The Meme of "Make me do it!"
"Make me do it!"
Barack Obama isn't really a con-man who betrayed the trust of millions of Americans who voted for hope and change.
He's really a closet liberal who wants to be outed.
"Make me do it!"
How many times have you read or heard the now nauseatingly familiar story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt supposedly saying "Make me do it!" to some nameless progressives, or whoever it was supposed to be?
Never mind that this fable doesn't fit either Franklin Roosevelt or the Presidency of the United States in any way, shape, or fashion.
"Make me do it?" Nobody ever made Franklin Roosevelt do anything, and although his cousin Teddy Roosevelt was more famous for iron will and endurance than the crippled Franklin, Franklin Roosevelt was still a paraplegic who somehow fantastically propelled himself around a thousand public stages so that most of the United States had no idea of his real condition until his fourth term as President.
"Make me do it?" Not even polio could make Franklin Roosevelt do anything.
And what is the origin of this ludicrous fable? As far as I can determine, according to Digby who is followed by a thousand other bloggers, it originates in a hopelessly vague anecdote linked from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute...
In one situation, a group came to him urging specific actions in support of a cause in which they deeply believed. He replied: I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it. He understood that a President does not rule by fiat and unilateral commands to a nation. He must build the political support that makes his decisions acceptable to our countrymen. He read the public opinion polls not to define who he was but to determine where the country was - and then to strategize how he could move the country to the objectives he thought had to be carried out.
That is just about the vaguest little anecdote that anybody ever saw.
"In one situation..." What situation was that? "...a group..." What group was that? "...came to him..." Where? When? "...in support of a cause in which they deeply believed." What cause?
Who cares?
"Make me do it!" says Digby. "Make me do it!" says democraticunderground. "Make me do it!" says David Sirota. "Make me do it!" says TPMCafe. "Make me do it!" attributed to an interview between Roosevelt and A. Philip Randolph by Harry Belafonte on PBS.org. "Make me do it!" says DailyKos. "Make me do it!" says Ralph Nader. "Make me do it!" says Progressive.org. "Make me do it!" says Slate. "Make me do it!" says Alternet.org.
And so on and on and on and on through 50 pages of a Google search, before I stopped looking.
"Make me do it!"
Never mind that the President of the United States is the most powerful single human being in the world, and not even a monstrous brute like Vladimir Putin can make him do anything!
"Make me do it!"
Barack Obama may not have much of a reputation as a fighter, but nobody denies that it's incredibly hard to land a punch upon him, and not even the great Muhammad Ali ever danced around a ring more elusively than Barack Obama has danced through his political career without getting tagged by any of all the thousands of contentious issues which constantly threaten to brand a politician and relegate him or her to an un-Presidential niche.
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!"
Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and all the rest of the motley crew of Democratic contenders learned that lesson about Barack Obama the hard way, and the rest of the Left should have learned it, too.
The only surprise was who got stung.
Come on, someone say something, all these recs, no comments - try this: "Did not." "Did too." "Did not". "Period goes in the apostrophes." "Your gramma was a grammar Nazi." "No, she was cleaning out Eisenhower's horses' stalls when you were just getting your first pair of riding boots."
Really, make it hurt, spare the rod....
Of course there are a few differing degrees of interpretation to this story. My favorite is, "I'm just going to sit here in the middle of the road with my thumb up my ass until someone comes up and kicks me in the shins and makes me get up and do that job I said for 2 years I really wanted to do."
I'm going to review all the quarterly statements from my investments that I usually throw away unopened just to see where the CEO declares, "I was going to cut costs and grow sales, but then at the last stockholders meeting no one specifically asked me to do that, so instead this quarter we're going to introduce a product nobody wants and see what happens, and maybe I'll get in a few good rounds of golf."
I'm considering switching from issues politics to identity politics. I will devote the next 4 years to making sure we elect someone who does not enjoy the game of golf. Scrabble, sky diving, boxing, I don't care what it is, I just feel rage inside that the most powerful nation on earth is continuously represented by idiots whose idea of fun is batting a little white ball into a cup. This may not be the root of all our problems, but I have to start somewhere. "Make me do it. Make me stop playing golf." I will.
