Pres. Barack Obama delivered hi s loviest speech as president in Tucson, Ariz., after the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords. It was moving, pitch-perfect and — in its key passages calling for civility in our political discourse — brazenly insincere.
Obama said we should be sure that “we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.” He framed his call as a way to honor the victims of the Tucson tragedy: “Only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”
Advertisement
Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa must have been too busy watching old episodes of The Sopranos that night. In a warm-up act for the president’s rally the other day in Detroit, Hoffa unloosed a witless, stereotypically crude tirade standing at a podium about to be affixed with a presidential seal and graced by the presence of the Master of Civility himself.
Hoffa told the rally that the Tea Party had declared “war on workers,” but told his listeners that organized labor likes “a good fight.” He thundered: “They got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner.” He assured President Obama that “this is your army,” and urged the crowd to vote: “Let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong [sic].”
This passage is so hot in tone and freighted with martial imagery that had Sarah Palin uttered it, MSNBC would preempt its usual prison documentaries to do 24-hour coverage of the supposed incitement to violence. But President Obama took the stage shortly afterward with nary a word about Hoffa’s rant, and the White House has refused to condemn it. Perhaps the president gave the unions a secret waiver from his injunctions to civility?
Of course, the summons to civility was never intended as a bipartisan initiative. Born of a smear of the Right as somehow responsible for the crimes of the lunatic who shot Giffords, it was a handy way to try to delegitimize conservatives and mute their voices. Soon after Tucson, liberal protesters in Madison, Wis., were lambasting Republican officeholders in rancorous terms and even threatening them, without anyone’s standing up for civility. When Giffords returned to Washington at the end of the debt debate to cast her first vote since the shooting, it was in an atmosphere thick with liberal accusations that Republicans were “terrorists” and “hostage-takers.”
When he extolled civility nine months ago, President Obama didn’t count on his political base’s becoming more enraged than ever, or on his own desperation as president of a country with 9.1 percent unemployment. The most elemental act of civility is assuming the sincerity and patriotism of your opposition. President Obama’s latest theme is that Republicans are putting party before country in opposing his program, an argument that implicitly rules out the possibility that they genuinely think his policies are foolhardy and worthy of opposition. It’s a kidney punch masked as high-mindedness.
Unless the economy rebounds suddenly, President Obama will be left with only one option next year — winning ugly. He will have to make his opponent even more unacceptable than he is, and if the past is any guide, he’ll do it without scruple. All Obama’s promises about process are highly conditional. He jettisoned his support for the public funding of campaigns in 2008 as soon as it became clear he could raise $750 million. He sloughed off “post-partisanship” when he had the congressional majorities necessary to ram through major legislation on a partisan basis. And now he’s saying goodbye to civility, too.
So be it. If civility is a good in its own right, the functioning of our big, unruly democracy has never depended on it. It will survive Hoffa’s ham-handed metaphors and Obama’s hypocrisy. But next time, Mr. President, please spare us the pose and the lectures.
—Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review. He can be reached via e-mail: lowry.comments@nationalreview.com.
It's good to know that Mr. Lowry now realizes his praise for the President's Tucson speech was misplaced. He, like many others, took the President at his word and gave him credit for sincerity he did not deserve. The Tucson speech, like every other speech President Obama delivers, was just one more performance by a man who relies on illusion because there is no substance. Barack Obama is the poster child for "Do as I say, not as I do" as he finger points and blames while telling his opponents they must give up their partisan ways.
If limiting collective bargaining rights for public employee unions and giving free people the right to work without forcing them to join unions and pay dues is a war on workers, then there is no way to describe what public unions do to citizens who depend on the services public workers provide when those services are held hostage until union negotiators get the lucrative contracts they demand - whether or not the taxpayers can afford them. People who have no real say in the negotiations - including union supporters - are forced to suffer until the union gets its way. As usual, the President and all his merry men have an odd way of looking at reality.
