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On race, Obama knows whites like to be flattered, not accused

September 23, 2009 — Last week, former President Jimmy Carter made the debate over the role of racism in the right's reaction to President Obama’s policies front page news. By citing his own Deep South credentials, Carter lent credibility, as well as the prestige of his former office, to the view that opposition to the administration’s health care reforms and its economic proposals is being fueled largely by racial prejudice against the nation’s first African-American chief executive.

Obama himself, however, publicly disagreed with Carter, signaling that the politically astute president understood the dangers -- if not the accuracy -- of imputing racist motives to his foes. Remember that Obama got elected as this nation’s first black president because he was the un-Jesse Jackson, the un-Al Sharpton. He understood, as did the feisty but wise Doug Wilder in his Virginia campaign for governor in 1989, that white voters like to be flattered, not accused.

Obama showed his light touch during his appearance on the David Letterman Show Tuesday night. Asked about  Carter's statement, Obama replied: "Well, first of all I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."

"How long have you been a black man?" Letterman joked back.

Obama went on to compare himself to FDR, JFK, and Ronald Reagan -- all presidents, he said, who were "called a lot of names" because they tried to bring about change during a period of social unease in the country.

President Obama knows that it may make liberal Democrats -- black and white -- feel good to denounce critics of their policies as racists, but it also makes many otherwise kinda/sorta tolerant whites get very defensive, and probably creates an even larger and more intense opposition to Obama and his proposals. Indeed, this view has guided Obama’s behavior on race throughout his campaign and during his eight months in office.

Whether it’s making a heart-felt address to the nation on race as he distanced himself from his long-time preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, or backtracking on black Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gate’s dispute with a white Cambridge police officer, Obama has consistently taken the high road where charges of white racism are involved. Who knows what his opinion is about such issues in the deepest recesses of his soul, but his political skills are very much in tact. He knows that getting the left -- including African-Americans -- highly and publicly incensed about white racism is a losing strategy, at least in terms of current political battles.

Moreover, there’s considerable evidence that plain old recalcitrant conservatism is at the root of the protests at town hall meetings and TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Parties. After all, the first TEA Party was held last December, before Obama took office, by a groups of Ron Paul’s small-l libertarians to protest then-President Bush’s stimulus package. And this writer’s best guess is that today’s crowds opposing Obama’s agenda would have been just as large and just as vociferous if they were opposing similar policies by either a President John Kerry or a President Hillary Clinton.

In addition, the opposition to President George W. Bush from the left side of the political spectrum was roughly as vehement and vitriolic when he was in office as what we are witnessing today against Obama. If you looked at film of the anti-war protests during Bush’s tenure in office, you would probably find more than one poster with a picture of Bush altered to resemble Adolph Hitler, not to mention other ugly smears. Lack of civility, as the current occupant of the White House has recently noted, is a sad fact of political life on both sides of the partisan divide.

Nevertheless, there is a certain plausibility in the claims of Carter and others that racism is a significant factor in the current protests. Those opposed to the often-controversial political agendas of various minority groups -- especially African Americans -- tend to be conservative across the board and usually end up in the GOP. In addition, conservatives   -- mostly Republicans -- also want to keep their money for themselves, not have government tax much of it away and decide how it should be spent. This clashes with the views of most African Americans and others that costly government programs, such as broader availability of health care insurance, are important to solving the nation’s social ills.

Taking such stands on minorities’ agendas and remaining a party open to all Americans is not an easy task. If memory serves me correctly, it was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who said that Republicans shouldn’t oppose affirmative action unless they come up with an alternative for helping the large number of underprivileged African-Americans. Otherwise, the message -- at best -- to blacks, and to others in society, is that the problems of these people don’t matter. Similar questions arise with regard to other minority groups. Republicans have yet to meet this challenge.

As a result, the GOP, through a variety of policy stands, has alienated not only African-Americans, but Latinos, many professional women, gay people and increasingly, many voters in the urban and suburban upper-middle classes who don’t share the conservative social agenda of the Republican right. In the process, California, once the western anchor of the GOP’s former “electoral lock,” and, at least temporarily, Virginia and Florida, have left the Republican fold, leaving the party in a seriously weakened condition.