{"id":1995082,"date":"2023-08-09T06:53:01","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T10:53:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history\/"},"modified":"2023-08-09T07:02:43","modified_gmt":"2023-08-09T11:02:43","slug":"obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama&#8217;s legacy is being exposed as fraudulent and it&#8217;s on the wrong side of history."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fobamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1995082&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div class=\"article-content\">\n<h2>Barack Obama: The Overrated President<\/h2>\n<p>Barack Obama is often hailed \u200bas one of \u2062the greatest orators in modern politics. While he had undeniable gifts in that department, \u200bas someone who attended a number of his speeches in \u200cperson, I never quite understood all the praise. Setting aside \u2064his career-making \u201cred states, blue \u200dstates\u201d speech at the 2004 Democratic convention \u2014 a plea for political \u2064moderation he spent his time in office repudiating\u200d \u2014 the \u2062only memorable things Obama said were either campaign pablum such as \u201chope \u2063and change,\u201d or remarks\u200d that\u200b were unintentionally revealing.<\/p>\n<p>In the latter\u200d category, my personal favorite\u2064 remark was \u2063this comment about congressional Republicans from 2013: \u201cWe\u2019re going to try to do everything we can to create a permission structure for them to be able to do what\u2019s going to be \u200cbest for the country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cPermission structure\u201d is a phrase that\u2019s been \u2064used by marketing \u2064executives for many years, and was apparently in common usage at the Obama White House. The idea is \u201cbased on an understanding that radically\u2064 changing a deeply held \u2063belief and\/or entrenched\u200b behavior will often \u2062challenge a person\u2019s self-identity and perhaps even\u200b leave\u200b them feeling humiliated about being wrong. \u2026 Permission Structures serve as scaffolding for someone to\u200b embrace change that they might otherwise reject.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While there\u2019s more\u200b overlap between politics and marketing than anyone would like to admit,\u200d the naked use of jargon that comes from\u200c the\u2062 world\u2063 of consumer manipulation betrays a remarkably egotistical approach to politics. There was no need to address honorable disagreement to Obama\u2019s policies, which\u200b were politically extreme and\u200b consistently opposed by voters.\u2062 The \u200dWhite House just needed to create, with the help of a slavish media, narratives that\u2062 could help people admit they were \u200bwrong and come around to his way of\u200b thinking.<\/p>\n<h2>MLK vs. Obama<\/h2>\n<p>To be clear, that\u2019s my gloss on it, and while I don\u2019t think it\u2019s an unfair summation, I wouldn\u2019t want to claim to speak on\u200d behalf of Samuels or\u200c Garrow. But I think it\u2019s undeniable \u2064the\u200b article does real damage to Obama\u2019s reputation because\u2064 the \u2062many criticisms in the piece are rooted in factual revelations about Obama\u2019s \u200bpast\u200b and the considered opinion of Garrow, who won a\u200c Pulitzer\u200c Prize in 1987 for his biography of Martin Luther King Jr. (In \u2062addition \u200dto decades of work as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/did-obama-refuse-to-condemn-antisemitism-and-black-nationalism-resurfaced-biography-says-yes\/\" title=\"Obama allegedly declined to denounce antisemitism and black nationalism, according to a recently resurfaced biography.\">civil rights historian<\/a>, Garrow \u2064is a \u2064major historian of abortion.) Garrow was\u2062 considered an important enough scholar that Obama sat \u200bfor eight hours of interviews with him while he was still president.\u2062 And it\u2019s clear his opinion of \u200cObama is somewhere between dismissive and contemptuous.<\/p>\n<p>Worse,\u200d Garrow\u2019s opinion is all the\u200b more devastating to Obama because,\u2064 throughout the sprawling 16,000-word interview, Garrow keeps\u2062 reverting back to his extensive knowledge of\u2064 MLK and making explicit comparisons between the \u200ctwo men to reinforce his unflattering judgments about Obama. At first blush, being compared to MLK would be an impossible standard for almost anyone to be held up \u200bto. However, as a historian Garrow is notable for deftly exposing MLK\u2019s considerable character flaws \u2014 the degree of MLK\u2019s womanizing and alcoholism \u200care decidedly worse than the public wants to know \u2014\u2063 while still burnishing his\u2064 historic accomplishments. It\u2019s clear throughout\u200b the interview that Garrow is not so reverential toward MLK\u200b he can\u2019t think objectively \u2063about him, yet he still considers him \u200ba\u2062 great\u2062 man.