achieving black students and successful black businessmen the stereotypes would start to fade. Although some whites may suspect that many blacks do not consider Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton their “spokesmen,” you wouldn’t know it from the media. Perhaps the media should reconsider its practice of immediately seeking out Jackson or Sharpton for a public comment the moment it encounters any newsworthy event involving at least one black American.

After two months in office Obama has shown white America that he does not know how to lead the nation. He only knows how to campaign against capitalism and entrepreneurial success. He had a chance to break the stereotype and show white America that it had not made a mistake, that race was irrelevant and anyone could, in fact, rise to the office of President and be successful. But Obama failed. He rose to the office, but he has not and will not be successful – not because of his race but because of his warped political philosophies and his lack of understanding of fundamental economic principles.

The fault is not Obama’s. He simply took advantage of the political climate and rode an anti-Bush wave into the White House because he had no articulate challenger. He was elected because many Americans gave more importance to race guilt than an objective analysis of the candidate’s experience, qualifications, and goals – and because the media, blinded by leftist ideology, chose to hide from the public the information needed to perform that objective analysis.

Having been burned once, white Americans will learn their lesson. It will not be fair to taint all future black candidates with the incompetence demonstrated by Obama, but it will happen. Flowery prose will no longer be enough – the voters will demand a track record of success. The next black Presidential candidate won’t get a pass because of his race. He may even be unfairly subjected to a higher standard. That will be the legacy of Barack Obama, the nation’s last black President.

…unless, of course, the Republicans nominate a conservative black.

Don Fredrick

March 11, 2009

Follow-up…

This is an e-mail received in response to the above article: