Obama: Sense and Nonsense
Inside every candidate there are multiple personalities, each of whom run the show in turn, depending on who the audience is. Barack Obama is no different than any other. He’s touched on personal responsibility before and he does it well by not trying to pull any punches, as in Gary, Indiana today:
"You should have a curfew in your house so your children aren’t out in the streets all night. You should meet with the teacher and find out what the homework is and help that child with the homework. And if you don’t know how to do the homework, don’t be embarrassed, find someone to help you."
"Fathers, be fathers," he added. "Be a part of your child’s life. Be a part of your child’s life and try to make them proud.
"And the last thing is, if your child is misbehaving at school don’t curse out the teacher. You know who you are. It’s not the teacher’s fault that your child is misbehaving. That’s some home training."
The crowd reacted raucously and Obama laughed. "You know what I say is true, though. Don’t blame the teachers, and the government and the schools if you’re not doing your job."
This is a message that both needs to be articulated and cuts a swath of truth across all racial and socio-economic strata. Well done, Mr. Obama. Now, if only he would extend that idea of individual responsibility to its logical conclusion: fiscal and social conservatism.
Unfortunately, it was too good to be true. Here’s Obama speaking in front of the rich and shameless, the left-wing elite in San Francisco:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Where is this coming from? Hopefully it’s just the repressed super-ego that Obama only shows off at glitzy gatherings of the uber-rich in order to make them feel at home with him. Such is the power of condescension - it makes for fine and lasting friendships, so long as there’s someone to mock.
Will the real Barack Obama please stand up for himself?
What I don’t understand is why conservatives consider it any of the president’s business to say stuff like the above. He’s right, sure, but since when should a president tell people they should have a "curfew" in their homes?? Can you imagine George Washington saying that? Or John Adams? Or Thomas Jefferson? Or any of the 19th and 18th century US presidents?
How times have changed. These days, Americans of all striped want a preacher, a national educator, a national parent, as president.
If anything Michael, advocating Personal Responsibility is very much a Conservative’s point of view. Would it be better if he advocated expanding National programs to encompass what parents should be doing in the first place? He’s not the first, Bill Cosby was very much along the same path - he got lambasted for it by the very people he was trying to help.
It’s called leading.
There is a vast difference between trying to regulate something and telling people that gov’t shouldn’t be a part of it. I agree with marc, Obama should have also included Pennsylvania small towns in his remarks that they too could have more personal responsibility. he is quite correct that jobs have been lost and the towns never recovered, but they could have taken positive steps rather than sit there. In this Obama is taking the normal Clinton method - pandering.
That’s fine, but that’s not what the founding fathers of the United States had in mind. As such, the conservative view should be that this is a matter for Church leaders, parents themselves… civil leaders, in other words, not for a president.
He shouldn’t be telling people how to raise their kids, he should set policies. If he doesn’t propose to force parents by law to adopt a curfew, he doesn’t have any business mentioning it.
It’s also not leading in the political sense of the word, it’s leading as a national parent. If you want that, fine, but it’s not conservative, nor is it what I want from my political leaders. So I’m free to criticize it.
It seems to me that you want your president to be a whole lot of things, this while his role is to purely ‘lead’ politically. You all want him to be your priest, pastor, rock star, parent, and so on, but there’s nothing conservative about that view.
His views on those problems are conservative, but since he doesn’t want to legislate anything about it, there is nothing conservative about expressing them, and telling people how to raise their children. "You should"… Pardon me? He’s a presidential candidate. He has got no right to tell people how to raise their children. Nor was it ever intended for the president to do so.
The ones who are supposed to tell you, are your friends, your parents, siblings, and religious leaders.
Oh please, if Clinton had the intestinal fortitude (or found a poll that supports it) to speak forth about what is really wrong, you’d be all for it.
More selective critism Michael, When a nation finds itself at a important junction when minorities are dropping out in increasing rates, that is a national problem, it is a leader that discusses it. Or is it just not being a national parent as you say when HRC talks about supporting No Child Left behind (before she opposed it), or the multitude of new programs HRC wants to enact that will dictate what happens to your child.
Not legistlating it IS showing conservative views. How does that simple concept escape your grasp? Have you bothered to read your candidate’s views that you fawn over? Really, go to hrc’s website and read her views. program, program, program. She never addresses the root of anything.
Are you a band-aid voter Michael? or a Get to the cause voter.
I agree with Interested and Marc here. I think that when a president or candidate expresses those kinds of views, they’re emphasizing the ‘bully pulpit’ aspect of the presidency and I see nothing wrong with that. And yes, I think it’s consistent with conservatism because they are basically reminding people of their own personal responsibilities, and then in effect telling them that they won’t legislate on those things that should be taken care of by people exercising responsibility in their private lives. IOW, it’s like sending a message that the govt isn’t going to pass laws in order to raise your child properly, that’s you’re job.
