Barack Obama opposed move against Joe Wilson
CBS (9-14-09): Kroft (from 60 minutes show) asked Mr. Obama if he thought the House should rebuke Wilson.
The president chuckled and said, "But see, this is part of what happens. I mean, it becomes a big circus instead of us focusing on health care."
The president chuckled and said, "But see, this is part of what happens. I mean, it becomes a big circus instead of us focusing on health care."
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I suppose I'd have to agree.
September 15, 2009 9:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Translation of Obama's statement: "We're cleaning up after the elephants."
September 15, 2009 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Translation of Obama's statement: "I wish the far left would STFU."
September 16, 2009 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Translation: This is how politics goes, it is what it is, and why getting things done is and will always be so difficult. Of course, I wish Wilson and the rest of those being uncivil would just STFU in the first place so others wouldn't have to be put into a position of restoring the lines of civility in government.
September 16, 2009 10:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
It probably means that as well, but I suspect Obama knew he would have zero control over the right while hoped he would have more control over his the left.
September 16, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe he shouldn't have that much control over them. They should be independent to do what they see fit. I don't want my representatives to kowtow to the President, even if they are in the same party. A little freedom (and separation of powers) is good thing, even if it makes getting things done a little harder. That's what the framers of the Constitution had in mind.
September 16, 2009 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why does it never fail that the wrong word is picked up and that completely negates the actual point I was trying to make?
OK. How about influence? The bully pulpit? The singular most important role that every American president has played in our most pivotal historical moments - that of drawing the country together to accomplish great things.
Our continued division at the grassroots makes his assumption of that role all the more critical.
September 16, 2009 10:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
In this case, how much of a circus was there. It's over now and things are moving on. As the original post indicates, the president "chuckled." I don't think he saw the needed to seriously deal with this. This was a minor bump as far as bump goes as part of the perpetual silly season.
So I think it is a far stretch that the President is saying to the far left STFU. Especially since this implicitly puts all the blame for this on the far left and none of it for the person responsible for the incident. Maybe he was saying hey guys lets calm down, you have a point to censure but lets not let it get out of hand. And guess what, they didn't punish him, just put it on record as going over the line.
September 16, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I was using humor to add to the point that Ripper made, which was equally valid and which I confirmed upon your first misunderstanding of my point.
September 16, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
And your point is that Obama is in agreement with you about how the far left is tearing apart this country by calling out the GOP for the racism it is exhibiting. Maybe if the GOP leadership would have stomped down on the birther movement (translation: go back to Kenya) and openly and loudly denounced all the emails and rally signs that expressed racism, the far left wouldn't have to be doing it.
It is possible Obama understands that if we as country remain silent about it, we are diminished as country. It is just that he as President can't get into fray on this.
September 16, 2009 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hyperbole seldom helps foster communication. I'll be waiting for the quote where I said the far left is tearing the country apart rather than keeping it from coming together.
September 16, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
"our continued division at the grassroots" which is why Obama wants to say to the far left STFU. The logical implication of your posts is that there is a division that is frustrating Obama and that it is the fact that the far left won't shut up that this division cannot be closed. And chances are making the division wider, thus tearing the country apart.
September 16, 2009 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
You missed where I said the extreme voices from both camps are frustrating to him. I am simply intuiting based on what he wrote in Audacity of Hope, which is a decided disdain for partisan politics. It takes two sides to have a divide.
September 16, 2009 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually a divide can occur when one side who wants to try to work things out and another side is flipping the bird.
My point would be that in this matter, of calling racist bull* for what it is and calling the silent leadership as complicit at the very least, Obama may not feel that these people constitutes the extremist in his view. Sometimes speaking the truth can be polarizing but needs to be done. Obama knows for him to be effective he can't be getting into the fray.
September 16, 2009 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
He can't get into the fray because it will never end. The man is trying to get things done, not get into a he said, they said match with these people.
The thugs have nothing else to do but try to muddy the waters. They have no power and no status in washington so this is their life's work right now.
Obama is right to rise above all of it and let others do the dirty work.
September 16, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
And really, how we are going to bring the country together if there are those who say that what Joe Wilson did was appropriate, that it is okay to disregard the lines of decorum and civility? We can't bring everyone together we don't call out and recognize those causing the division to get wider. Ultimately, by calling those who acknowledge uncivility for being uncivil as the ones causing the division to widen, it is you that is helping widen the gap.
September 16, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Calling someone uncivil and calling them a racist are two different things.
To then use that as a launching pad to paint the entire republican party as racist is not only unfair, but it is strategically idiotic.
Obama has this exactly right. It was better left alone or left to the Congress, but remain a sidebar in either case.
September 16, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
The original post was about how Obama felt about the House rebuke of Wilson and House wasn't bringing in the racism card, so his comment has nothing to do at all about how Obama feels about the those outside Congress debating and dialoguing about the racism inherent in the comment.
You decided to expand this to show evidence that Obama is telling the left wing of his party to STFU.
As President, as he learned with calling the police acting stupidly, he has to watch what can say about how he really feels. I doubt Obama wants people to stop about how police officers interact with African-Americans in ways that are "stupid" if not racist.
The validity of the racism brush being used on the GOP is an issue, but this comment by Obama is not related to it.
