Obama Approval Index Month-by-Month - Rasmussen Reports™
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/04/obamas-legacy-of-broken-promises-change.html
CHANGE? OBAMA PUNKED US GOOD, AND STILL IS!
HE IS MERELY A BANKSTER-OWNED BUSH THIRD TERM!
Top Obama
fundraisers among state dinner guests
By JACK
GILLUM | Associated Press – 9 hrs ago
President
Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama wait to welcome Britain's Prime
Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha Cameron to the White House prior
to a State Dinner, Wednesday, March 14, 2012, …more in Washington. (AP
Photo/Susan Walsh) less
WASHINGTON
(AP) — The White House extended state dinner
invitations to more than 30 of President Barack
Obama's top fundraisers, including a handful of donors to an independent
political group backing his re-election effort, an Associated Press review has
found.
Such
coveted seats for Wednesday's event honoring British Prime Minister David
Cameron and his wife went to about two dozen supporters who each raised
$200,000 or more for Obama's campaign. Those included film producer Harvey
Weinstein, New York financier Orin Kramer and Miami public-policy consultant
Joseph Falk.
Indeed,
it is not uncommon for presidents to reward major supporters with access to
dignitary dinners: President George W. Bush invited dozens of his "pioneer"
supporters to state dinners, and President Bill Clinton did the same. But Obama
previously has criticized Washington's pay-for-access privileges, and even
donors themselves complained early in his presidency that they were kept at
arm's length.
The
AP's review also found some of those same donors, including Kramer and Falk,
have written big checks to Priorities USA Action, a "super" political
action committee run by former White House aides. Both donors contributed more
than $10,000 to the group, which has struggled to raise the kind of big cash
that Republican-leaning super PACs have banked on.
The
nearly three dozen top donors who mingled with the dinner's 360 total guests
are also known as "bundlers" — the high-profile fundraisers who
collect campaign checks from friends and business associates. Since federal
campaign rules cap individual contribution limits — $2,500 each for the primary
and general elections — bundlers have become significant figures for Obama's
campaign.
All
told, bundlers at Wednesday's event raised more than $8 million for his
re-election efforts, records show.
"I'm
so thrilled he's running for re-election," said Weinstein, who raised more
than $500,000 this campaign. "He's done a fantastic job, and he's the most
underestimated president I've seen. He's too humble, and his accomplishments
far outweigh his esteem, but people will learn that in time."
Obama
and the Democratic Party have cashed more than $250 million in contributions as
of late January, surpassing all of his potential Republican challengers,
including frontrunner and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. But Democratic
strategists have warned that the president faces the potential of being
out-raised by major sources of cash supporting the eventual GOP nominee come this
summer.
In
turn, Obama encouraged his supporters last month to donate to Priorities USA
Action, a decision that drew criticism from campaign-finance watchdogs and
Republicans who said Obama flip-flopped on his earlier stance assailing super
PAC money. For their part, Democratic aides said they were playing by the same
rules as everyone else, but also conceded they would not be left at a
disadvantage in November.
An
Obama campaign spokesman declined to comment for this story.
While
Obama's campaign has released its list of bundlers, Romney has yet to disclose
the identities of his major fundraisers.
*
GOLDMAN
SACHS IS A MAJOR OBAMA DONOR!
“Records show that four
out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants
- Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and
Citigroup ($358,054).”
TO WORK IN THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, ONE MUST COME FROM SOME
CRIMINAL WALL ST BANKSTER, OR BE A MEMBER OF THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA
RAZA!
DO A SEARCH ON THE BLOG FOR OBAMA’S
SEC. of LABOR HILDA SOLIS, CECELIA MUNOZ AND HIS “WISE LATINA” LA RAZA PARTY
MEMBER SONIA SOTOMAYER!
“It confirms from the inside that
three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits
triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great
Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The
same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial
aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals
at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making
more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into
poverty and homelessness.”
An insider’s view of Wall Street
criminality
15 March 2012
Greg
Smith, an executive director at Goldman Sachs, announced his resignation
Wednesday in an op-ed piece in the New York Times, denouncing the bank's
“toxic” culture of avarice and fraud.