One reason I think this is important is that it helps to immunize against the natural criticisms of conservatism- by showing that it’s not as though conservatives are blind to certain social problems and it’s not as though we don’t care- but we also don’t believe in electing a govt to take over the parents’ job. It’s like giving the political counterargument to statism.
I guess I can see where culturally it may be different in the Netherlands, in terms of what your politicians normally discuss. But then again, you have a pretty high degree of social welfare programs, so perhaps if conservatives did talk like this it might have prevented that? I’m also curious, would you see a role for that kind of ‘bully pulpit’ talk to lead people on say, environmentalism and energy conservation? Is it only when it comes to more personal family issues that you object, or do you generally really mean it when you say that if they’re not advocating regulation or law then they should remain quiet on an issue?
I do. It’s also, for those who may not know, a 20th century ‘discovery.’ Before the 20th century, no one wanted presidents to use any bully pulpit. And especially conservatives didn’t want the president to do any bullying.
So it’s not actually. Calling people to be responsible for their own lives, yes, but that true conservatism means that the government doesn’t even talk about these kinds of things, since it’s none of the government’s business to lecture people how to live their lives.
Conservatism in its true essence opposes this kind of paternalizing talks. The instant response should be: sure, we agree… but it’s not your business to talk about this. If you have some policies to suggest, you can speak. Until that time, bud out of our lives.
That’s conservative.
That you fawn over? I simply think she’s better than Obama, not that she’s the best politician out there. Unlike those who support Obama, that is.
And again, it’s not. The conservative approach is: since this isn’t any of your business, you shouldn’t even be talking about this. Leave it up to pastors to talk about this, you should be busy legislating, talking to foreign governments, and so on.
Or is that concept too difficult to grasp for you? Are you somehow incapable of understanding that politicians have no business talking about certain issues because they’re politicians (according to true conservatism)?
As an aside, one of the main reasons the US is engaged in some kind of culture war is because politicians are encouraged to speak about these and other matters.
Yes fawn over. Italicize all you would like - there is also a bold icon if you’d like, it does not make your theories anymore correct.
And again you are - wrong. Despite your preference that they simply legislate (quite liberal) there is nothing wrong with discussing serious national issues. Are you also against stating the need to conserve energy? how about spouse abuse? drug abuse? abortions? Are you as selective when it does not shine your candidate in a positive light?
The conservative approach is to keep Gov’t out of it. he’s not legislating, he’s talking.
Your candidate though - lets legislate, legislate, legislate. You have not been to her site yet and read have you.
Discussing does not equal legislating. That should be clear to anyone. The mere fact of not enacting legislating is taking quite the conservative approach.
Michael, I think it’s more correct when you just assert that there are differences in Dutch politics vs. American, and leave it at that, rather than claiming some sort of conservative orthodoxy. In my view, admittedly an American one, when the institutions of society and the attitudes which encourage personal and familial responsibilities are under threat from liberal/progressive policies, then conservatives have no choice but to engage in what you call a culture war. I guess what I’m saying is that to whatever degree that that phenomenon doesn’t exist in the Netherlands, to me it seems that this is because conservatives refused to fight to preserve the status quo- they didn’t push back against statist social policies.
Sorry to stir up the dispute over your support for Hillary Clinton, too, Michael, but isn’t it a bit odd to criticize Obama for giving a speech like this but not addressing the fact that HC actually also talks about such things but doesn’t even do so from the conservative perspective? How you can you ignore, for instance, that she’s the author of a book "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child", and that she advocates for all kinds of legislation to ‘help families’, and says things like this in the context of the campaign:
"We need to do more to help our families prepare their children. A family is a child’s first school. The parents are a child’s first teacher. We need to support it through nurse visitation or social work or child care, & do more with the pre-kindergarten program. This has to fit into an overall innovation agenda because we can’t just say, go to school longer. We need to do what happened when I was in school and Sputnik went up, and our teacher said, your president wants you to study math and science"?
I mean really- how can you criticize a candidate who IS talking about these things from a non-legislative stance, saying that he shouldn’t even talk about it, but then ignore the candidate who is also talking about these things AND wanting to legislate (which is obviously as far from conservatism as you can get)?
I agree with a lot of comments for and against…yeah isn’t those the same type of words that Bill Cosby used… yes…but people didn’t rally around it…but it is funny that they rally around it when BO talks about it…it is amazing to me that people haven’t figured out that this guy is not suited to be the next president of the US…he is more suited as what he was a community organizer… or some other type of activist… but the president…heck no
if BO wins alot of people are going to disappointed…I still have not figured how a person living in a 1.65 opps I mean $2 million dollar house can tell another person not to buy rims for their cars or other things … smart money says if you are making 1.2 million you don’t go out and spend 1.65 million on a house…you buy a modest 300-400K house… but just like the people that buy rims for their cars, it is simply to keep up with the joneses.