Acclaimed commentator George Will set tongues wagging all over the nation yesterday. Because in his latest syndicated column he not only asserts that “Obama’s administration is in shambles;” he concludes that, but for Obama’s race, the nation would reject him in Jimmy Carter-like fashion in November:
Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.
(Washington Post, October 2, 2012)
Except that this patronizing psychoanalysis of the national electorate reeks of racial bias. After all, the Bush administration was in even greater shambles at this point in his re-election campaign in 2004. In fact, so much so that his Democratic challenger John Kerry was famously caught on tape expressing, in utter bewilderment, that:
I can’t believe I’m losing to this idiot.
(Newsweek, November 4, 2004)
Therefore, one wonders how Will would explain why the nation was so reluctant to give up on this White slacker who practically inherited the presidency from his Daddy….
Mind you, this is not to say that White guilt will not factor in November. It’s just that Will ignores the inconvenient truth that the Obama administration has a well-documented record of accomplishments that makes this president, by any objective standard, eminently worthy of re-election.
Instead, here is the more informed and unbiased psychoanalysis I offered in this respect almost a year ago:
When all is said and done, I am convinced that even some Republican-leaning voters will think twice about helping to perpetrate the historic spectacle of re-electing George W. Bush to a second term – after he nearly bankrupted the country with his tax cuts for the rich and unfunded wars, but denying Obama a second term – despite his bipartisan efforts to clean up the mess Bush left behind.
Besides, trust me folks, race matters. This is why disappointed supporters like actor Matt Damon, as well as White independents whose votes are so indispensable, will also think twice about causing this first Black president to go down in history as a failure – especially given all of the mediocre White presidents who cruised to second terms.
(“Obama Will Be Reelected in Landslide,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 30, 2011)
Of course, George Will is every bit as entitled as Al Sharpton is to play the race card. But this column makes a mockery of the informed and unbiased (Spock-like) opinions for which he has become famous.
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Obama will be reelected…