The Black Jimmy Carter

 

It used to be Bill Clinton was the first black president. I never entirely understood the appellation as Clinton, while still in the throes of a hot primary race for the Democratic nomination back in 1992, “took a powder” and let a profoundly mentally disabled black man be executed in the state of Arkansas—a matter that every decent minded person found rightly appalling.

I first heard the “black Jimmy Carter” business from right wing blogs like townhall.com but now, without using the term the remnant newspaper progressives are lining up to declare President Obama ineffectual. Yesterday’s Frank Rich column in the NY Times is a case study in the art. Rich argues that Obama has lost his compelling narrative; that the campaigner who stood for youth and change has become muddled or muffled somehow and accordingly the president’s popularity is dropping in a calamitous freefall. He points to a score of likeminded prognosticators including Jon Meacham at Newsweek and Ken Auletta at The New Yorker.

What interests me more than the spindrift alarmist game of liberal minded editorialists is the fealty of their opinions, as if Washington or New York “insiders” are (ARE) the nation—and by turn they may declare the supernatural fate of Thebes. They’re all Tieresias and they’re all seeing Jimmy Carter where three roads meet. And what interests me more than pile-on liberal prophesying is that this ought to be necessary at all. (One understands the world of Sophocles and the role of the Sphinx, but really, who needs a sphinx, small “s”?)

When FDR was in the White House he had the unimaginable luxury of a healthy national newspaper industry, and even luckier, a local newspaper industry that still believed in writing about national affairs by contextualizing them in local terms. FDR was merely popular because of his radio chats, he was actively the recipient of a local press that wanted him to succeed.

Since we no longer have a local press to speak of (or where we do, it takes its national news prefabricated from Washington and New York) we can’t root for the president as a people, not in the way our fathers and mothers could when Franklin and Eleanor were fighting “big money” in DC and were, for all their efforts, labeled traitors to their social and political class.

Those of us who have disabilities are generally mindful that Barack Obama has been steadfast and rather brave about insisting that Washington do something progressive—nay, moderately progressive about the human crisis in health care. I still believe that’s worth rooting for and if President Obama has common sense he will go on fighting despite the quisling reportorial and opinion class that’s looking for dolorous gibberish of no consequence.

 

S.K.

Comments

[Carrie]

Thank you for writing this, Andrea. Over the years, you've taught me a lot about the efficacy of righteous anger. I used to be one of those women who said, "I'm a feminist, but not an angry one." Now I think if you're a feminist and you aren't angry, at least part of the time, you're probably not paying much attention to how women--and all kinds of other people--are being treated in the world.