Barack Obama’s Divided America

The anger felt by those opposed to the president’s policies, which they deem “leftist,” is taking on frightening proportions.

There is anger in the air in American towns. It is like a nervous agitation that consumes the spirit and largely differs from the air of unity that briefly swept over the country a year ago, when Barack Obama was elected president. The dozens of death threats in the form of letters and phone calls received over the past few weeks by some Democratic legislators — including the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi — following the passage of the health care reform bill, the president’s main battle point, are a clear testimony of these electric times.

Mao, Hitler, Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Stalin

The president’s entourage thought that once it had swallowed the pill of the massive development of health care, the opposition movement would decline. But the protests continue to fuse from the ranks of the Tea Party movement’s demonstrators, who still appeared in the tens of thousands on April 15 to protest against “Obama the Marxist,” his expensive health care reform, the “stranglehold of the federal state” and the “excessive taxes.” “Obama, we are in front of your lawn, pull up your blinds and listen,” they shouted Thursday in Washington. Behind the strollers, the picnic baskets and the friendly folkloric costumes, the activists who were questioned expressed a true stringency toward the president, sometimes even an angry questioning of his political legitimacy. “This man is dangerous, he is leading us to bankruptcy, the Weimar Republic and a single-party dictatorship,” declares a former U.S. Air Force officer with short-cropped hair who dared to brandish a sign with Mao, Hitler, Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Stalin standing side by side. “Let’s get rid of the crazies” read the sign.

In this enterprise, which aims to take away the legitimacy of presidential actions, some states, such as South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, have decided to play their own tune, threatening to declare illegal some federal laws on health care or gun control. As a guest of anchor Charlie Rose, the historian Douglas Brinkley spoke of a “fierce philosophical battle” between proponents of a New Deal, led by Obama, and advocates of minimum government, anxious to preserve the freedom of the states. “The divisions run deep, there is blind anger, a new form of violence,” said Newsweek columnist Jon Meacham on the same TV show. “This violent attitude mostly hides a feeling of anxiety, a fear that America may really be declining in the face of Chinal,” believes analyst Andrew Nagorski.

Congress Split in Half

Behind the opposition to health care reform, many experts see the inability of the extreme fringe of the electorate to accept the presence of “Obama the African-American” in the White House. Quite revealing is the insistence with which conservative radio shows and blogs keep talking about the conspiracy theories put forward by the “birthersm,” a movement that believes that the head of state lied about his place of birth and is not in fact a U.S. citizen.

“The line between opposition to governmental policies and this tradition of paranoia is very narrow,” says Jon Meacham. This is what former president Bill Clinton wanted to remind the public during the 15th commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing, when a far-right extremist caused the death of 168 people. The former president warned that the climate that prevails today in the United States looks a lot like the one that reigned shortly before April of 1995, judging it unhealthy to let “the debate feed on hate.” “By all means keep fighting, by all means, keep arguing,”* he continued, judging that the Tea Party movements are the sign of a good democracy. But be mindful of the use of “careless language” was also Clinton’s message, referring to a note written by a New Jersey teachers’ union that expressed, in the form of a joke, the wish for the death of Republican Gov. Chris Christie. This warning occurs at a time when the radical right’s militias, using the economic crisis and Obama’s election as a platform, are experiencing a renewed popularity, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Their number has increased from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009.

This return to extremes is deemed even more preoccupying because it is happening in conjunction with widening divisions in Congress. The old-timers of Capitol Hill admit to feeling nostalgic for the old days, when friendships between the two branches were made during family week-ends in Washington. With money taking center stage more and more in electoral campaigns, today members of Congress are forced to spend every weekend in their home districts in order to raise funds. This trend has completely changed the climate in Congress, explains John Schadl, spokesperson for Congressman Jim Oberstar. “They hardly speak to each other and don’t know each other,” confirms analyst Stuart Rothenberg, who sees in this very issue one of the roots of Obama’s difficulty in creating a bipartisan approach.

The Spiral of Confrontation

The way in which electoral districts are regularly re-designed to allow representatives to be easily re-elected increases the polarization in Congress. In the Senate, filibustering, a procedure that allows the minority to block debates and was used infrequently in the past, has become common practice and prevents any compromise from taking place. Stuck in the spiral of open confrontation, members of Congress become prisoners of their party’s limitations, with the risk that they will avoid voting for any reforms. Health care reform was passed without a single Republican vote, a first in the country’s history, considering the significance of this legislation.

Obama’s luck lies in the fact that the people are aware that Congress is paralyzed by the lobbies. Only 17 percent of Americans believe that the legislative branch is doing its job, whereas 50 percent approve of Obama’s actions, according to a recent poll conducted by the New York Times. Only 30 percent have a negative opinion of their president. The noise made by the Tea Parties and the echo heard throughout the country should not overshadow the option the president still has to once again act as the rallying point of a divided America.

* http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/16/AR2010041604016.html?waporef=obinsite

Parts of this speech can be found in: “Clinton Alludes to 1995 Bombing, Says Words Matter” from The Washington Post, Saturday, April 17, 2010