The Obama whisper campaign revisited
We had a conversation here some days ago about the “whisper campaign” — my words — against President Obama.
Today’s Washington Post has an editorial written by conservative Charles Krauthammer which speaks to just how far up the right-wing food chain this stuff goes.
Krauthammer is one of the top conservative journalists in the US and enjoys one of the largest megaphones in journalism, in the Post and on Fox News.
So this isn’t fringe-website stuff. What does Krauthammer have to say about the POTUS? He opens by quoting himself about Obama, creating the perfect echo chamber.
When President Obama returned from his first European trip, I observed that while over there he had been “acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating” between America and the world.
He then suggests that, while Mr. Obama’s European trip was a trip, his Middle Eastern tour was “a pilgrimage.” Get it? A pilgrimage. Clever.
Krauthammer then revisits the conservative meme that Mr. Obama views himself as somehow messianic, a concept which a distinct meaning in America’s traditionalist-conservative culture — especially the large end-times community within the Evangelical church.
Not that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see.
Mr. Obama’s speech to Muslim audiences included several pointed challenges to the Islamic “street” — he called Holocaust deniers “ignorant” and demanded more respectful treatment of women.
He declared unequivocally that America’s commitment to Israel is unshakable.
None of that enters into Krauthammer’s argument. Instead, he argues again and again that Mr. Obama is guilty of disloyalty to his country and his culture.
And hovering above it all, above country and history, is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one’s own country.
I want to say again that I think there is plenty of room in American politics for people to criticize Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.
Indeed, the President is already drawing heavy fire from the left as well as the right. Krauthammer himself makes some cogent and worthy points in his essay — raising questions that are worth raising.
But this kind of coded speech about the President, his patriotism and his faith, is repulsive. It’s a new form of McCarthyism; and it’s shameful.
I have no doubt that Republicans will rise again and enjoy political success. For the sake of our country, I hope they’ve purged this kind of sly viciousness from their ranks before they do.
