The Obama Hate Machine ─ The Lies, Distortions, and Personal Attacks on the President--And Who Is Behind Them

A leading voice in progressive media explores the sordid phenomenon of hate speech against Obama as spewed by the right wing and funded by corporate America.

“Obama was born in Kenya”…“Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer”…“Obama is a Communist who wants to institute death panels”…The extent to which these undying lies have taken hold in the American mindset shows just how ruthless, destructive, and all-powerful the right-wing
machine—hijacked by extremists in the media and fueled by corporate coffers—has become in America. And no one has inspired such venom as our nation’s current president, who has been targeted by Republicans for a uniquely insidious brand of character assassination. In his characteristic on-the mark arguments sure to appeal to anyone on the Left or in the Center, talk show host and syndicated columnist Bill Press shows how the peculiar nature of Obama Hating subverts issue-driven debate and threatens not only the outcome of the 2012 election but the future of the American democratic system.

BILL PRESS is the host of the nationally syndicated radio program The Bill Press Show. He writes a syndicated column for Tribune Media Services, and is the former cohost of MSNBC'sBuchanan and Press and CNN's Crossfire and The Spin Room.

ADVANCE PRAISE for THE OBAMA HATE MACHINE:

"In a poisoned political climate, negative personal attacks on President Obama must have no place in our public discourse. In an age when sound bites too often dominate the news, Bill Press digs deeper: busting the myths, standing up for the truth and the American people."—House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi

PRESIDENTS UNDER FIRE


Barack Obama, of course, is not the first president to have experienced withering personal attacks. They are as old as the presidency itself. In some ways, they are a tribute to our American experiment. Unlike forced allegiance to a monarch or tyrant, criticism of elected leaders is not only tolerated here; it is considered a necessary function of our democracy. And from the moment the first president took office, U.S. presidents have had to deal with sometimes-nasty attacks. In this day and age, all of us, Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Partiers alike, revere our Founding Fathers. We even put them on a pedestal. But that's not how they were treated in their own day. Not even Saint George Washington.
It was an open secret that Thomas Jefferson, as our first secretary of state, tried to undermine President Washington's declared policy of neutrality in the matter of war between France and Great Britain. From his position in the cabinet, Jefferson worked behind the scenes, helping orchestrate Republican opposition to Washington and trying to turn public opinion toward the position of siding with France.
Once Washington left the White House, our first president became an open target of abuse. He was publicly mocked and criticized as being weak and ineffective. Rumors resurfaced that he had enjoyed an affair with a young cleaning woman, whom he called "pretty little Kate, the Washer-woman's daughter." The Philadelphia Aurora, the chief Republican newspaper, heavily influenced by Jefferson, described Washington's farewell address as "the loathings of a sick mind." Its publisher, Benjamin Franklin Bache, revived charges that Washington had assassinated an unarmed officer during the French and Indian War and accused Washington of offering America nothing better than a "despotic counterfeit of the English Georges."
Writing in the Aurora, the one and only Thomas Paine even questioned Washington's leadership of the Revolutionary army, deeming him worse than a sunshine patriot. "You slept away your time in the field till the finances of the country were completely exhausted," he charged, "and you have but little share in the glory of the event." Paine demanded that Washington ask himself "whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any."
Ouch! Watching from a distance, Abigail Adams was appalled by the attacks on our first president. It just proved, she wrote her husband, Vice President John Adams, "that the most virtuous and unblemished Characters are liable to the Malice and venom of unprincipald [sic] Wretches." And, of course, she was afraid of what level of attacks might fall on her husband, who enjoyed nowhere near the popularity of the haloed Washington. She later warned Adams that, as president, he might well find himself "being fastned [sic] up Hand and foot and Tongue to be shot at as our Quincy Lads do at the poor Geese and Turkies." And, indeed, he was.
Adams was no fool. He knew he would be in for a rough time. As he wrote Abigail of the departing George Washington after his inauguration, "He seemed to enjoy a triumph over me. Methought I heard him think, 'Ay! I am fairly out and you are fairly in! See which of us will be the happiest!'"
As vice president, Adams had already endured his share of ridicule, some of which he brought on himself. After suggesting to Congress that Washington be called "Your Highness," rather than the populist "Mr. President," Adams was henceforth called "The Duke of Braintree," or simply "His Rotundity." Privately, Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania dismissed Adams as "a monkey just put into breeches."
After eight years of running interference for President Washington against Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, the last thing John Adams needed when he himself assumed the presidency was having to put up with Jefferson as vice president. But that's what the electoral vote delivered, after a noncontested and practically nonexistent presidential campaign. Still trying to figure out the proper way to choose leaders in the new republic, neither Adams nor Jefferson declared their candidacy or campaigned for the office. Once their new roles were decided, however, the two leaders, from different political parties and with separate agendas, were bound to clash-and did.
At first, heeding his wife Abigail's advice, Adams held forth an olive branch to Jefferson, offering him cabinet status, a major voice in foreign policy, and designation of him or his ally James Madison as the new American envoy to France. But Jefferson rejected all three, choosing to pursue his Republican party agenda instead.
As Joseph Ellis reports in First Family, Jefferson was, in fact, already in clandestine conversations with the French consul in Philadelphia, urging him to ignore any peace initiatives from the new president-since, according to Jefferson, Adams did not speak for the true interests of the American people. Just imagine! Today, this act would be considered treason.
There followed a rocky four years, during which Adams was constantly fighting rear-guard actions by his disloyal vice president, who was busy plotting with the French, and by his own cabinet (he had mistakenly retained all appointees of Washington, believing the cabinet should be a permanent body). It was all too much for First Lady Abigail Adams, who lamented the steady stream of "Lies, falsehoods, calamities and bitterness" and denounced Philadelphia as "a city that seems devoted to Calamity."
And it led, inevitably, to the first contested election for president, in 1800, and one of the ugliest presidential campaigns ever.
For the incumbent vice president to challenge the incumbent president for reelection was, in itself, a direct personal attack. It'd be as if Dick Cheney had dared to run against George W. Bush in 2004. Today, that would never happen. It would be considered inappropriate, in bad taste, even treacherous. But back then, the country was new, and people were still feeling their way around the political process.
Even before the campaign, intrigue began. Adams first had to defend himself from a scurrilous attack by fellow Federalist Alexander Hamilton that he had, in effect, begun to lose his mind. Adams's "ungovernable temper," matched by his "disgusting egotism" and "distempered jealousy," Hamilton charged in his Letter from Alexander Hamilton, Concerning the Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Esq. President of the United States, were characteristics that "unfit him for the office of chief magistrate."
But his strongest challenge came from Vice President Thomas Jefferson and Republicans. Determined to weaken, if not destroy, Adams's reputation ahead of any actual campaigning, Jefferson commissioned fiery pamphleteer James Callender to wield the political ax.
As I noted in my first book, Spin This!, Callender-who would later turn on Jefferson and charge him with sexual abuse of slave Sally Hemings-published The Prospect Before Us, in which he accused Adams of corruption and secretly attempting to lead the United States into war, which was the exact opposite of what Adams was fighting for. In his private life, charged Callender, Adams was "one of the most egregious fools upon the continent." Then, in typical Callender style, he vilified the president as "a repulsive pedant,... a gross hypocrite,... a wretch that has neither the science of a magistrate, the politeness of a courtier, nor the courage of a man."
With that, the stage was set. And once the Adams-Jefferson campaign got under way, neither side held back. Because of his known aversion to any established religion-he was a Deist-Jefferson was accused of being an atheist. Not to mention a Francophile (guilty), a revolutionist, and a man devoid of morals, whose election would deliver the country to licentiousness and debauchery and who, if elected, would immediately order the confiscation of Bibles and the burning of churches. Almost in anticipation of the questions raised about Barack Obama's birth certificate, Adams supporters called Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father." George Washington stayed above the fray, but not Martha. She couldn't resist jumping on the bandwagon, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."
The Jefferson camp, meanwhile, responded in kind, accusing President Adams of being unpatriotic because he opposed joining France in another war with Great Britain and, here at home, wanted to maintain a standing army. He was also charged with wanting to turn the presidency into a monarchy and with planning to marry one of his sons to a daughter of George III, thus starting an American dynasty that would reunite the country with Great Britain.
As the great historian Page Smith relates in his magnificent two-volume life of Adams, another rumor more amused than annoyed him. Republicans accused Adams of sending Gen. Charles Pinckney to England in a United States frigate to procure four pretty girls as mistresses, two for the general and two for himself. "I do declare upon my honor," Adams responded, "if this be true General Pinckney has kept them all for himself and cheated me out of two."
At the same time, Jefferson's backers also questioned Adams's sexuality. Campaign brochures repeated James Callender's description of Adams as being of "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
Jefferson, of course, won that round and became our third president. A bitter Adams didn't wait around for his archenemy to take the oath of office. On Inauguration Day, 1801, he left early in the morning to return to Massachusetts.
Once in the White House, Jefferson had his own political enemies to deal with, and few more lethal than the beast he created, notorious once and future mudslinger James Callender. When refused a presidential appointment, Callender turned on the man who had once paid him to smear John Adams, accusing the refined "gentleman" of Monticello of having sexual relations with his slave Sally Hemings and fathering her children. Which, of course, was true. For Abigail Adams, this was the revenge she'd been looking for. "The serpent you cherished and warmed," she wrote much later to Jefferson, "bit the hand that nourished him."
GETTING PHYSICAL
The point is, over-the-top political invective was here from the beginning, directed against, and even exercised by, some of the most revered figures in the American political pantheon. And it wasn't always just verbal. Too often, it got physical. Not yet in the White House, perhaps, but, from its earliest days, on the floor of the United States Congress. Norm Ornstein, who follows Congress from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute, has documented many cases where debate over issues degenerated into acts of physical violence between members of Congress. Among the more colorful and memorable are:
• Lyon v. Griswold. On January 30, 1798, debate over whether the United States should enter the ongoing war between France and England on the side of France escalated into a shouting match between Matthew Lyon, Republican of Vermont, and Roger Griswold, Federalist from Connecticut. At one point, Lyon, a tobacco chewer, like many other members of Congress, spit tobacco in Griswold's face. Two weeks later, on February 15, Griswold responded by attacking Lyon with a hickory cane. At which point, Lyon picked up a pair of fireplace tongs and struck back. Neither one was expelled from Congress.
• Black v. Giddings, 1845. We only know about this incident thanks to John Quincy Adams, who recorded it in his diary. As Representative Joshua R. Giddings, an Ohio Whig, was speaking on the floor, Representative Edward J. Black, a Democrat from Georgia, "crossed over from his seat ... and, coming within the bar behind Giddings as he was speaking, made a pass at the back of his head with a cane." Adams reported that Representative William H. Hammett of Mississippi then "threw his arms round [Black] and bore him off as he would a woman from a fire."
• Brooks v. Sumner, 1856. This is the most notorious incident of congressional violence in our history. Pro-slavery senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina was the subject of strong verbal attacks from abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Over the course of a fiery three-hour speech, Sumner argued that Butler had taken "a mistress who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight-I mean, the harlot, Slavery."
Butler's relative, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, rallied to his defense. Brooks walked from the House to the Senate floor and beat Sumner senseless with his gutta-percha walking cane. When other senators tried to come to Sumner's defense, they were stopped by Representative Laurence Keitt, also of South Carolina, who pulled out his pistol and kept them away. After an attempt to expel Brooks from the House failed, he nevertheless resigned his seat, but he ran again and was reelected the following November. Indeed, Brooks subsequently received dozens of canes in the mail from admiring southerners.
For his part, Sumner could not return to the Senate for three years due to his injuries, but he was reelected in 1856 regardless by an equally angry Massachusetts state legislature.
• Tilman v. McLaurin, 1902. South Carolina strikes again. This time, violence between two Democrats from South Carolina. On the Senate floor, Senator John McLaurin accused a fellow South Carolinian, Senator Benjamin Tillman, of telling a "willful, malicious and deliberate lie." Tillman, known as "Pitchfork Ben," hauled off and punched McLaurin in the face.
• Thurmond v. Yarborough, 1964. One of the strangest of all physical encounters between members of Congress was a wrestling match between segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (again!) and Ralph Yarborough of Texas. Thurmond was so determined to prevent the confirmation of LeRoy Collins as President Johnson's head of the Community Relations Service that he stood outside the door to the Commerce Committee hearing room, blocking other senators from entering. When Yarborough tried to get around him, Thurmond threw Yarborough to the floor. At which point, Chairman Warren Magnuson came to the door and broke up the scuffle. Thurmond won the wrestling match but lost the vote, sixteen to one.
There were many other times, of course, when members of Congress engaged in angry debate. But, perhaps mindful of losing their seats, they stopped just short of coming to blows. In 2003, all but one Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee walked out to protest Chairman Bill Thomas's lack of notice about markup of a pension bill. Pete Stark of California was left behind to observe the proceedings and report back to his fellow Democrats. When Stark attempted to speak, Congressman Scott McInnis of Colorado told him to "shut up." At which point, Stark, known for his temper, shouted back, "You think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come on. Come over here and make me, I dare you. You little fruitcake." In earlier days, that could easily have led to blows with a hickory cane, or worse.
Senator Patrick Leahy showed similar restraint in his famous contretemps with Vice President Dick Cheney in 2004. After a heated exchange over Cheney's ties to his old firm, Halliburton, and President Bush's judicial nominees, the veep ended the debate by telling Leahy to "go fuck yourself" and walked away. Cheney later said, "That's sort of the best thing I ever did." Leahy did not return fire, which was probably for the best, given that Cheney later shot hunting partner Harry Whittington in the face.