<\/p>\n<p>And in fairness, Obama invited this comparison\u2063 upon himself. He rode into the White\u2062 House encouraging supporters to frame his election as the fulfillment of MLK\u2019s legacy, and further \u200dinvited comparisons by appropriating MLK\u2019s rhetoric.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of memorable Obama rhetoric, I\u2019d be willing to bet\u2064 that millions of Americans are under the\u2063 impression\u200d \u201cthe arc of history is long and\u200b bends toward justice\u201d is an Obama quote rather than an MLK quote (and it\u200c appears MLK borrowed it from a\u200d 19th-century Unitarian minister). Nonetheless, Obama has used the phrase \u201carc of history\u201d more than a dozen times since his \u200cfirst presidential campaign.<\/p>\n<p>The\u200d \u201carc of history\u201d soon transmogrified \u200cinto\u200b another oft-used Obama phrase, \u200cwhich was invoked by Obama and his staff many times throughout their triumphal \u200cbullying of political opponents for being on \u201cthe wrong side of \u200dhistory.\u201d Obama\u2019s abuse\u2063 of the \u201cright\u201d and \u201cwrong\u201d side of history was \u2064so absurd that even \u2064The Atlantic took a break from acting as a court \u200dstenographer to run an\u200c article fretting this language \u201csuggest[s] a tortured, idealistic, and ultimately untenable vision of what history is and how it works.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s just as well people attribute that \u200cquote to Obama, \u200dbecause while this progressive and Hegelian understanding of history is perfectly in sync with American liberalism, it\u2019s \u200cnot\u2064 exactly compatible with common sense \u2014 history is full of injustice that comes out of\u200b nowhere and sets \u2064righteous causes back quite a ways. King himself eventually recognized this and rejected the sentiment \u2064in his \u201cLetter from\u2062 Birmingham Jail.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSuch an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of\u2064 time, \u200bfrom \u2063the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will \u2062inevitably cure all \u200cills,\u201d King\u2063 wrote. \u201cActually, time itself is neutral; it\u2063 can be used either \u200ddestructively \u2062or constructively.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At the same time Obama expressed arrogant\u2063 certitude\u200c about his own role\u2062 in history,\u200c he \u2063rejected the aspects of King\u2019s idealism that were actually\u200c productive.\u2063 In 2020,\u200b Obama\u2062 gave an interview to Atlantic editor\u2063 and Obama superfan Jeffrey Goldberg where he said, \u201cAmerica as an experiment is genuinely important to the world not because of the accidents of \u2064history that\u200b made us the most powerful nation on Earth, but \u2064because America is the first real\u200b experiment in building a large, \u2063multiethnic, multicultural democracy. And we don\u2019t know yet if that can\u2064 hold.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So America is the most powerful nation because of accidents of history \u2014 not because of our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history\/\" title=\"Obama's legacy is being exposed as fraudulent and it's on the wrong side of history.\">historically unprecedented founding commitment<\/a> to human rights and limited government. It\u2019s telling how the arguments about being on the \u2062right side of history are casually discarded here, even \u200cthough they might make sense to use retroactively. As Garrow observes, \u201cWhat I could never understand was Obama\u2019s contempt for the \u200cidea of American exceptionalism. \u2026 Why would the president of the United States feel the need to disabuse his countrymen of the idea that \u200dthey are special?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, that\u2019s hardly the \u200bmost revealing part of \u200dthat \u200bquote. MLK offered Americans \u201ca dream that my four little children will one day live \u200bin a nation where they\u200c will not be \u2062judged by the color of\u200c their skin but by the content of their character.\u201d Well, I\u200d don\u2019t exactly know what Obama\u2019s offering in\u2064 response to \u2063King\u2019s vision of the future is, but it sounds pretty pessimistic to\u200d say you\u2019re\u2063 not sure America can survive as a \u201cmulticultural democracy\u201d \u2014 especially coming from a guy so famous for\u200d having his \u200blikeness emblazoned next to \u2062the word \u201cHOPE\u201d that the poster has \u2063its own Wikipedia entry.