September 16, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually the question was about what Obama thought about what the House was attempting to do. That's why Obama said this would turn things into a circus.
September 16, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point. He wasn't talking about anyone outside of House, and since it was pretty much the entire House Dems involved, had nothing to do with the "far left" of the House Dems. He was just taking the high road on this issue. Nothing more. He chuckled, he didn't see the "big circus" that would ensue that dangerous to the formation of HCR.
September 16, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Since the left wing is primarily the ones shouting the loudest that the GOP is racist over this, I suspect the sentiment may have occurred to the president once or twice despite this particular quote being directed at Congress.
September 16, 2009 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
And maybe Obama agrees with them. He isn't going to say out loud. And he probably agrees with Jimmy Carter but won't say it out loud, just as active Generals won't openly agree with retired Generals who dis the Commander in Chief.
September 16, 2009 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Guess we will agree to disagree. When the president says he thinks this sort of thing is a distraction and creates a circus atmosphere, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he means what he says.
September 16, 2009 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
And I agree that it was a distraction and did create a bit of a circus, but sometimes distractions needs to happen, and that Obama feels that way. Where we disagree is whether Obama feels that this particular incident is to be lumped into the larger group of serious partisan politics that we need to put an end to.
September 16, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Calling it a circus and a distraction and typical of Washington politics seems to indicate he thinks it does represent that partisan atmosphere that continues to drive too much of the debate.
September 16, 2009 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
We'll agree to disagree, but I would end by saying that I don't think Obama is would go as far as to say that one should avoid all disagreements that could be construed as partisan politics. In his HCR speech, he lobbed a few cannon balls over the bow to those who had been too extreme (eg death panels and the thing that started this the immigrant issue), which could be, as some have said since, a partisan attack.
September 16, 2009 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreeing without being disagreeable seems to be the president's chief political tactic. That always struck me as a sensible way to build a governing majority and played well in the primaries.
September 16, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's right of course. War criminals roam free, giving lectures to right wing groups... and House Dems worry about a guy who rudely shouted.
September 15, 2009 11:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
He's the Chief Executive. He should stand above it as far as being on the record about it. And the House did what it did, it wasn't much of a circus, and now they're moving on. So the President stand about the frackas and doesn't poison the negotiation with the other side, while the House makes it point. Win-win.
September 16, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. Thanks for making sense.
September 16, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seconded.
Maybe we can take this event, Congress underlining the frank incivility of loudmouths, as a turning point toward restoring a civil debate. The nation was appalled by Wilson's interruption. Our Congress devolved into a town hall when a single voter was making enough noise for two or three. This is undemocratic in a mild way. There is a time and a place, and the Presidential Address to Congress is neither.
From the funny, irreverent, perspective, 200 years ago, publicly calling someone a liar was grounds for a duel. Obama would kill that old man. I believe these ludmouths are becoming more common because we stopped objecting to them.
September 16, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Second you too.
September 16, 2009 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let me paraphrase/tweek the comment I made yesterday.
Joe Wilson acted like a spoiled brat. He apologized to President Obama, who accepted said mea culpa. That should have been it. President Obama came across as the bigger man, which he is. And the Democratic fundraising machine, which has been sleeping, kicked into action. If more was needed to assuage the egos of House Democrats, a quick resolution condemning Wilson's action would have been appropriate.
But that was not good enough for some. Those 2 moronic words have been taken way out of proportion.
Results :
(a) Everyone is talking about 2 idiotic words.
(b) Nobody is talking about Obama's address to the Nation. Can anyone remember what was said?
(c) Healthcare has been pushed aside.
(d) Pelosi is withdrawing her line in the sand re Public Option.
(e) Some Democrats are now equating those 2 words with 'racism' and 'white hoods.' Clearly this was an act of stupidity. By raising it to anything other than that, by stretching the truth, is playing directly into the hands of Republicans. The overreaching has led, in my opinion, to the Republican fundraising machine having been kicked into action. Until this time, the latter wasn't just sleeping, it had been in a coma, until the 'R' word was used.
For all of you who are praising the House Democrats for wanting to see Wilson stretched out on a rack for those two stupid words, let me ask you a question.
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et. al. lied to this nation, and before Congress on many an occasion. Their actions brought shame on this Nation. They authorized war, torture, rendition, occupation of a sovereign nation, deaths of thousands of US military men and women, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi nationals etc. They are responsible of War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. Where is the Congress' outrage against these lies?, against these vile and despicable acts? When will Congress begin Impeachment Hearings for these loathsome acts?
Two stupid words result in immediate action in Congress. Lies, war, torture, rendition, and the deaths of over a million Iraqis, and a deathing silence is heard.
September 16, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah that's what I said.
September 16, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Indeed you did Sir Tiggers of California, and in a much more precise manner than I. Thank you.
September 16, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
dont get carried away.
geez.
and your wrong too.
September 16, 2009 8:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Had the President really wanted to stop the House move against Wilson he could have done so. He cannot publicly get involved in all this stuff and he is wise not to. However, instead of standing on the sidelines, all the rest of the Democrats need to pounce on those racist Republicans and every time they pull their racist crap, call them on it as they did in this instance.
September 16, 2009 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink