President Barack Obama is set to give his inauguration address today. The crowd is much smaller than his first term as is his popularity. The new Gallop poll shows Obama at a 49 percent popularity rate. While he remains personally popular, the overall popularity rate below fifty percent is comparable to Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford — two presidents who ultimately languished in office.
Frankly, I think it is very disappointing that former President George W. Bush is not present. That absence takes away from the celebration of our unified faith in the democratic system.
Leslie and Jack have gone to listen to the inauguration downtown with my brother and his two kids. My 86-year-old mother drove in from Chicago with my brother for the inauguration. She was here for the first Obama inaugural and remains a steadfast supporter. However, given her mobility limits, she is watching on television with me and the three other kids. I have to write on the speech for USA Today so logistics (and laziness) has me watching a home with my mother.
For civil libertarians, this inauguration is not as joyful as it is for many others. As I have written previously, Obama has been a disaster for civil liberties and left many of us . . . to put it lightly . . . estranged. I do not consider Obama to be an inspiring figure after his first term. It is not clear if he will embrace the principles that he abandoned so quickly in his first term on surveillance, privacy, torture, and secrecy laws. While he is free of the pressure of a future election, his party leadership is expected to continue the same policies and cynical treatment of civil liberties. The Republican offer no better alternative. Obama has created an imperial presidency by general acquiescence – the silence of liberals who remain loyal to Obama as an individual despite policies that are anathema to traditional liberal values. For that reason, many of us now see Obama as a symbol of the loss of principle and values in our political system. The rampant hypocrisy that inundates our policies and politics has become stifling. My respect for Obama’s family and his personal character does not overcome those conflicts over constitutional principles and civil liberties values.
I also continue to amazed at the coverage by Fox and MSNBC — two networks that tend to follow predictable takes on Obama. MSNBC anchors have been gushing over his popularity despite the polls showing little change in the unpopularity numbers. Fox has been highlighting the divisive views of Obama to a degree that makes him look like a bunkered recluse. It is part of our new echo chamber of news where people just watch networks that reaffirm what they want the world to look like — despite evidence to the contrary.
I do view this as a celebration of another peaceful transition of government and always have the kids watch, I do not view inauguration speeches as quite as significant as suggested by the coverage. I do not expect that the 51 percent on the unpopularity side of Obama are likely to be transformed by a speech — any more than many were won over by Bush’s speech. We all can take pride in the stability of our system and another peaceful transition. Yet, on Tuesday, we will still have a dysfunctional political system controlled by a monopoly of power by the two parties. For those who want change, it will have to come by seeking changes in this system against the fixed interests of these parties and the White House.
rafflaw,
It was just that one small section that resonated with me — it rings true to me.. I posted the link only because it was the source.
Billed as the full text of Obama’s speech:
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/21/16626094-obamas-inaugural-speech-the-full-text?lite
ap,
Just one man’s opinion, but I think the NY Times piece was a hit job and with few, if any sources. I do agree with your Greenwald link, however.
Swarthmore mom,
You are right about Beyonce. She did a great job with the anthem. I couldn’t even imagine someone like Nugent standing up there with that crowd, without his gun or bow.
Sleeping Through a Revolution: It’s Time for President Obama to Wake Up to the True Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
By John W. Whitehead
January 21, 2013
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/sleeping_through_a_revolution_its_time_for_president_obama_to_wake_up_to_th
Excerpt:
Stand up for what is right, rather than what is politically expedient.
“On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.”—Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon at National Cathedral (March 31, 1968)
Five days before his murder, King delivered a sermon at National Cathedral in Washington, DC, in which he noted that “one of the great liabilities of life is that all too many people find themselves living amid a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution.”
As King recognized, there is much to be done if we are to make this world a better place, and we cannot afford to play politics when so much hangs in the balance. It’s time, Mr. President, to wake up. To quote your hero: “[O]ur very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. The large house in which we live demands that we transform this world-wide neighborhood into a world-wide brotherhood. Together we must learn to live as brothers or together we will be forced to perish as fools.”
First time in history a gay bar is mentioned in inaugural speech. so there’s that.
Bev; Bush is a coward. He knows he could be disgraced or worse in public these days. Or he would do something really disgusting with that smirk of his, some off hand remark, some embarrassment- no doubt about that. His life time form is not going to change.
Rather have Beyonce singing the national anthem than Romney’s campaign entertainer Ted Nugent…. so many differences.
As Rafflaw points out, it is the money that screws it up. Of course we could try that way and find that power is enough to get any candidate to sell himself, a la Rome.
President Obama, he started to sell himself, you decide when.
But definitely to his party, endorsing privately its true “ideals”, ie more money for them. He went on doing it all the way to the White House, picking needed cash for promises along the way. Bought and now paid as Prez, what the hell do we expect? ´Mr. Clean???
And he knows what happens to those who buck the system. No president ever forgets the lesson of JFK.
Blouise,
Run for President. Let me know how that goes in light of what I write above. No snark, just a perhaos uncomfortable for us both realization.
I love the parlor democrats explaining why Obama is better than the other….. This is directed to Elaine…..
http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/democrats-explain-organizing-for-action (Thanks, Blouise, for the nudge)
======
I only skimmed the piece, but the following snippet resonated…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/managing-the-oval-office.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&hp&
“Mr. Obama’s top advisers say they often feel alienated from the president. There is a sense in the White House that “Barack Obama’s theory of government is he is the government.””
Scrolling down, I say……
Beautifully and accurately review of where we stand today.
Expecting a slap at Obama, find that they were given to us, networks, etc and even our stupid expectations that it will get better without pressure from us.
Keep it up please. Professor Turley.