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it\u2019s unrealistic to expect America\u2064 ever\u2062 to stamp out racism (or any other sin for\u200c that matter), but King\u2019s call to a virtue-based vision of equality was \u2064nonetheless deeply taken to heart by most Americans. Otherwise, the fact it took just 40 years\u2063 for \u2063America to go from assassinating civil rights \u200bleaders and turning firehoses\u200b on peaceful black protesters to \u200delecting a black president is just another \u201chistorical accident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maybe we \u2064still have a \u2064long way to go, but the progress made on civil rights in this country is still\u2062 worth celebrating\u200d \u2014 and there\u2019s no good evidence we should abandon the belief that progress was\u200c made because, in King\u2019s words, \u201cthis nation \u200cwill rise up and live out the true \u200dmeaning of its \u200dcreed: We\u2064 hold these truths \u200dto be self-evident, that all men are\u200b created equal.\u201d That it\u2019s hard to tell whether America\u2019s first black president believes that racial \u2062progress in America is because of, not in spite of, American ideals, well,\u2063 that\u2064 isn\u2019t exactly reassuring for ordinary Americans \u2062looking to validate the trust they placed in him.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, lots of other black leaders harbored\u2063 doubts \u2063about King\u2019s hopes for the future.\u200c Which brings us to the \u2064other \u2064startling aspect of the interview between Samuels and Garrow, where we move from the abstract realm of character \u200cjudgments \u2062to disturbing historical facts. \u200dIn Obama\u2019s ballyhooed first memoir, <em>Dreams of \u2062My Father<\/em>, Samuels summarizes his description of the breakup between \u200dObama and\u2064 Sheila Miyoshi\u200b Jager, one of \u2063his serious girlfriends \u2062before he married Michelle\u200b Obama: \u201cIn <em>Dreams<\/em>,\u200c Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August \u2064Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends \u200chis incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/black-leftists-anti-semitism-and-media-silence\/\" title=\"Black leftists and media silence on anti-Semitism.\">white-identified liberal universalism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Garrow, who started writing his Obama biography well \u200cinto Obama\u2019s second term as president, \u200ctracked down Jager\u200d \u2014 now a professor at Oberlin with \u200da formidable academic reputation \u2014 \u2064and\u2063 asked her about \u2063her relationship with Obama. \u200c(That the credulous journalistic establishment was totally incurious \u2063about digging into Obama\u2019s inconsistent and self-serving life story is a thread running throughout the interview.) According to her, what really happened was this:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em>In\u2063 Jager\u2019s telling, the quarrel \u2064that ended the couple\u2019s relationship \u200dwas not about Obama\u2019s self-identification as a Black \u2064man. And the \u200dimpetus was not \u200ca play about the American Black experience, \u200bbut an exhibit \u200bat \u200dChicago\u2019s \u2063Spertus Institute \u2063about\u2063 the 1961 trial of Adolf \u200cEichmann. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black\u200c mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series \u2062of lectures organized \u200bby Louis Farrakhan\u2019s Nation of \u200bIslam, accused Jewish doctors \u200din\u200d Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within \u2064the city\u2019s \u2062power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling\u200c for his firing. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>In Jager\u2019s recollection, what\u2062 set off the\u200d quarrel\u200b that precipitated the end of the\u2063 couple\u2019s relationship was Obama\u2019s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of \u2063this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama\u2019s embrace of a Black \u200didentity had created some degree of \u2063distance between the\u200b couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama\u2019s inability to condemn Cokely\u2019s comments. It was not Obama\u2019s Blackness that bothered her, \u2064but that he would not <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/read-the-letter-the-harvard-crimson-wont-publish\/\" title=\"Read the Letter the Harvard Crimson Won\u2019t Publish\">condemn antisemitism<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While it\u2019s hard to land firmly on one side\u2062 of a he\u200b said\/she said account of a romantic break-up, \u2063Jager has\u200b an outstanding reputation; she\u2019s a\u2062 professor at Oberlin college. She hasn\u2019t \u2063been outspoken about Obama on much of anything, much less publicly critical \u2063of him. She doesn\u2019t seem bitter about a relationship that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/supreme-court-to-decide-if-us-is-immune-from-lawsuits\/\" title=\"Supreme Court to rule on US immunity from lawsuits.