Smith
headed the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the
Middle East and Africa. In his column, entitled “Why I Am Leaving Goldman
Sachs,” he describes a corporate environment that encourages and rewards big
short-term returns gained through the bilking of clients and the general
public. “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients
off,” he writes.
Speaking
of one’s clients as “muppets” and describing deal-making as “ripping eyeballs
out” are commonplace at Goldman, according to Smith. The way to advance at the
Wall Street giant, he writes, is to persuade your clients “to invest in the
stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of,” get your clients
“to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman,” and trade “any
illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.”
The
column describes an operation in which laws and regulations requiring financial
institutions to deal honestly with their clients and protect their interests
are routinely violated. The insider’s indictment of Goldman Sachs highlights a
broader process—the criminalization of American capitalism as a whole.
It confirms from the inside
that three-and-a-half years after Wall Street’s manic pursuit of super-profits
triggered a global financial meltdown and the deepest slump since the Great
Depression, nothing has changed in the boardrooms of corporate America. The
same fraudulent and often illegal practices that enriched the financial
aristocracy and plundered the rest of society continue unabated. The criminals
at the top, having been bailed out with trillions of taxpayer funds, are making
more money than ever, while millions of ordinary people are being driven into
poverty and homelessness.
Education,
health care, pensions are being gutted, wages are being slashed and more
austerity is on the agenda because there is supposedly “no money.” Corporate
profits and CEO pay, meanwhile, are setting new records.
This
is an indictment not simply of Goldman Sachs, or even Wall Street alone, but
rather the entire economic and political system. Every official institution—the
White House, Congress, the courts, the media, the Democratic and Republican
parties—is complicit.
Smith’s
column was widely reported in the media. NBC Nightly News led its report
Wednesday night with the story, interviewing a former chairman of the
Securities and Exchange Commission who was brought on to deplore the type of
practices described by the former Goldman executive. The ruling class is well
aware that popular anger against Wall Street is rising and capitalism itself is
becoming increasingly discredited in the eyes of millions of Americans—a
process that found an initial expression in the Occupy Wall Street protests. It
is concerned that Smith’s piece will further fuel this sentiment.
The
practices to which Smith points—and worse—are well known to the Obama
administration and the financial regulatory agencies. In April of last year, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations published a 640-page report outlining in detail the fraudulent
and illegal practices of major banks that contributed to the September 2008
crash. Fully 260 pages of that report were devoted to Goldman Sachs. They
explained chapter and verse, giving dates and naming names, how the bank
defrauded its clients by selling them mortgage securities while betting against
the same investments, without telling them it was doing so.
The
committee also documented the complicity of the credit rating firms and federal
regulators in the colossal mortgage Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2007-2008,
setting off a new world depression. It cited securities laws that had been
violated by Goldman and two other banks it examined, Washington Mutual and Deutsche
Bank, and referred this information to the Obama administration’s Justice
Department.
The response of the White
House was to do absolutely nothing. Not a single senior bank executive has been criminally
charged, let alone imprisoned, for crimes that have devastated the lives of
countless millions of people in the US and around the world. Instead, the White
House has shielded the corporate criminals.
One
Wall Street firm after another—Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citigroup,
Countrywide Financial—has been allowed to settle charges filed by the
Securities and Exchange Commission out of court, paying token fines while
admitting no wrongdoing. That this continues is seen in the filing Monday in
federal court of the sweetheart settlement between five major banks and the
state and federal governments of charges arising from the banks’ illegal
processing of foreclosures. The banks have merely to pay a combined fine of $5
billion for illegally throwing thousands of families out of their homes, with
no admission of wrongdoing. In return, they get the quashing of state
investigations that threatened to result in tens of billions in damages and
fines.
Not only does the Obama
administration protect the Wall Street criminals, it includes their
representatives among its top personnel. To cite some examples:
* Mark Patterson, a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, is the chief
of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
* Dianna Farrell, former financial analyst at Goldman Sachs, is
deputy director of the National Economic Council.
