reflectivepundit

Trump made America the Laughing Stock of the World

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Today, the British newspaper The Independent carried this huge headline on top of page one: “The day America took leave of its senses.” I think that the paragraphs underneath the telling header deserve to be highlighted here because they made the case for America gone wacko:

“Has there ever been a more absurdly surreal moment, even in US politics, that unchallengeable theatre of the absurd and the surreal? One moment, we were watching a property magnate, with one eye on the presidency, the other on his reality TV show ratings, and puffed up like a bullfrog, rejoicing on an airport tarmac in New  Hampshire that America's President of two years had finally made public his birth certificate.

The next, America's TV networks interrupted their schedules to cut to the White House, where that self-same President appeared to confirm the momentous fact: not that Barack Obama had indeed been born, but that the happy event indeed took place, as no sane person has ever doubted, on the unimpeachably American soil of Hawaii, one August evening in 1961.

Of late, however, America has seemed to be taking leave of its senses. A quarter of the population, polls showed, and close on half of Republicans, still refused to believe that unassailable fact.”

There have been wacky people at all times in all countries. However, it took wacky Donald Trump and a compliant media to finally show all of America and the rest of the world how the nasty fantasies and racist conspiracy theories of the far-right fringe took over mainstream Republican politics and became focus points of mass-mediated national discourse.

No white president ever faced as far-fetched and dirty under-the-belt attacks as President Obama. And the reason is clear: For the bigoted anti-Obama movement pushers, for those among them who consider only Christians—and thus themselves--as God’s children, it is unbearable that a black man was elected into the highest office in the land. That’s behind the push to deny his presidency the legitimacy. It is plainly racism. Add to that the virus of Islamophobia that has spread rapidly in these circles.

Everyone knows that President Obama is a Christian. But for the anti-Obama movement he is at best a closet Muslim in bed with those who want to enforce Sharia law into the United States—at worst he is on the side of our terrorist enemies.

Instead of distancing themselves from the wackos in the ranks of their party, Republican leaders have remained silent, ambiguous, or have been even supportive.

Donald Trump Plays the Media like a Fiddle

Brigitte L. Nacos

If the Republicans do not hand him the presidential nomination, he will follow the example of Ross Perot and run as an Independent. That’s Donald Trump’s latest move to put fear into the Republican establishment. After enlisting support among the Tea Party crowds by signing on to their demagoguery, he threatens to take decisive votes from any Republican nominee other than Mr. Trump himself.

To be sure, Ross Perot won a surprising 19% of the vote, when he ran against George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 1992. But without the Texan billionaire’s wacky ways he could have had even better results.

Trump is a master of promoting himself. He plays the media like a fiddle. Where Perot had to dig into his fortune for paid TV-infomercials, Trump dominates the free media. Day-in and day-out.

The more incendiary his rhetoric and the more nonsensical his righteous utterings, the more news and public attention Donald Trump rakes in. The real estate entrepreneur, reality show host, and socialite flirted with the presidential candidacy before. But this time around, without a dominant Republican candidate for the 2012 race in sight, he seems more engaged than in previous pre-campaign periods.

Tapping into the charge that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore not qualified to be president, Trump has moved into the realm of crazy conspiracy theories at the right fringe of the Tea Party crowd and into the world of the unreal.

At first sight that seems ironic for the host of a reality show unless he simply throws his rhetorical bombs in a clever effort to revive the sliding rating numbers for his pitiful show-- if only by drawing in the “Birthers” who call the sitting president “The UsurpingpResident Obama” on their web site.

It doesn’t matter whether the talking heads in radio and television or the reporters and columnists of the print media take Donald Trump serious or not, the mere volume of the coverage he receives is mindboggling since he has not taken preliminary or semi-official steps towards the presidential candidacy as have Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney and perhaps Michele Bachmann.

A cursory review of television and radio transcripts for the last month from mid-March through mid-April  (contained in the Lexis/Nexis electronic archives) reveals that Trump was far more often in the news than all other mentioned contenders for the Republican nomination. As the following list shows, Trump was the topic or appeared or was mentioned in more than 700 radio and TV segments compared to less than 400 for Romney in second place and less for the rest. 

Donald Trump                         708   

Mitt Romney                           371

Sarah Palin                             358                                         

Newt Gingrich                         304

Michele Bachmann                   295

Tim Pawlenty                          186

Mike Huckabee                       181 

Haley Barbour                         127

President Obama’s Non-Role in Budget Fight and Compromise: Presidents Must Lead, Not Merely Plead for Compromise

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Good presidents, exceptional presidents are leaders, not merely observers of and mediators between two or more sides with far-apart positions. President Obama’s distaste for taking the lead in policy controversies was once again on display during the just resolved budget fight that prevented a federal shutdown which would have inflicted harm on the just recovering economy. Instead of taking to the bully pulpit and resisting Tea Party Republicans’ my-way-or-the-highway threats, the president left it to the Republican speaker of the house and the Democratic leader in the Senate to fight it out.