As Rich pointed out, civility means assuming the sincerity of ones opponent (at least initially). So, by praising Obama's Tuscon speech, we would assume that Obama was sincere, despite history that would tell us different.
So, I guess the old saying still applies. "When you assume, you make an a** out of you and me!"
The other Hoffa thought RFK was an SOB. Hoffa was supposed to have threatened to release documents on RFK's tryst with Marylin Monroe to wreck his 1968 campaign. Sirhan Sirhan made sure that RFK wouldn't be embarrassed in his lifetime. Hoffa was probably given a set of cement shoes and a one way ride on over the river and into it. Teamsters Hoffas in a Huffa are a family tradition. What kinda pension is in his wallet? If they could find me they would put sign me up for a "contract".
I guess your paid to listen to Obama. Myself, I tune him out whenever I hear his voice. I do read pertinent information, and his comments in print so that I know what he droned on about. But most of his utterances are bald faced lies.
Well, the pundits have to have something to write about, otherwise no paycheck. But lefties bad-mouthing righties has been going on for as long as I've been of voting age. Actually, counting the Goldwater daisy ad of the early 60s and Herblock's (now seen as rather restrained) cartoons of Nixon's 9:00 shadow, since before that.
First, righties were in the pockets of the capitalists and Social Darwinists. Then they were rabid with inappropriate anti-Communism. Then they were (despite their voting record) racists; that one is still one of the mantras today. Then they were shills for corporate greed. Then they were Christian fundamentalists. Now the Tea Party is filled with Brown Shirts who are going to send the blacks and Jews to the ovens if they ever get power, and their insistence on Constitutionalism is becoming decreasingly quaint and charming as time passes and the economy and the climate become more and more problematic.
Obama is like the little boy who cried wolf. He has lied to us so many times, there really is no room for trust.
He is a "Constitutional Scholar" that has no idea what The Constitution means of why it was even written (it's intent was to LIMIT government Barry). He is a lawyer that has no concept of what a contract is. He is an individual that states, "Let me be perfectly clear" as a prelude to obfuscation and lies.
At this point, we should be polite and act like we are walking the streets of Chicago. Keep your wallet in your front pocket and stay alert. Eternal vigilence is the price of freedom!
When East St. Louis teachers (including my mom) struck for better working conditions in the late 1950s, it was the Teamsters who drove through the picket lines, running down at least two teachers and breaking the leg of one.
Big Labor has always held that it has an implicit right to use violence to get its way. It pays off many politicians to get them to use the coercive force of government to give it special powers that no other private organization has and to look the other way when it resorts to violence on its own against "enemies."
Thanks to Hoffa for reminding decent Americans about the nature of unionism.
Hoffa was only the first volley, but no one seems to be criticizing The "Master of Civility" for his choice of words. Didn't anyone hear him say in his labor day speech:
"I know it’s not easy when there's some folks who have their sights trained on you.
That imagery is exactly what the professor-in-chief lectured the nation on following Tuscon. So much for Civil Discourse. He's as bad as the thug that introduced him.
“Unless the economy rebounds suddenly, President Obama will be left with only one option next year — winning ugly. He will have to make his opponent even more unacceptable than he is, and if the past is any guide, he’ll do it without scruple.”
Obama will do it without scruple and Republicans look to be on a course to make it even easier for him, with possibly electing Rick “we would treat him pretty ugly in Texas” Perry.
He’s right out of central casting for Obama.
A far right-wing, white, Southern, secessionist talking governor, who has presided over 250 executions, compares himself to a prophet and believes because a few “end of days” evangelicals told him that this is his purpose and he has been “called” into the race by a higher power (your basic God likes me best view).
Well put. Most rational conservatives will soon realize that feelings of great satisfaction by defeating Obama will immediately be followed by pure, unmitigated horror after realizing Rick Perry has been elected president.
While I don’t believe Perry can be elected president or will ever be elected president, I’m in complete agreement with my man Mitt when he said on the debate stage, that any one of our Republican candidates would be a better president than Obama.
Follow
