For Obama, Time For Rhetoric Has Ended.

“You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can not fool all the people all of the time.”
- Abraham Lincoln

At first, I was a bit confused about Barack Obama’s curious devotion to all things “Abraham Lincoln.” But it now appears that Team Obama, despite its own best efforts, constitutes living proof of one of Abe Lincoln’s best known quotes. They just don’t seem to be able to "fool” as many people today as they used to. Now, it’s time for the whole team–including the President himself – to downplay the constant flow of rhetoric and to start “moving the needle” – for the country as a whole, and for black folks, specifically.

Throughout the general election campaign, and even during the first several months of his new administration, it was a rare week that there wasn’t a connection being made between Mr. Obama, the 44th president, and “Honest Abe,” the 16th, by members of the media, or by the new president, himself.

For me, however, the comparisons between Lincoln and Obama have become crystal clear the longer Obama has been in the White House, and the more I read through some of Mr. Lincoln’s less-publicized, less-sanitized, remarks.

We have to start, of course, with just how confused African Americans have been about both men, and how loyal and devoted we’ve been to each, even though, the black community has apparently been little more than a political expedience for both.

Over a 70-year period beginning with the Emancipation Proclamation and until the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt and his black-inclusive New Deal, in 1933, African Americans admired no national political figure more than Lincoln and supported no political party more fiercely than they did Lincoln’s Republican Party. In those days, those labeled as “Toms” in the black community were Democrats, not Republicans.

Clearly, blacks never had the benefit of knowing the “total Abraham Lincoln,” the one who said, in his fourth debate with Stephen A. Douglas, in Charleston, Illinois, in September 18, 1858: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

Remind me, what part of all of that does Barack Obama find most inspirational?

Despite the accuracy of those quotes, the vast majority of black people still believe, to this day, that Mr. Obama’s role model, “The Great Emancipator,” was firmly supportive of black aspirations.

Most of them also probably don’t know that Lincoln was a leading member of the American Colonization Society, whose goal it was to ensure that America’s black slaves, should they ever eventually obtain their freedom, not be allowed to remain in the United States, or have the rights available to white Americans.

It was Honest Abe, himself, who, said: “I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization.” He also said, “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves and send them to Liberia – to their own native land.”

In speaking directly to a delegation of blacks on the same subject, President Lincoln said: “But for your race among us, there would not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other.”

He, then, according to David Sztybel, Ph.D., urged the blacks in the audience to move to a colony in Central America “where they can mine coal.”

What in the world will it ever take for African Americans, or for the current president, himself, to finally gain a more accurate understanding of just who Abraham Lincoln really was?

In the same way, President Obama seems to be every bit as ambivalent toward domestic blacks and African people, even as we continue to shower him with our unqualified political support.

At the same time that Obama continues to stress that he does not recognize the existence of a “black America” or a “white America,” or the need to have government programs to address black-specific disparities, we and our black neighbors continue to give the President approval ratings in the high-80's. We do that despite the fact that the rest of the country and, indeed, the rest of the world, is beginning to hold him significantly more accountable for promises he’s made and broken, and for the lack of effectiveness of his economic and fiscal policies.

In fact, many pundits have been referring to July and August 2009 as the two worst months of media coverage that Barack Obama has ever experienced. Not surprisingly, therefore, the most recent Rasmussen Poll disclosed that, in August, the president’s total approval rating fell below 50 percent for the first time since he assumed office. It also revealed that only 6 percent of investors rate the economy “good” or “excellent” and 52 percent rate it “poor,” the same level as 12 months ago, when George W. Bush was president. As to acceptance of the president’s healthcare proposals, support, which had jumped by 6 points to 51 percent immediately following the president’s highly publicized speech before Congress, has subsequently fallen again to pre-speech levels, at 45 percent. Recently, Rasmussen also found that only 22 percent of likely voters believe that conditions in Afghanistan will be better in six months and that 60 percent believe the U.S. is “on the wrong track” under President Obama’s leadership.

What should be even more disturbing to the President’s ‘handlers’ is the hint, in a poll taken recently in the Greater Atlanta area, that Obama’s “disapproval rate” among blacks has grown to 35 percent. Clearly, if black folks start to step away from the president, he’s in serious danger of having his overall approval ratings dip below 40 percent. That would bring about the equivalent of “political open season” on the new, formerly invincible commander-in-chief.

While we’re on the subject of growing disappointment with a president who hasn’t shown African Americans much “love,” anyway, I can’t resist mentioning a commentary I just read in New African Magazine by Cameron Duodu, a native Ghanaian journalist, who the magazine now describes as a “hugely disappointed fan” of Obama’s.

In providing “chapter and verse” about his deep disillusionment after hearing Obama’s recent, condescending, “typical-Western Power” speech to the Ghanaian Parliament members, Duodu mentioned something that I had not previously comprehended: that the words being sung so mellifluously and traditionally by the Ghanaian women to Barack Obama as he left the grounds of the Accra Conference Center were: “Obama, do something before you go.” As Duodu pointed out, the women meant: “He should do something worthy for Africa and for the world, before his presidency ends.”

They were imploring him to “man up,” to have the courage to do something significant about the abusive, slavery-like economic relationship that continues to exist between the U.S. and African nations, to help to re-educate Western European and other G-8 member nations and to earn, finally, the adulation that Africans began to bestow upon him during his campaign and immediately following his election.

I hope the president heard what the Ghanaian women were so appropriately requesting, and that he will find it in his heart to do similar, much-needed things for black people right here in the United States, who also expected so much from him.

No matter how slow he’s been to get the message, it’s not too late.

As Obama’s hero, Abraham Lincoln, himself, once said: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”




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