\">ended decades ago<\/a>, where Obama \u2062asked her\u200b to marry him twice and \u200bshe rejected \u2064him.<\/p>\n<p>If \u2063Jager is to be believed \u2014 and I think she is,\u2063 as the rest \u2062of the Samuels-Garrow interview is full of \u2064criticism of episodes where Obama has obviously fictionalized aspects of his memoirs and life story \u2014 then this just really puts an exclamation point on the narrative established by this landmark interview. Americans thought they were electing a guy who had tacitly, if not \u200bexplicitly, said he would fulfill Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s legacy, a man who, in \u2063Garrow\u2019s considered words, \u201cdid not buy into identity politics.\u201d Instead, they got a guy invested in defending Louis Farrakhan\u2019s vision of race in America.<\/p>\n<p>Being \u2064a president in the mold of King would entail evaluating leadership failures\u200d as a matter of the content of\u2064 your character and\u2063 judgment. Following Farrakhan would entail blaming\u2026 well, it seems hard to\u200b believe Obama\u2063 would embrace antisemitic conspiracies, but certainly there\u2019s ample evidence that Obama and his \u2062defenders do dodge\u200c accountability by blaming a more socially \u200cacceptable villain of shadowy cabals of racists \u2063and Republicans.\u2064 (On the other hand, if Obama is hoping for\u200c favorable assessments of his famously\u200c antagonistic relationship with Israel, he\u2019s not helped by Jager\u2019s anecdote or\u200b the fact that he had his kids baptized at a church run \u2062by a guy who \u2064even Ta-Nehisi Coates admits spews \u201ccrude conspiratorial antisemitism.\u201d)<\/p>\n<h2>\u2018He Loses Interest\u2019<\/h2>\n<p>For \u200dthose of you who may think this is a little too harsh and\/or\u200b a Manichean take on Obama\u2019s nuanced worldview, I have good news. The interview is also\u2063 a springboard to debate Obama\u2019s sexuality. And large portions \u200bof the interview are also consumed\u2064 with \u2063discussions of whether Obama is a \u201ccelebrity-obsessed would-be billionaire, or \u2026 a would-be American Castro, reshaping American society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Garrow\u2064 and Samuels\u2019 \u200bconclusion on that last dilemma seems to be that the shallow narcissism of the former neuters a \u2062lot\u2064 of the impulses related \u2063to the\u200d latter. Garrow concedes Obama, who frequently touted his \u2062credentials as a law professor, would be\u200d a terrible Supreme \u2063Court \u2064justice\u200c because Obama himself admits he\u2019s \u201cfundamentally\u2064 lazy.\u201d Elsewhere Garrow sums \u2064up much of his political career by saying, \u201cSome things are meaningful to him, but then he \u200closes interest.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Samuels, however, doesn\u2019t have Garrow\u2019s scholarly restraint in \u200bdescribing Obama\u2019s post-presidency. \u201cI remember thinking, imagine telling Harry Truman, \u2018Hey,\u2064 why don\u2019t you sell that old house and buy three or four \u2064huge mansions in Martha\u2019s Vineyard and Hawaii \u200cand Washington, D.C., and \u2062rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in\u200b sweetheart deals\u2064 with big corporations while you\u2019re vacationing on rich\u2064 people\u2019s\u200d yachts?\u2019\u201d Samuels tells Garrow. \u201cHe\u2019d probably sock you in the jaw.\u201d (For what it\u2019s worth, the yacht vacations with Bruce Springsteen, Oprah, and Tom Hanks \u2062appear pretty\u2063 nauseating.)<\/p>\n<p>In order to keep the Secret Service at bay, let me say for \u2062the record that neither the \u200bghost of Harry Truman nor anyone else should sock Obama in the jaw. But\u200b it\u2019s\u2063 been seven years since the guy was in the White\u200c House, and the\u2064 judgment of\u2062 history is starting to come in. \u2064I\u2063 think we at least have permission to say he was a bad president.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barack Obama is praised as a top orator in modern politics, but having attended his speeches, I never fully grasped the hype. Excluding his notable &#8220;red states, blue states&#8221; speech in 2004, his undeniable gifts in this area were not as apparent to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":1995083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1995082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1995082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1995083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1995082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1995082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1995082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}