* Jacob Lew, Obama’s chief of staff, was a top executive at
Citigroup. He follows two other bankers chosen by Obama to head his White House
operations—former JPMorgan executive William Daley and former Chicago
investment banker Rahm Emanuel.
The
criminalization of the American corporate-financial elite cannot be separated
from the capitalist system itself. It is the product of a decades-long process
of crisis and decay, in which the ruling elite has increasingly separated its
wealth-making from the production of real value.
Manufacturing
and the productive infrastructure have been decimated, while financial
manipulation and speculation have come to dominate economic life. The working
class has suffered a catastrophic decline in its social position at the same
time that a parasitic financial aristocracy has come to exercise a de facto
dictatorship over the political system.
Like
all aristocracies, the American financial elite will not accept any
infringement of its wealth and power. The working class must break its grip by
mobilizing its strength in opposition to both parties of Wall Street and
fighting for the establishment of a workers’ government and socialist policies,
beginning with the nationalization of the banks and corporations and their transformation
into public enterprises under the democratic control of the working people.
Andre
Damon and Barry Grey
The
author also recommends:
*
OBAMA IS THE BIGGEST CON JOB
IN AMERICAN HISTORY!
“Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).”
*
HE PUNKED US GOOD WITH HIS “CHANGE”,
THEN SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH ALL OF BUSH’S ARCHITECTS FOR WALL ST BAILOUTS AND
NO REAL REGULATION, LIKE TIM GEITHNER, AND ALL THE MOST CORRUPT DEMS OF HIS
PARTY, LIKE DIANNE FEINSTEIN AND HILARY CLINTON!
AFTER SERVICING HIS
BANKSTERS, HE’S TURNED HIS ADMINISTRATION INTO A SUBSIDIARY OF THE MEXICAN
FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA!
*
In what was billed by the
White House as a major speech on the economy, President Barack Obama on Tuesday
combined a potted review of American history with half-truths and lies in an
attempt to present himself as a fighter for social equality and critic of Wall
Street.
Obama, who has spent nearly
three years in the White House single-mindedly defending the interests of the
financial elite, has in recent weeks adopted this populist persona with the aim
of derailing the emergence of social protest, in the form of the Occupy Wall
Street protests, and seeking to channel it behind his reelection campaign.
The speech was notable only
for its unbridled cynicism. As always, Obama proceeded from the premise that
the American people are infinitely gullible and suffer from collective amnesia
with regard to the record of his administration.
Yet under his
watch, not a single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator has been
prosecuted, let alone convicted.
OBAMA IS
NOTHING BUT BUSH’S THIRD CORRUPT TERM!
In every aspect of domestic
and international policy, Obama has continued and escalated the policies of his
Republican predecessor. He has gone beyond Bush in slashing social programs,
waging aggressive war, and attacking democratic rights—including officially
ordering the assassination of American citizens.
Obama plays the populist card
8 December 2011
In
what was billed by the White House as a major speech on the economy, President
Barack Obama on Tuesday combined a potted review of American history with
half-truths and lies in an attempt to present himself as a fighter for social
equality and critic of Wall Street.
Obama, who has spent nearly
three years in the White House single-mindedly defending the interests of the
financial elite, has in recent weeks adopted this populist persona with the aim
of derailing the emergence of social protest, in the form of the Occupy Wall
Street protests, and seeking to channel it behind his reelection campaign.
Typical
of such carefully staged events, the site of Obama’s remarks—Osawatomie,
Kansas, where Theodore Roosevelt gave his 1910 “New Nationalism” speech—was
chosen for its symbolism. By wrapping himself in the mantle of Roosevelt’s
Progressive Era reform agenda, Obama hoped to lend credibility to his
improbable pose as a man of the people and opponent of the moneyed interests.
The speech was notable only
for its unbridled cynicism. As always, Obama proceeded from the premise that
the American people are infinitely gullible and suffer from collective amnesia
with regard to the record of his administration.