August 31, 2009 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sign me up.
August 31, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nobody enjoys golf. It's a game designed by left-wing fiends to torment the upper classes who will (almost) never play so much as one hole at par, much less half a round. Failure is a given.
Unfortunately, like all left-wing fiends, the golf fiends were so pitifully ignorant about lifestyles of the rich and famous that instead of forcing golfers to play on a tarmac at the edge of high-traffic highways, they allowed the game to be played on little slices of paradise, with a bar at the end of every trail!
Woo hoo!!! Who cares what you shoot, with Johnny Walker always waiting to cheer you up after what was otherwise a very pleasant stroll through nature primeval?
But all is not lost!
There's still a small chance that some left-wing mole in Congress can eliminate the "golf exception" on the eve of some future tax bill, with nothing more expensive than a midnight bribe to a starving Congressional clerk, and then... in goes the radical language and out goes the "golf exception."
This harmless and virtually unknown little wrinkle in the system is what allows Pebble Beach to pay taxes like for scrubland in Arizona, while an acre of buildable beachfront nearby costs $8 million and up. Fair taxes on the fairways would bankrupt golf courses nationwide and knock the props out from under the CEO lifestyle.
Most of them would rush into the sea like lemmings!
August 31, 2009 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I must admit I didn't mind golf when I tried it with an over-and-under shotgun. "Pull" and "fore" roll off the tongue equally at ease, especially after one or two warm-up rounds of absinthe. Absinthe - I knew something was missing in the typical duffer's routine, aside from buckshot or .410 pellets. Yes, if those bars bookending the fairway contained Baudelaire's and Rimbaud's favorite, they wouldn't be shooting smack between their toes in-between business chit-chat and trying to find their ball in the rough. And that addiction to hard core drugs, rough trade unprotected sex and golf is what makes politics the mean-spirited, dangerous sport it is today. "Make me stop," they plead, the beads of sweat rolling off their foreheads, "make me stop fucking people for fun and profit." "Can't do it," I respond with empathy, "got my kids' education to think about, and the Caribbean vacation". Tap the syringe to make it look like I'm getting the bubbles out, actually just playing East Side Roulette, wondering how a brain embolism really looks, bubbles bubbles, who's got the bubbles. ("If bubbles killed, there wouldn't be a junkie alive...." You tell 'em, Bill, spoil my game from whatever astral plane you ended up on). Tell that politician to stop what he's doing, to do, as Spike (in the arm) Lee would say, the right thing as it were. But it's a junkie's world out there, Washington is the one place they have the advantage, where all addictions converge. "Stop me from doing what I want to do." Right. Wild horses couldn't drag me away. Hooked up in the stable, the stable they call DC. And why do you think they call it Dope?
August 31, 2009 5:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Des, you're on the right astral plane. And I'm hoping they serve Baudelaire's and Rimbaud's favorite. Please, make it so, for these monkeys are swarming me. Could you save me a seat in coach? It's either that or a game of East side roulette for me.
August 31, 2009 9:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Desidero channels Bill Maher?)
August 31, 2009 10:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Harharharhar!!!
August 31, 2009 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can't really say. I hear they covered their faces with pointy white hoods.
August 31, 2009 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the intent of the "make me do it" line is pretty simple. It means something like this:
The President of the US is not, contrary to popular mythology, the Dictator of Amerika. He "presides" over a town filled with lobbyists, legislators, party bosses, crooks, scam artists, corporate thieves and cynical operatives. These folks practically run this place; they have a lot of power. Our legislators aim mainly to keep their jobs by pleasing the folks who have the most power to take their jobs away from them, and in most cases - sorry to break it to you - that ain't "the people". The people the politicians need to please are typically the powerful interests who have the biggest stake in our national economic order, who have the most to lose or gain by changes to it, and who can in ordinary circumstances buy and sell congressional seats, and even presidencies, when they need to.
