Barack Obama

“Argo” and the Horrible Thought

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
Thanks a bunch, Ben.

Thanks a bunch, Ben.

“Argo” prompted a disturbing thought that has been haunting me since I saw the picture. I am sorry that I had the thought, and hoped that it had been successfully banished by time and hope. Unfortunately, the juxtaposition of “Argo” winning the Best Picture Oscar combined with the inappropriate and intrusive appearance of Michelle Obama to announce it, complete with a politics-tinged speech that was as gratuitous as it was manipulative, caused that thought to begin burning in my brain again. Alas, here it is.

At the conclusion of “Argo,” former President Carter is heard emphasizing the obvious, that in 1980 he would have loved to have taken credit for the audacious  rescue of the six American Embassy workers from Iran that was engineered by his CIA. But, Carter says, do so would have endangered the remaining hostages, and though it would have helped his politically besieged Presidency (which was lost to Ronald Reagan that same year, in part because of Carter’s perceived weakness in handling the hostage crisis), giving all of the credit to Canada was the right and responsible thing to do.

I am no admirer of Jimmy Carter’s policies, personality, Presidency or leadership. He is, however, an ethical man. He was President before the hyper-partisanship that has rotted our politics, before the “perpetual campaign” style of leadership launched by Clinton, and before every act by every main stage player in Washington appeared to be dictated by the need to hold power, rather than by the needs of the people. My horrible thought is that I believe the current President and his  Machiavellian political advisors would not have done as Carter did, if the “Argo” scenario played out in 2012, as that Presidential election approached. This White House, facing the prospect of defeat, would find a way to leak its participation in the successful rescue, judging its retention of power a higher goal than protecting the hostages that may well have died anyway.

I wish I didn’t have this thought, but I cannot banish it. The unseemly chest-thumping and credit-grabbing over the killing of Bin Laden, the leaking of details about the deliberations leading to it, the deceptive handling of the Benghazi disaster, and yes, the inability of the President’s political strategists to resist attaching the President or his wife to anything remotely positive—even the Academy Awards— while refusing to accept responsibility for any mistake, miscalculation or failure (See Bob Woodward on the disinformation campaign regarding the looming sequester, beginning with Obama’s outright lie in the third Presidential debate, “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed.”), all have me convinced that the days when we can trust a President to risk his own grip on power for the good of the country are gone, perhaps forever.

As I said, it is a horrible thought, and I fervently wish I didn’t have it. I want to trust and admire our nation’s leaders, the President most of all. But the leaders of both parties have earned this level of distrust, and I see no signs that they are capable of making that horrible thought, and other too, go away.

ARRGGH!! Beyonce..ARRRRGHH!!!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Misdirection

Just “Arrrrgh!”

First, Beyonce ducks a question (at pre-Super Bowl  press conference) about whether she really lip-synced the National Anthem at the Inauguration, as discussed extensively here , here, and here,

by using Clintonian parsing—no, she wasn’t lip-syncing ( because that means just moving one’s lips to a song, and technically she was singing. It’s just that the audience may have been hearing her recording and not her real voice.) Then she “answers”…by singing the song, brilliantly, without accompaniment. (Of course it was planned.) Then CNN’s awful morning anchor Carol Costello AND CNN’s headline writer state that Beyonce “answered her critics” by doing so.

For the love of…Arrrrgh!

That was NOT an answer! This was masterful, if screamingly obvious (to all but CNN) misdirection and manipulation.The question posed was not “Can you sing “The Star Spangled Banner?,” but “Did you lip-sync?”, which means, as she well knows, “Did you sing it live at the Inauguration, and was the live rendition what we heard?” Her rendition of the song at the press conference was no more responsive to the question than a sudden riff on “Trouble in River City” or “Turkey in the Straw.” Then pathetic CNN calls it an answer, as if singing the song two weeks after the event in question settles the issue. Our professional journalism establishment at work. (in the version I saw, Costello didn’t even mention that Beyonce gave a technical “no” to the “did you lip-sync?” query before bursting into song.

ARRRRGHHH!

 Beyonce could have cleared up the controversy weeks ago by either admitting that she lip-synced, or by denying it. Asked about the matter directly, in front of TV cameras, she avoided the question again. That was an answer, all right, but not the one CNN and the singer implied it was.

The answer was “Yes.”

____________________________________

Spark: CNN

Graphic: Soda Head

Another Faked “Live Performance” At An Obama Inauguration

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments
Beyonce, moving her mouth convincingly for the President

Beyonce, moving her mouth convincingly for the President

At this point, I am resigned to being one of the last people on earth who still believes that when a live performance is advertised, we should get a live performance. Clearly nobody in the Obama Administration believes it, because for the second straight inauguration ceremony, a featured musical presentation introduced as a live performance was actually an elaborate fake. I was initially impressed that Beyoncé could sing The National Anthem so well live and in the open air—not quite Whitney, but still excellent. I’m not so impressed that she could do it in a studio, with sound balancing, multiple takes and editing. It does make a difference, you know.