Reviewing
the events that led to the financial crash of 2008, Obama declared: “We all
know the story by now: Mortgages sold to people who couldn’t afford them, or
even sometimes understand them. Banks and investors allowed to keep packaging
the risk and selling it off. Huge bets—and huge bonuses—made with other
people’s money on the line. Regulators who were supposed to warn us about the
dangers of all this, but looked the other way or didn’t have the authority to
look at all…
“It
combined the breathtaking greed of a few with irresponsibility all across the
system. And it plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we’re
still fighting to recover. It claimed the jobs and the homes and the basic
security of millions of people—innocent, hardworking Americans who had met
their responsibilities but were still left holding the bag.”
This
is a fair description of what amounts to a criminal conspiracy against the
people of the United States and the world, carried out by a financial oligarchy
that exerts absolute power over the political system. A bit further on Obama
declared his commitment to a country where “everyone plays by the same rules.”
Yet under his watch, not a
single banker, hedge fund manager or financial regulator has been prosecuted,
let alone convicted. On
the contrary, the president has handed them the keys to the national treasury
and tailored his policies to enable them to continue their speculative
activities and make more money than ever.
The
fury of the state has been reserved for those who have sought to protest
against the plundering of society by the financial elite and the resulting
growth of poverty, unemployment and inequality. They, for the most part student
youth, have been assaulted by baton-wielding police in riot gear, packing
rubber bullets and using pepper spray. The protesters have been arrested in the
thousands. Obama, with his silence, has signaled his support for these attacks,
carried out for the most part by Democratic mayors.
Obama
strained to present his policies as diametrically opposed to those of the
Republicans. After the worst economic crisis in eighty years, he said, the
Republicans “want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess.”
This
from a president who has made “bipartisanship” the watchword of his
administration and done his best to restore credibility to the Republicans
after they were repudiated in the 2008 election that brought him to power.
In every aspect of domestic
and international policy, Obama has continued and escalated the policies of his
Republican predecessor. He has gone beyond Bush in slashing social programs,
waging aggressive war, and attacking democratic rights—including officially
ordering the assassination of American citizens.
After
attributing the entire blame for the deregulation of big business and the
growth of inequality to the Republicans, ignoring the fact that these processes
proceeded apace under Democratic as well as Republican administrations, Obama
declared that his solution began with “making education a national mission.”
This
is yet another example of shameless hypocrisy from a president who has adopted
the education program that was previously the province of the Republican right,
and spearheaded an unprecedented assault on the jobs and conditions of teachers
and the very principle of public education.
Lodged
within the fog of populist phrase-mongering were code words inserted in the
speech—verbal winks and nods—to reassure Wall Street: “the free market is the
greatest force for economic progress in human history… It’s not a view that
says we should punish profit or success… business, and not government, will
always be the primary generator of good jobs… This isn’t about class warfare.”
With
tens of millions out of work and new reports each week detailing record levels
of poverty and inequality, Obama declared that capitalism has “led to a
prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.”
His
invocation of Theodore Roosevelt was preposterous on two counts. First, Obama
is not proposing the slightest measures to address social inequality, unlike
Roosevelt, who, under conditions of emerging class battles and the growth of
the socialist movement, advanced a significant bourgeois reform policy,
including a progressive taxation system, unemployment compensation, and laws to
restrict child labor and establish minimum wages.
Second,
Obama falsifies history. These reforms were not showered on the people by
benevolent presidents or bosses, they were extracted from the ruling class
through mass struggles, involving millions of workers in sit-down strikes and
general strikes that rocked entire cities and defied the murderous violence of
the employers and the state.
In
his 1910 speech, Roosevelt warned, “If the reactionary man, who thinks of
nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a
revolution.” Over the next half century, the American ruling class was forced,
kicking and screaming, to adopt measures that lessened social inequality
precisely to avoid revolution.
As
is now clear, those concessions to the working class were not permanent.
Precisely the failure of the labor movement, due to the treachery and
pro-capitalist orientation of the trade union bureaucracy, to break from the
Democratic Party and build an independent socialist movement disarmed the
working class and allowed the ruling class to wage a counteroffensive.
Obama
and the entire bourgeoisie are now seeking to utilize the economic crisis to
repeal the 20th century and destroy all of social gains of the
working class.