Even as the clock ticked down towards the government shutdown, there were no strong public statements by the president. Reminding congressional leaders and rank and file members to act like adults magnified the president’s disengagement from the ideological infighting at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

But staying out of the fray at any cost relinquishes the tools and powers that come with the office of the president—among them the use of the bully pulpit to inform the public and explain why certain policies are right and others wrong.

Instead, when the Republicans got what they wanted and agreed to “compromise,” the president praised the architects of the agreement as historic spending cut as if that was what he wanted all along. It was a stunning statement.

“I want to think Speaker Boehner and Senator Reid for their leadership and their dedication during this process,” he said. “A few months ago, I was able to sign a tax cut for American families because both parties worked through their differences and found common ground.  Now the same cooperation will make possible the biggest annual spending cut in history, and it’s my sincere hope that we can continue to come together as we face the many difficult challenges that lie ahead, from creating jobs and growing our economy to educating our children and reducing our deficit.  That's what the American people expect us to do.  That's why they sent us here.” 

Thus, the president did not only celebrate the Republican-dictated compromise this time around but also the earlier agreement that kept the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the richest Americans in place.  Moreover, he spoke of hope for further compromise in the future for which the GOP has far more radical plans to shift resources from low and middle income Americans to a small number of the wealthiest and corporate America.

Compromise is not the answer to demands and threats from radicals set to dismantle a social safety net that pales in comparison to those programs that are part and parcel of Western Europe’s capitalism with a human face. Nor should the president even think of compromise on social issues, such as the funding of Planned Parenthood programs, the EPA’s ability to enforce environmental protection regulations, or the funding of public broadcasting and television.

Needed for the next and far greater fights over budget and ideological issues is a strong leader in the White House, not a great compromiser.

Now It Is Time for the President’s Bully Pulpit: Explaining the Tea-Party-Republican Scheme of Taking from Society’s Weakest and Giving to the Wealthiest

By Brigitte L. Nacos

President Obama can no longer sit on the fence in the battle for America’s short-term and long-term budget priorities. He should no longer speak with a soft voice only but must use the stick. The bully pulpit that the White House provides him with is a powerful and unique stage. And now is the time to use that stage, go public forcefully, and explain in plain language how the Tea-Party-driven Republican budget plan would take from the middle and lower classes and give to the wealthiest individuals and corporations. Appealing for sanity, unity, cooperation, and compromise will not work, when dealing with leaders who are held captive by a fanatic minority within their own party and the nation.

Tea Party extremists and their Republican captives in Congress as well as an assortment of presidential hopefuls have intensified their inflammatory rhetoric to sharpen the partisan-ideological divide. They push their radical, reactionary agenda, not equitable and workable policies. When House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin explained his 2012 budget proposal this week, he proclaimed outright, “This isn’t a budget. This is a cause.”

This cause is not for the benefit of the American people as the populist leaders in the unholy alliance of Tea Party movement and Republican Party claim. On the contrary,  the budget plan is in reality a shocking road map to demolish America’s modest social safety net that was woven step by step since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency to provide a modicum of care and security for the old, the disabled, and the poor—especially children.

The war against what the Wall Street Journal and other guardians of the economic and political power elite call with obvious disdain “the entitlement state” is in reality a campaign to make the tiny strata of the richest Americans richer und the most profitable corporations more profitable.

Apart from some hard-hitting editorials, opinion pieces, and talk show hosts, most of the mainstream media and cable talk shows have not exposed the appalling nature of the Republican budget plan. Instead, Congressman Ryan and his proposal received quite a friendly media reception. The discussions of and comments by generously compensated talking heads, for example on MSMBC’s “Morning Joe,” as they discussed Ryan’s budget proposal and the suggested elimination of entitlements, such as Medicaid, Medicare, have been particularly frustrating as has the benign coverage of GOP leaders’ demands that the U.S. Senate and the White House capitulate.

To be sure, reforms are needed to rein in government spending. But the proposals of the President’s bi-partisan Budget Commission, not the agenda of the right-extreme fringe that has taken over the Republican Party should be the starting point of discussions. The budget crisis will never be solved by not tackling both the spending and the revenue side. The Ryan plan is heavily biased against the vast majority of hard-working Americans and the growing number of those families under or barely above the poverty line.