What Did Obama Stand For?
with Norman Finkelstein
A major part of Barack Obama’s appeal to voters was his supposedly astounding intellectual acumen. But how much of this is backed up by the facts and how much of it was political myth-making? In this excerpt from this week’s episode, Norman Finkelstein and I ask whether there was any political or intellectual substance behind the public image of the former president.
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Barack Obama was a gifted orator, for sure. Perhaps that is why so many were taken by him, and fooled by him. Without a doubt, a far better orator than intellectual. He's no Thomas Sowell, that's for sure.
I remember when nobody knew who the hell Barak Obama was. I, like most people, was curious. I am no fan of politicians or politics. Going back even farther, when I first heard Bill Clinton speak, as he ran for president, I thought the guy was so transparently phony and gratuitous that everyone would see right thru him. I was wrong.
But the first time I hear Barak Obama speck, I drew no instant conclusions. He had no glib answers to questions. He pondered his answers, looking for just the right words. Good, so far. But all he ever earned from me was style points. He never said anything that was insightful, or unique to his own mind. He simply rephrased the usual talking points.
He was the first president that I can think of that weighed in on a local political issue, early in his presidency. That would be the instance of a Cambridge cop, near Harvard, being called to a house concerning a possible break-in. You may remember, the owner of the house, a black man, had returned from a trip a few days early, and a neighbor, who knew he was away, was concerned to see someone in the house, and called the cops. The cops came, the black guy said he was the owner, and the cop asked him for ID. Rather than provide it, the black guy went off on the cop about racism. I'm a little sensitive about that, and could tell an interesting but overly long story, but the short form is I was similarly asked for ID in my own home. So, I provided it. Big damned deal.
But Obama, knowing NOTHING of the specifics, weighed in for the black guy and against the cops. That was NOT a good sign for the remainder of his presidency.
And then there was Ferguson, in which BLACK witnesses substantiated that Michel Brown viciously attacked a cop, trying to get at his gun. The cop was in his car, and Brown reached in and started punching him and trying for the gun. So, the cop shot him. It went on for a while as Brown initially backed off, and the cop got out of his car to apprehend him. It resulted in more attacks by Brown, and more shots from the cop. Remember, this is corroborated by multiple BLACK witnesses. Yet, Obama fed the "blame the cops" intolerance, supporting the totally phony "Hands up don't shoot movement." If you ever supported or participated in the "Hands up, don't shoot movement", you supported lies and bigotry against cops. And Obama was part of that.
Obama's foreign policy was an ongoing disaster. His "Arab spring" became an "Arab genocide".
I've gone on longer than I intended, yet I've only scratched the surface. Early on, I was calling Obama a stuffed suit. He looks good, he talks well, but he has nothing to say that's worth hearing.