There sure are a lot of political cowards here today….. Not that it makes a difference…. Herpes is still herpes…. It lasts forever….
“…very disappointing that former President George W. Bush is not present…”
He decided not to go lest he be blamed for the low turnout…because it’s all Bush’s fault!
Check out “Organizing for Action” … the beat goes on
“”That’s the Washington, D.C. parlor game of the moment, discussing whether the Obama coalition is a coalition that’s going to survive Obama and carry on, or is it just uniquely Barack Obama’s achievement?” Craig told The Huffington Post. “Or does the vote of the women and the young people and the African-Americans and the gays, you know, and the Hispanics survive and go on and create additional Democratic majorities in the future?”
“And that’s too early too tell, much too early to tell,” Craig said.” Huffington Post You can now add Asians to the coalition. They voted for Obama at 71 percent.
MLK’s vehement condemnations of US militarism are more relevant than ever
His vital April 4, 1967 speech is a direct repudiation of the sophistry now used to defend US violence and aggression
by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/king-obama-drones-militarism-sanctions-iran
Excerpts:
The civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is remarkable, as I’ve noted before on this holiday, how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when commemorating his life (just as his economic views are). By King’s own description, his work against US violence and militarism, not only in Vietnam but generally, was central – indispensable – to his worldview and activism, yet it has been almost completely erased from how he is remembered.
King argued for the centrality of his anti-militarism advocacy most eloquently on April 4, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York City – exactly one year before the day he was murdered. That extraordinary speech was devoted to answering his critics who had been complaining that his anti-war activism was distracting from his civil rights work (“Peace and civil rights don’t mix, they say. Aren’t you hurting the cause of your people, they ask?”). King, citing seven independent reasons, was adamant that ending US militarism and imperialism was not merely a moral imperative in its own right, but a prerequisite to achieving any meaningful reforms in American domestic life.
In that speech, King called the US government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”, as well as the leading exponent of “the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long” (is there any surprise this has been whitewashed from his legacy?). He emphasized that his condemnations extended far beyond the conflict in Southeast Asia: “the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit.” He insisted that no significant social problem – wealth inequality, gun violence, racial strife – could be resolved while the US remains “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift” – a recipe, he said, for certain “spiritual death”. For that reason, he argued, “it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war.” That’s because:
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”
Working against US imperialism was, he said, “the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions.” For King, opposing US violence in the world was not optional but obligatory: “We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy . . . .” The entire speech is indescribably compelling and its applicability to contemporary US behavior obvious. I urge everyone who hasn’t already done so to take the time to read it.
Barack Obama’s grand inaugural ceremony will take place today on the holiday memorializing King’s birthday. Obama will always be linked in history to King because his election (and re-election) as America’s first African-American president is, standing alone, an inspiring by-product of King’s work on racial justice. But this symbolic link has another, less inspiring symbolic meaning: Obama’s policies are a manifestation of exactly the militaristic mindset which King so eloquently denounced. Obama has always been fond of invoking King’s phrase “fierce urgency of now”, yet ironically, that is lifted from this anti-war speech, one that stands as a stinging repudiation of the continuous killing and violence Obama has spent the last four years unleashing on many countries around the world (Max Blumenthal suggested that Obama’s second inaugural speech be entitled “I have a drone”).
What I always found most impressive, most powerful, about King’s April 4 speech is the connection he repeatedly made between American violence in the world and its national character. Endless war wasn’t just destructive in its own right, but is something that ensures that America’s “soul becomes totally poisoned”, fosters “spiritual death”, perpetuates the “malady within the American spirit”, and elevates “the Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them.” In sum, to pursue endless war is “to worship the god of hate” and “bow before the altar of retaliation”.
This is the overarching point that drives our current debates about war and militarism through today. The debasement of the national psyche, the callousness toward continuous killing, the belief that the US has not only the right but the duty to bring violence anywhere in the world that it wants: that is what lies at the heart of America’s ongoing embrace of endless war. A rotted national soul does indeed enable leaders to wage endless war, but endless war also rots the national soul, exactly as King warned. At times this seems to be an inescapable, self-perpetuating cycle of degradation.
…
One of the best decisions the US ever made was to commemorate King’s birthday as a national holiday. He’s as close to a prophet as American history offers. But the distance between the veneration expressed for him and the principles he espoused seems to grow every year. When it comes to King’s views on US militarism, nothing more potently illustrates that distance than the use of King’s holiday to re-inaugurate the 44th president.
Glenn Greenwald today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/king-obama-drones-militarism-sanctions-iran
“Obama will always be linked in history to King because his election (and re-election) as America’s first African-American president is, standing alone, an inspiring by-product of King’s work on racial justice. But this symbolic link has another, less inspiring symbolic meaning: Obama’s policies are a manifestation of exactly the militaristic mindset which King so eloquently denounced. Obama has always been fond of invoking King’s phrase “fierce urgency of now”, yet ironically, that is lifted from this anti-war speech, one that stands as a stinging repudiation of the continuous killing and violence Obama has spent the last four years unleashing on many countries around the world (Max Blumenthal suggested that Obama’s second inaugural speech be entitled “I have a drone”).”
and what DonS said which saves me from having to go through the list to satisfy DHMCarver’s challenge
Sometimes I wonder how many people voted for President Obama based more upon ideas rather than his personal capabilities and that he came in on those coat tails.
Don’t think for a moment he is going to return any favors to the average American citizen for re-electing him. Expect the further erosion of your civil rights, but I am sure half of the public will continue to support him regardless of what he will do. Much will be said such as “Yes, but” or “He is the lesser of the evils” to deflect addressing the problems.
Generally people get the politicians they deserve, especially when they continue blind support of those who are taking away liberty.
Elaine, 🙂