Thus, the only way any progressive legislation whatsoever can be successfully rammed through this den of whores is for the voting public to create a degree of political pressure that is so intense that the politicians have to pay more attention to the voters than the big economic stakeholders. So, if you guys do that, then the Congress will be cooperative and I'll be able to push this health care thing through. But if you let up, then the kingmakers with the deep pockets will ultimately win. Best of luck."
Now as for all this "betrayal" stuff, I actually read the health care proposals Obama ran on, and voted with my eyes open. Did you? Obama never ran on support for single payer. He didn't even defend a mandate, OK? He did defend a public option, cooperatives and all the rest of the stuff he still supports, despite all the distracting trial balloons and media games.
All the anger and bile is premature, Everything that happened during the summer is the equivalent of pre-season football. The big games haven't even started yet. Just keep up the noise and pressure and this thing is going to get done.
August 31, 2009 11:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dan, you're absolutely right that he has not technically reversed himself. He did support the PO and not only declined mandates- he ran some Rove-type ads against Clinton about forcing people who couldn't afford it to buy insurance. That's politics, though, and those not paying very close attention are going to get spun. But I think Obama railed aplenty at the lobbyists, corporate interests and revolving door DC politics especially with regard to HCR. He implied a universal-coverage program that would work towards ridding the public of the health care albatross, the industries unfairly and obscenely profiting off of the sick and injured.
The first thing he did was try to appoint one industry lobbyist, Tom Daschle, to put together his plan (he appointed another insider when that fell through). Then he invited the lobbyists and industry leaders, along with a few public oriented health professional groups, into the WH to hammer out the parameters of a program that will benefit them as much as the uninsured, and do little to nothing for the majority of people who have little choice in the insurance that is sucking up their income. Tom Daschle has been to the WH as a lobbyist for four or five of the big industries almost as many times as he would have as HHS secretary.
The House plan has some good things in it but do you believe it will be the plan that goes to Obama to be signed? The Senate HELP committee has a decent plan of sorts but it will never be voted on.What have the Dems stood up on?
Listen to Obama's unenthusiastic almost boilerplate "support" for a strong public option and even perhaps, maybe, if they have to- reconciliation, and then listen to Reid's recent remarks backpedaling as fast as he thinks Obama wants him to. Maybe I'm just too cynical these days. But I keep feeling this deja vu all over again.
August 31, 2009 11:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think Roger Wilkins had the best analysis of "make me do it"
ROGER WILKINS, April 28, 2008:
Now, let me just make two observations about presidents and getting things done. There is an old story that maybe some of you have heard. Sidney Hillman was a big labor leader. He had helped Roosevelt when Roosevelt was the governor and he helped him in the '32 campaign. So he went to the White House and he was welcomed as he should have been. He said, here is what you have to do Mr. President, da, da, da, da, da, da. And the story goes that President Roosevelt said, Sidney I agree with everything in your proposal, it is all exactly right, now you just go back home and make me do it.
And the same thing happened with Lyndon Johnson and the voting rights act. He wanted to do the Voting Rights Act, he had used up a lot of chits on the Civil Rights Act and he just engaged in a very long romancing of Martin Luther King, Jr., to make sure that King put his people on the streets and kept the people's feet to the fire and move along and move along and he essentially said to King - - make me do it.
And King put the people on the street, and then there was pressure from inside the government on the president - - with which I was associated - - and it happened.
- - Roger Wilkins
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/08/various_matters/permalink/ae65b761a8844f044327156c08084ab8.html
Images, such as the one of Tom Coburn (R-OK) telling a crying woman with a husband at home requiring a feeding tube looking for help that the government was not the answer, speak volumes. Coburn said we should get back to relying on the charity of or neighbors. While such a community based aid program may play to the GOP base, it seems a cold message to most Americans.
Democrats will respond to pressure when they actually see outrage from their constituents. The outrage over health care reform being dictated by the Conservatives will provide Democrats with the political cover (backbone) that Democrats need to override the GOP threat of a filibuster and authorize a straight up or down vote on a health care bill.
Put people in the streets.
September 1, 2009 9:02 AM | Reply | Permalink