I also assume I’m one of the last citizens who finds the beginning of new Presidential term being launched with a lie both symbolic and disappointing. Everybody does it, who is hurt, it’s trivial, things have changed…I know. Lots of rationalizations fit. I don’t care. Some things should be genuine and trustworthy, and the President’s inauguration is one of them.

Thus here again, slightly edited, is my protest against this deception in 2009, after the first time the American public was faked out. Looking back on what I wrote, and what the Obama Administration turned out to be, it really was symbolic after all. So it is this time around. It’s just not as much of a surprise.

“Why are there American citizens who stubbornly maintain that Neil Armstrong’s moon landing was faked? Why is cynicism becoming a crippling national malady? Look no further for the answer than the inaugural ceremonies of Barack Obama, where a U.S. Senator and a quartet of great musicians couldn’t bring themselves to avoid artifice and deception on the day America displays its democracy to the world. Continue reading →

Relax, Americans: The President Will Be A Good Man…Whoever He Is.

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

The good guys.

The degree of anxiety over today’s Presidential election—perhaps more accurate than anxiety is hysteria—is palpable. It is also unnecessary and foolish. I have read the fevered rantings of Andrew Sullivan, who fears Mitt Romney like the Germans feared the invading Russian army at the end of World War II, and the apocalyptic monologues of conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin, who is prone to statements like, “It’s over, that’s all! Do you understand? If Obama wins, this country is never coming back!” I have watched both parties exploit and encourage this kind of irrational fear, and its by-products, predictably, are hate, division and anger. There was a time in America when political adversaries referred to each other as “my honorable opponent.” The candidates were not more honorable then. We were more sensible.

The history of the United States has shown that very few truly bad men have the opportunity to run for President. It makes sense, if you give it a modicum of thought. A Presidential contender must negotiate the perils of life for at least four decades without accumulating damning evidence of disqualifying character traits and malign intent. The candidate must have shown sufficient ability and character to impress those he worked with and owed duties to. Most of all, a potential President must have been able to engender a sufficient amount of trust over more than half of his natural life.

We should not judge political leaders by the same standards as other professionals, because the nature of politics, by definition, is ethically ambiguous. Politics knows only one ethical system: utilitarianism. The practice of governing and making human progress advance in the civic arena rules out absolute principles, and requires delicate calculations of ends and means. This often appears, to non-practitioners, as corruption, and it certainly can become that. Effective, trustworthy leaders are able to avoid the occupational hazard of believing that the ends necessarily justify the means. If they cannot, they will not have the opportunity to be President. Continue reading →

The Benghazi Express: It’s Hard To Hide An Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 33 Comments

Did you hear the gross and inappropriate remark Joe Biden made to the father of one of the soldiers killed in the Benghazi attack? Of course not! Because it makes the Vice President appear to be a clueless and insensitive fool…we can’t have THAT…not before an election!

It’s pretty simple, really. The American people have a right to know what really happened in Benghazi, and as new questions keep arising, the appearance of a cover-up on the part of the Obama Administration keeps getting more difficult to deny.

  • On 9/11 of 2012, an armed attack on the American embassy in Libya left four dead, including the Ambassador. After the attack, the only official U.S. comment was on the website of the Cairo embassy, which had experienced a violent protest, disavowing an anti-Islam film trailer that had been posted on YouTube, essentially suggesting that the violence had been provoked by offensive American speech.
  • Many days afterward, that remained the official position of the Obama Administration, to such an extent that ten days after the raid the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. visited all the Sunday talk shows to describe the attack as spontaneous, not planned terrorist actions, and sparked by indignation over the video. President Obama went before the U.N., and again disavowed and blamed the video. Continue reading →

Of Unfairness, Petards, and the Golden Rule

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Here is the problem.

When you become desperate, and spring to manipulate gaffes, misstatements, over-heard comments and poor choices of words into unfair and disproportionate campaign attacks, you set the ground rules for your opponents as well. Unless you really have a bombshell—I’d say Romney’s 47% comment was a bombshell—the tactic is a poor risk, as well as being unethical. No candidate, nor any of his or her supporters, should try to make political points from off-the- cuff remarks, unless they reach Todd Akin-like levels of offensiveness and stupidity. They should apply the Golden Rule, for their own protection, as well as the principle’s ethical virtues.Indeed, Presidential candidates should pledge—to each other and to the public—to run campaigns about substance, not slips of the tongue.