For
all his pseudo-populist bluster and his invocation of an earlier period of
progressive reform, Obama could offer no serious measures to address the social
crisis. His only concrete proposal was passage of an extension of his payroll
tax deduction—a measure that is striking only for its hopeless inadequacy. It
is fundamentally reactionary to boot, since it will allow corporations to
reduce their Social Security taxes, thereby draining the government benefit
fund for seniors.
The
president’s central focus is to join with the Republicans in shredding what
remains of the social safety net. “To reduce our deficit,” he boasted, “I’ve
already signed nearly $1 trillion of spending cuts into law and I’ve proposed
trillions more, including reforms that would lower the cost of Medicare and
Medicaid.”
We
will leave it to the professional apologists for the Democratic Party, from the
New York Times to the affluent upper-middle class types who occupy the
offices of the Nation, the AFL-CIO trade union apparatus and various
pseudo-left groups to try to paint in “progressive” colors what has turned out
to be the most right-wing administration in modern American history.
For
our part, the Socialist Equality Party in the US will do everything in its
power to expose those trying to hoodwink the working class with identity
politics and the hoary myth of the “lesser evilism.” The fight for social
equality means the fight for socialism and the independent political
mobilization of the working class to take political power in its own hands.
Jerry
White
Copyright
© 1998-201
*
“Records show that four out of Obama's top
five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup
($358,054).”
*
Wall Street
Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
BY TIMOTHY P
CARNEY
Editorial Reviews
Obama Is Making
You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs,
GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama
was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big
Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers. In Obamanomics,
investigative reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media
ignores and the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and
Change, Obama is delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming
he’s battling corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory
robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
Congressman
Ron Paul says, “Every libertarian and free-market conservative needs to read Obamanomics.”
And Johan Goldberg, columnist and bestselling author says, “Obamanomics
is conservative muckraking at its best and an indispensable field guide to the
Obama years.”
If
you’ve wondered what’s happening to America, as the federal government swallows
up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts deficit
exploding “stimulus packages,” this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam.
Ultimately, Obamanomics boils down to this: every time government gets bigger,
somebody’s getting rich, and those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book
names the names—and it will make your blood boil.
*
Obama Is Making You Poorer—But Who’s Getting Rich?
Goldman Sachs,
GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests” Barack Obama
was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely from Obama’s Big
Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses, and consumers.
Investigative
reporter Timothy P. Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores and
the White House wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is
delivering corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling
corporate America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s
Obamanomics. In this explosive book, Carney reveals:
* The
Great Health Care Scam—Obama’s backroom deals with drug companies spell
corporate profits and more government control
* The Global Warming Hoax—Obama has bought off industries with a pork-filled
bill that will drain your wallet for Al Gore’s agenda
* Obama and
Wall Street—“Change” means more bailouts and a heavy Goldman Sachs presence in
the West Wing (including Rahm Emanuel)
* Stimulating K Street—The largest spending bill in history gave
pork to the well-connected and created a feeding frenzy for lobbyists
* How the GOP needs to change its tune—drastically—to battle Obamanomics
If
you’ve wondered what’s happening to our country, as the federal government
swallows up the financial sector, the auto industry, and healthcare, and enacts
deficit exploding “stimulus packages” that create make-work government jobs,
this book makes it all clear—it’s a big scam. Ultimately, Obamanomics boils
down to this: every time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich, and
those somebodies are friends of Barack. This book names the names—and it will
make your blood boil.
*
Praise for Obamanomics
“The
notion that ‘big business’ is on the side of the free market is one of
progressivism’s most valuable myths. It allows them to demonize corporations by
day and get in bed with them by night. Obamanomics is conservative
muckraking at its best. It reveals how President Obama is exploiting the big
business mythology to undermine the free market and stick it to entrepreneurs,
taxpayers, and consumers. It’s an indispensable field guide to the Obama
years.”
—Jonha Goldberg, LA Times columnist and best-selling author
“‘Every
time government gets bigger, somebody’s getting rich.’ With this astute
observation, Tim Carney begins his task of laying bare the Obama
administration’s corporatist governing strategy, hidden behind the president’s
populist veneer. This meticulously researched book is a must-read for anyone
who wants to understand how Washington really works.”
