Bill Press - The Obama Hate Machine: The Lies, Distortions, and Personal Attacks on the President---and Who Is Behind Them

To Milo, Prairie, Django, Willow, and Silas.

What joy!

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It may seem like a lonely undertaking, but its not. Every nonfiction book is a collaborative effort that builds and grows on the work of those who have plowed the same ground before.

To that end, I thank especially my good friends at ThinkProgress, the communications arm of the Center for American Progress. Editor-in-Chief Faiz Shakir has built the Web site into one of the countrys most dependable sources of information on public policy. And, simply by reporting the facts of their vast political contributions, indefatigable researcher Lee Fang has made life hell for the Koch Brothersto which exercise I am only too happy to add my contribution.

As they did with my last book, David Brock and his amazing crew at Media Matters helped enormously, too. In addition to being a fierce media watchdog, they pump out a steady, dependable flow of research for those of us in talk radio.

Im proud again to publish with the imprint of Thomas Dunne Books. A special word of thanks to Tom Dunne for his personal inspiration, insights, and additions. Nobody loves or knows politics better. Its a joy to work with Toms associates Rob Kirkpatrick, Margaret Smith, Joe Rinaldi, Nadea Mina, and other professionals at St. Martins Press.

My work is made easier every day by the outstanding assistance of producers Peter Ogburn and Dan Henning and the support of colleagues Eric Burns, Karl Frisch, and David Shuster.

For this, our sixth book together, thanks most of all to researcher Kevin Murphy and agent and friend Ron Goldfarb. You could not ask for more committed partners and collaborators.

And, as always, a special word of thanks to Carol.

INTRODUCTION

The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL , OCTOBER 24, 2010

A NEW BEGINNING

Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009. For those who traveled to the nations capital, as well as for those who watched at home, its a day well never forget. Washington had never seen a crowd so big or so happy.

An estimated 1.8 million people crowded in front of the United States Capitol to witness the swearing-in of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States. The mass of humanity stretched from the western steps of the Capitol all the way to the Washington Monument, a mile and a half away.

It was a bitterly cold morning, but nobody seemed to mind. There were smiles everywhere. People greeted total strangers with hugs and high fives. Police officers and National Guard troops, out in record numbers, got in the spirit of the occasion. They smiled and posed for photographs with Obama supporters. To help pass the time before the ceremony began, crowds broke out chanting Yes, we can and Fired up, ready to go!the signature slogans of the Obama presidential campaign.

Indeed, there was magic in the air. For the first time, people sensed the reality of the hope and change they had believed in and enthusiastically voted for. And they understood they were participating in a very special event: not only the inauguration of a new president but a young president, with a young familyand, most significantly, 143 years after the end of slavery, Americas first African-American president. Everybody knew they were watching history being made.

But what few, if any, in that huge crowd on the Mall realized was that, at that very hour, a different kind of history was also being madeand not so far away: in the headquarters of the Republican National Committee, just south of the Mall; in the offices of K Street lobbyists, just a few blocks north; and in the corridors of the Capitol building itself.

Even while Barack Obama was taking the oath of office, conservative political operatives were busy plotting how to bring down this new young president. They embarked on a twofold agenda: not only to cause his entire political agenda to fail but also to destroy him personally. To that end, they unleashed a barrage of personal attacks and a litany of hate uglier than those directed against any other president in modern times.

CHANGING THE TONE

There is nothing wrong or unusual about pursuing a different political agenda. That is, after all, the job of the opposition party: to oppose.

Similarly, no president should be spared criticism. No president has. But even if Barack Obama is not the first, nor the last, president to face such criticism, the personal attacks directed against him, for whatever reason, have been more relentless and uglier than those against any other president in our lifetime, certainly any president since Abraham Lincoln.

It began during the presidential campaign of 2007 and 2008. It intensified once he was in the Oval Office. And it only continues to accelerate the closer we get to November 2012. In the past, the loyal opposition, whether led by Democrats or Republicans, was usually conducted as a constructive, not a destructive, response. With regard to any serious problem facing the nation, both sides might have come up with different ideas on how to fix it, but they still agreed there was a problem that needed fixing. They both had the same goal, just different ways of getting there.

In order to balance the budget, for example, Democrats usually favored a combination of taxes and spending cuts; Republicans insisted on spending cuts alone. On immigration, most Democrats wanted to secure the border, while at the same time providing some path to citizenship for millions of immigrant families settled in this country for a long time; many Republicans simply wanted to seal the border and send anyone here illegally back home. Everybody understands that, in such a system, neither side gets everything it wants. Both parties have to give a little, or compromise. Slowly, albeit imperfectly, progress is made.

Thats how government works. Or rather, thats how government used to work. This was true no matter who was in the White House, and no matter whether a Democrat or Republican was majority leader of the Senate at the time: Bob Dole, George Mitchell, Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, or Trent Lott. After each election, winners and losers sat down together, decided on the agenda for the next session of Congress, and got down to work, solving problems.

Yes, thats how it used to be. Not always, of course. Newt Gingrich, certainly no Howard Baker kind of Republican, adopted a take-no-prisoners approach to politics. And under his direction, Republicans started road testing a new, more virulent form of opposition: trying to break the presidentat that time, William Jefferson Clintonpersonally. They accused him of dubious crimes (Whitewater) and even outright murder (Vince Foster), shutting down the government if they could not have their way, plunging the United States into an impeachment crisis, and forcing us all to sort through Clintons dirty laundry once they had latched onto a sex scandalevidence of which, alas, was only too easy to find in Monica Lewinskys closet.

But however badly behaved the opposition was under Clintonand lets remember, they were badthings got even worse for President Obama. Never before in U.S. history had so many on the Right insinuated that the president was not even an American, or that he was a socialist, a fascist, a tyrant, or some combination of all three. Never before had so many tried to claim the president was illegitimate. Perhaps this was because they disagreed with him. Perhaps it was because he was so popular and successful. Or, perhaps, it was just because he was black.

From the very beginning of the Obama administration, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and the then House minority leader, John Boehner, made it clear they had a different agenda. Instead of working together on any issue, they would automatically oppose anything President Obama or congressional Democrats put forwardeven if it happened to be legislation identical to proposals previously submitted to Congress by President George W. Bush, which they had enthusiastically supported.