I would have thought the Democrats would have learned this; I would think any politician would have learned this. But they are worried, and falling in the polls, so when Mitt Romney awkwardly talked about his “binders full of women” in the second debate, liberal pundits and Democrats decided to make this the latest way to ridicule Mitt, taking its place aside “I like to fire people,” and “corporations are people,” but sillier than either, though no more unfair. The attacks on those statements were unethical; this attack was outrageous. More important, it re-emphasized that in this dirty campaign, intentionally warped and unforgiving interpretations of statements that the candidates wish they had said better are acceptable weapons of choice, as unfair and misleading as that choice is.

So, as a result, when their candidate makes a far, far worse gaffe, as Obama did by telling “the Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart that “If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal,” they can expect no mercy from the media, their conservative adversaries, or anyone else, including me. Is the statement as bad as it sounds? No. Does it show that Obama doesn’t care about the death of his ambassador and three other Americans? No. Will it be perceived that way anyway? Yes, absolutely, and because it will, the Republicans will run with it hard, and no Democrat who harped on Romney’s more trivial foot-stuffing exercises can credibly complain.

So they are going to have to live with the mother of one of those slain in Benghazi, telling the press,

“It’s insensitive to say my son is not very optimal – he is also very dead. I’ve not been “optimal” since he died and the past few weeks have been pure hell.”

And they are going to have to put up with this:

‘

Continue reading →

The Obama Campaign’s Ungracious Character

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Poor choice of role model, Mr. President.

Consider these post-debate quotes from various key figures in the Obama campaign:

” The President did a good job explaining his positions, but give credit where credit is due. Governor Romney had a great night. He was focused and clear, and obviously connected with the audience. He’s a capable adversary, as we always knew. President Obama can and will equal and surpass his performance in the coming debates.”—David Axelrod

” Governor Romney proved himself to be a formidable debater, and the President will have to be more aggressive in countering his arguments, which he certainly has the ability and the ammunition to do.”—Stephanie Cutter

“I didn’t feel I had a poor debate, but I obviously need to have better ones. Sometimes the other guy just beats you, and you have to accept that, tip your hat, and win the next time.”—President Obama

If you haven’t seen these respectful, gracious quotes, all typical of the comments of past candidates and their staff after debate performances that were seen as falling short of their opponents’, there’s a reason. Nobody on the Democratic side, including Obama himself, nor most of the media pundits except those who would be fairly classified as conservative, have been willing to give Mitt Romney any recognition for a well planned, well-executed, professional and compelling debate. “What happened?” Diane Sawyer asked the President. “I had a bad night,” he replied. Romney, you see, had nothing to do with it. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Conspiracy Theories and the Disrespect Follies

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments

One of the problems with the hateful, vicious, hyper-partisan politics that now grips the nation is that its most severe sufferers, inevitably the so-called “bases” of the two political parties and their most vocal advocates, end up making themselves look like fools because of it. Their fervor drives out rationality, and by refusing to assign decent and reasonable levels of  respect to their political opponents, they devalue their own credibility, sometimes to the vanishing point. They may not really be fools (though some of them are), but in a real sense, they have been driven insane…by hate, by lack of proportion, and a respect deficit that banishes both fairness and responsible conduct.

Crazy Accusation A: Republicans/Conservatives… Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: President Obama and Mitt Romney

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Congratulations to President Obama and Mitt Romney for being respectful, civil, dignified, good-natured, articulate and presidential in tonight’s debate.

I was proud of both of them.

Thanks. We needed that.

Look! Now Obama Has a Suck-Up Speech To Explain…

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The Daily Caller found a previously uncirculated Barack Obama speech from 2007, and the conservative media has been giving it the “47%” treatment. No wonder. The speech is uncommonly ugly, with the future President channeling Rev. Wright and Kanye West, encouraging black anger and racial hate. Needless to say, he does not sound like a leader of “all the people” here.

I am on record as believing that such partisan audience speeches should be taken for what they are, and thus with several grains of salt, but never mind: the standard, a different one, has already been decreed by the mainstream news media, which treated Mitt Romney’s unscripted remarks about the government-dependent “47%” as more significant than the collapse of Obama’s foreign policy, the negligent death of our Ambassador, and a protracted White House cover-up of a terrorist attack. If they want to aspire to any fairness and even-handedness at all, it should devote a similar amount of attention and outrage to Obama’s remarks to black clergy, which were, in my view, far worse, because they were designed to exploit racial fears and divisiveness. They are also, like Romney’s comments, misleading and unfair.

I could argue that it is more reasonable to focus on Obama’s speech, because it was made in public, and presumably was fair game for criticism at the time. Why didn’t the reporters who witnessed it raise any alarms then? Wouldn’t such a racially divisive speech during the campaign (for the nomination) be at least as newsworthy in 2008 as the “47%” line by Romney 2012? Of course not—because the media was trying to elect Obama then, and it is trying to defeat Romney now.

Don’t be silly. Continue reading →