http://townhall.com/video/morgan-freeman-americas-first-black-president-hasnt-arisen-yet
| Freeman Rethinking Obama |
Morgan Freeman is backpedaling as fast as he can from the Hope and Change President.
According to the co-star of "The Shawshank Redemption" and the academy award winner from "Million Dollar Baby", the nation has yet to see a black president. He is not the first, but certainly a prominent voice, to remind everyone that President Barack Obama is a "mutt," and even the President humorously acknowledged his diverse heritage.
In this country, the background of an individual never meant that anyone had to stay in the back or lie on the ground. No matter where a man was coming from, a free society based on the rule of law, not the arbitration of nobility and royalty, afforded to any individual to survive and thrive in this county.
Without a doubt, President Barack Obama is not exception. Yet not for the color of his skin, but for the color of his policies and the paucity of his character is this country suffering through the fourth year of an extremely slow recovery
Was it not three years ago when Democratic strategist Donna Brazile crowed on ABC's "This Week" that for the first time in American history an "African" would be inaugurated President?
| "White President" Obama |
I think a growing number of Americans, black and every other color, are realizing that President Obama is very much the "White Man's" President, an elite and effete Chicago liberal who rode into office on a populist wave of frustrated, white, working-class euphoria.
It was the "white" vote that got him elected, it was the "white" voting "bloc" (if there is such a fatuous construction) that still brings the majority vote to every successive chief executive.
The African American vote has sunk into the Democratic camp since the New Deal, and even more so since the "Great Society" of Lyndon Johnson, yet policy experts and independent intellects have outlined and argued over and over that welfare, handouts, accommodation, quotas, and affirmative action have done more harm than good for the class or the targeted ethnic group.
The anti-Bush, anti-bank, and anti-bailout crowd, predominantly white and working class, gave the Presidency to a junior senator, ranked 99th in the US Senate, sleeping away in the lowest seat in the Veterans Affairs Committee. An amateur from the moment he haltingly took the oath of office, Obama has disdained the wisdom of his elders, riding on the arrogance self-congratulation of media snobs and Beltway cheerleaders, all of whom wanted to be swept up in the drama of sending the first "Black", really black, president to the White House.
Have we forgotten all the ranting and raving about the Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, a "New" Democrat who understood the power of the center, who ushered in sweeping welfare reform and balanced budgets with the help of a demanding Republican Congress?
By that calculation, the first "black" president did far more for African Americans than the first "real black" president, who according to Morgan Freeman, is not really black.
| Obama: "A Different Shade of Red" |
Yet Morgan Freeman's opinion on anything political really commands little respect. A movie star can debate and describe the values and impact of the silver screen; as for the red and blue conflicts which shape our political discourse, Mr. Freeman is color blind, and sadly so.
I would also submit that contrary to the black-white tirade, which I had presumed would be gone by now in our post-racial politics, President Obama is the first "red" president. I am not referring to Native American heritage, but rather the explosion of public debt and deficits which are eating this country from the inside out like an aggressive cancer.
Despite the chronic recriminations of the liberal establishment toward the Big Government conservatism of George W. Bush — yes, two wars, Medicare expansions, tax cuts — President Obama has the dubious distinction of trillion dollar deficits for every year of his term in office, followed by $5 trillion, a 50% increase, to the national debt.
President Obama is responsible for the failed leadership in which he refused to meet with the Bowles-Simpson caucus, to implement their suggest reforms, and even ignoring the bipartisan commission following the near-default of the national debt in the summer of 2011.
President Obama is letting the red ink flow, and has demonstrated not capacity or concern to stop it. Indeed, Obama is the first "red" president, red as in "red ink" for debts, for financial dysfunction, for repudiation of the public trust.
And he may also be "red" as in embarrassed for being the second Democratic President in thirty years to be unseated after one term in office.