—David Freddoso, best-selling author of The Case Against Barack Obama
“Every
libertarian and free-market conservative who still believes that large
corporations are trusted allies in the battle for economic liberty needs to
read this book, as does every well-meaning liberal who believes that expansions
of the welfare-regulatory state are done to benefit the common people.”
—Congressman Ron Paul
“It’s
understandable for critics to condemn President Obama for his ‘socialism.’ But
as Tim Carney shows, the real situation is at once more subtle and more
sinister. Obamanomics favors big business while disproportionately punishing
everyone else. So-called progressives are too clueless to notice, as usual,
which is why we have Tim Carney and this book.”
—Thomas E. Woods, Jr., best-selling author of Meltdown and The
Politically Incorrect Guide™ to American History
*
·
Hardcover: 256 pages
·
Publisher: Regnery Press (November 30,
2009)
·
Language: English
·
ISBN-10: 1596986123
·
ISBN-13: 978-1596986121
HE IS THE BANKSTER-BOUGHT PRESIDENT FOR THE 1%... HIS PARTY
BASE IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “THE RACE” . FOR LA RAZA OBAMA HAS
SABOTAGED OUR BORDER SECURITY, SABOTAGED E-VERIFY TO ASSURE ILLEGALS OF OUR
JOBS, SUED 4 AMERICAN STATES ON BEHALF OF LA RAZA, SABOTAGED VOTING I.D.
REQUIREMENTS TO EASE ILLEGALS INTO OUR VOTING BOOTHS!
OBAMA HAS PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS NO PRISON TIME,
AND HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE AMNESTY or at least continued NON-ENFORCEMENT!
Obama’s
Achilles: Broken Promise of Bipartisanship May Sink Reelection
Remember “A Chicken in Every Pot” or
“No New Taxes”? This president came in vowing a new day of cooperation in
Washington. Why that pledge could cost him the election.
In the last 100 years, every U.S. president who lost his bid
for a second term did so because he abandoned his principal promise to the
American people. If Republicans can persuade the public that Barack Obama
similarly shattered the pledge at the very core of his presidency, they will
succeed in denying him the new lease on the White House he insists he deserves.
President
Barack Obama greets supporters as he arrives at McCarran International Airport
in Las Vegas, Wednesday, March 21, 2012., Isaac Brekken / AP Photo
Four elected chief executives in the past century failed in
their reelection campaigns—and each of them flopped by landslide margins. For
William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and
George H.W. Bush in 1992, broken promises doomed their chances for another
four-year term.
Taft, Theodore Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor, based his
first presidential campaign on guarantees that he would continue the popular
policies of his ebullient predecessor, but voters in 1912 knew they’d been
betrayed because TR himself came out of retirement to tell them so! Roosevelt
not only challenged Taft for re-nomination but ultimately conducted his
third-party “Bull Moose” campaign, handing victory to Democrat Woodrow Wilson
and pushing the incumbent to a paltry 23 percent of the popular vote.
In 1928, Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover ran as the
prosperity candidate, deploying the sonorous slogan, “A Chicken in Every Pot, a
Car in Every Garage.” The Great Depression smashed his optimistic assurances
and helped FDR carry 42 of 48 states.
After the sleaze and polarization of the Nixon administration,
a nation weary of Watergate turned to a youthful, deeply religious Georgia
governor who titled his campaign autobiography Why Not the Best? As a
former officer on nuclear submarines, Jimmy Carter ran as a sure-handed
technocrat who offered the explicit promise of “a government as good as its
people.” After three years of economic meltdown, a seemingly endless hostage
crisis, and self-defeating talk of malaise, that cheerful vow sounded laughably
quaint, and Carter fell by 8.4 million votes to Ronald Reagan.
Finally, in 1988 Vice President George H.W. Bush escaped the
nagging “wimp” factor and electrified the GOP convention with an unequivocal
declaration meant to evoke the steely resolve of Clint Eastwood. “Read my
lips,” he snarled. “No new taxes!” Violating that well-publicized oath with a
sharp increase in marginal tax rates literally wrecked his presidency:
producing a primary challenge from Pat Buchanan, a formidable third-party
candidacy by Ross Perot, and a lopsided November win for the young governor of
Arkansas, Bill Clinton.
