Failure Comes in All Colors
Taranto has a long piece on how whenever Obama is in political trouble, his defenders accuse his critics of racism. Obama is in a world of political hurt right now–the worst yet by far–so the accusations are reaching a fever pitch. They’ve inspired, for example, a new Twitter hash tag #BeforeBlackPresidents where the president’s advocates attribute every imaginable (negative) contrast between the world pre-2008 and today to racism. Which sort of raises the question: If Obama’s race is such a big deal, how did he get elected in the first place? Did people just start noticing he was black? (Which would be kind of hard, even for the blind, given how much his race has been touted–by him and his followers.)
Look: Obama’s current political predicament has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with color. A sizable majority is distraught and angry not because Obama is black, but because the country is deeply in the red. That, and the fact that nobody seems to be really serious about tackling that problem–least of all Obama.
Cries of racism are the new last resort of the scoundrel. Politically opportunistic charges of racism are extremely corrosive. They will have the effect of poisoning race relations, and jeopardizing much of the real progress that has been made in recent years.
The lesson is a simple one. It isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that anybody can become president. It’s no exaggeration at all to say that anyone who is elected can fail at the job. Many white guys have proved that in the last 224 years.
Was S&P being racist when, for the first time in US history, our debt was downgraded from risk free?
Comment by La Russophobe — August 5, 2011 @ 9:33 pm
Yes, Our assiduous servant Barack not only plays his role consummately by ensuring that the economic gains of US productivity growth are not wasted on wages, he diverts the attention of those whose wages don’t increase from the fact that their wages don’t increase!
This assures that Our assiduous servant Barack will be able to enjoy a long and highly renumerative retirement after he completes the destruction of the democrat party, and that Our servant Mitt will soon return all political power at the federal level to where it belongs, to Our eager and assiduous servants the Republicans.
And then, We’ve got a little list… they’ll none of them be missed.
Comment by a — August 6, 2011 @ 6:18 am