My cousin linked me Thomas Friedman’s newest column, which starts off with Friedman writing about how the current political atmosphere reminds him of Israel in 1995, right before Rabin was assassinated:
Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.
What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.
I was five when Rabin was assassinated, so I can’t really make that comparison for myself. I can compare it to the Bush Administration, though.
Friedman makes a big deal about how the Secret Service is investigating a Facebook poll that merely asked if Obama should be killed. Did he ever write an article about the Secret Service investigating the maker of this game, which actually lets you kill Bush? Did he ever worry that the people who uploaded these “Kill Bush” T-Shirt designs would actually follow through? As Michelle Malkin pointed out in August, the mainstream media’s coverage of the anti-Obama rallies demonstrates an amazing amount of selective memory: these rallies still aren’t as bad as the anti-Bush rallies. Zombie does a rather fantastic job both of explaining this and providing all sorts of photographic evidence.
Could someone try to kill Obama? There’s always a chance, just as there was a chance someone would take a shot at Bush. Friedman seems to believe that when people who agree with him say crazy things, they don’t mean them, but anyone right of center who criticizes or protests against Obama is helping generate an atmosphere that could lead to assassination. What an absurd double standard.
Friedman then goes on to state his belief that Clinton’s presidency was delegitimized by Whitewater and George W. Bush’s presidency was delegitimized by the Florida recount. Apparently, he’s concerned that the same thing is now happening to Obama:
Mr. Obama is now having his legitimacy attacked by a concerted campaign from the right fringe. They are using everything from smears that he is a closet “socialist,” to calling him a “liar” in the middle of a joint session of Congress, to fabricating doubts about his birth in America and whether he is even a citizen. And these attacks are not just coming from the fringe. Now they come from Lou Dobbs on CNN and from members of the House of Representatives.
Again, hack away at the man’s policies and even his character all you want. I know politics is a tough business. But if we destroy the legitimacy of another president, if we make it impossible for him to lead us, we will be in serious trouble. We can’t go 24 years without a legitimate president — not without being swamped by the problems that we will end up postponing because we can’t address them rationally.
I can’t speak to the political climate before the Bush presidency, but I would agree that the decade or so since I started becoming politically aware has seemed rather vitriolic, with Bush being the object of hate for most of that time. I also agree with Friedman on a point that he may or may not be making: We should show a lot of respect for the office of the president, and once a president is sworn in, it’s time to accept that he is the new president and show the appropriate respect. This applies both to the Flordia recount diehards and the Birthers.
But beyond that point, Friedman manages to get just about everything wrong. He says that you’re allowed to “hack away at the man’s policies and even his character,” but he also suggests that calling Obama a socialist is an attempt to delegitimize him and should therefore be out of bounds. He implies that on the left, only fringe characters engage in crude political dialogue, while on the right, mainstream politicians do so. This is only true if you label the Democrat’s 2004 nominee for president a fringe figure, as demonstrated by this 2006 exchange with Bill Maher:
Maher: You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.
Kerry: Or, I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.
Furthermore, the complaint about Lou Dobbs (who aired a segment on the Birthers, and in doing so did the Democrats a huge favor by making the far right look idiotic) once again reveals an absurd double standard. At least Dobbs isn’t deliberately airing falsefied, er, “fake but accurate” documents about the president, as Dan Rather did in 2004.
(As a side note, I’m puzzled that Friedman says we can’t go 24 years without a legitimate president. Where did that 24 number come from? Is he a) arguing against reelecting Obama, b) assuming Obama will be reelected and arguing that the right needs to start cooperating, or c) showing an inability to perform simple arithmetic?)
Friedman closes with, “We can’t change this overnight, but what we can change, and must change, is people crossing the line between criticizing the president and tacitly encouraging the unthinkable and the unforgivable.”
I’ll agree with that, but in exchange, he should agree with my closing statement:
Thomas Friedman, you’re an idiot.
Max Rosett is a regular contributor to The D.C. Writeup.
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