President Obama Fights Back
This new found fight is interesting when one considers that if Republican attacks on his policies and personality are a given, the real revelation has been the incoming fire he has taken from his supposed allies on the left like Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times writer Paul Krugman, who called the president “a bland, timid guy that doesn’t seem to stand for anything in particular.” Ouch! Those clearly would be fighting words anywhere but the halls of academia or Washington, where we expect our leaders to take such insults with a smile as opposed to settling the problem with fists out on the White House lawn.
Still, President Obama ripped Republicans during his recent speech on the budget at George Washington University, where he intimated that the GOP is seeking to balance 1 trillion dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy on the backs of social service programs for the poor.
Obama’s angry side was also on display following an interview with Texas reporter Brad Watson, one in which Watson repeatedly corrected the president about how many points he lost Texas by in ’08. Mr. Obama admonished Watson at the end of the session by saying that if he ever wanted to interview him again, that next time “let me finish.” This is a far cry from the president’s interview with Bill O’Reilly during Super Bowl weekend, one in which I had hoped that Mr. Obama would have asked O’Reilly “who do you think you are talking to” before removing his microphone and walking out. Of course that would not have been dignified, but dignified and O’Reilly rarely belong in the same sentence, particularly when the latter is on his high-handed, self-righteous soap box.
I often have wondered why the president allows his opponents to take personal or policy whacks at him. It just goes to show how far we have come since the 19th Century, when South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks brutally whipped Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane after the latter made remarks that Brooks found objectionable on the Senate floor.
Still, silence in politics is often acceptance, and it is far past time that the president set the record—and people—straight when they are out of line.