If Republicans want to see history repeat itself in 2012,
with a once-popular incumbent turned out of office by a deeply disillusioned
electorate, they must persuade the public that Barack Obama has continued the
big-loser pattern of broken promises. That means reminding voters
of the most important theme associated with his rise to power: the pledge to
unify the nation and put aside petty, partisan differences. Whatever happens
with the unemployment rate or gas prices, the president’s failure to live up to
these assurances remains both painful and apparent.
In the speech that made him a national figure overnight,
Illinois Senator Barack Obama gave the keynote address to the Democratic
National Convention in 2004. “Alongside our famous individualism, there’s
another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one
people,” he intoned. “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red
states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats.
But I’ve got news for them…. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance
to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”
In his Inaugural Address four-and-a-half years later, the
newly elected president sounded strikingly similar themes. “On this day, we
gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict
and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances
and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too
long have strangled our politics.”
Can even the most devoted Obama admirer plausibly claim that
this new day of harmony and cooperation actually dawned in Washington?
Low approval ratings for all federal officials suggest that
Americans recognize that the “conflict and discord” have become more bitter
than ever before and that the president, despite his soaring rhetoric, plays a
prominent part in the squabbling. He may attempt to blame conservatives
exclusively for the small-minded gamesmanship, but he’s compiled his own long
record of below-the-belt, straw-man attacks, sliming his opponents as greedy and corrupt, claiming that they place
plutocrats and corporate power above the public welfare.
Instead of the fresh era of “unity of purpose,” President
Obama must acknowledge that his signature legislative achievement, health-care
reform, passed both houses of Congress without
a single Republican vote,
and led elected officials in the majority of states to challenge its
constitutionality before the Supreme Court.
Yet even more tragically than his crushed hope of overcoming
partisanship, Barack Obama has disappointed the public in the historic mission
of transcending racial divisions. It may have been unrealistic to expect that
election of the first black president would heal four centuries of racial
strife, but that didn’t stop millions from rallying to banners of hope and to
the intoxicating chant of “Yes We Can!”
Can even the most devoted Obama admirer plausibly claim that
a new day of harmony and cooperation actually dawned in Washington?
In that context, no matter how eloquently the president speaks about the
Trayvon Martin tragedy,
the incident still serves to undermine the notion of his transformative
leadership: racism remains a powerful, even paralyzing, presence in American
life. To an embarrassing extent, Obama himself remains a racially divisive
rather than unifying figure. According to March tracking polls by the Gallup
organization, 85 percent of blacks approve of Obama’s job performance, but only
39 percent of whites do—an unprecedented difference of more than two-to-one.
When challenging Barack Obama’s claim on a second term, the
Republicans should remind the American people why we entrusted him with the
presidency in the first place. Beyond any specific expectations about jobs,
taxes, and health care, the public welcomed the prospect of an end to the
bickering with a new politics of common-sense reform.
The GOP candidate can expose the president’s spoiled promise
by renewing the same pledge more credibly, and demonstrating in the campaign
itself the coalition-building, pragmatism, and bipartisanship the people
expected from the incumbent. Reinvigorated hope for unity and cooperation
provides the best chance to highlight this president’s most fatal failure and
to add his name to the melancholy list of discredited one-termers who broke
faith with the American people.
HE IS THE BANKSTER-BOUGHT PRESIDENT FOR THE 1%... HIS PARTY
BASE IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA “THE RACE” . FOR LA RAZA OBAMA HAS
SABOTAGED OUR BORDER SECURITY, SABOTAGED E-VERIFY TO ASSURE ILLEGALS OF OUR
JOBS, SUED 4 AMERICAN STATES ON BEHALF OF LA RAZA, SABOTAGED VOTING I.D.
REQUIREMENTS TO EASE ILLEGALS INTO OUR VOTING BOOTHS!
OBAMA HAS PROMISED HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS NO PRISON TIME,
AND HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE AMNESTY or at least continued NON-ENFORCEMENT!