President Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber

 of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 27, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Les Payne

February 4, 2009

Staring down Conservatives of both branches of government last week, President Obama confronted the steel teeth of powerful forces that, at bottom, consider him something of a squatter in the Oval Office that for 232 years had been reserved for white men only.

The Republicans at that House Caucus retreat in Baltimore, and the Supreme Court on the front row at the State of the Union Address gazed upon the first black president as if he had destabilized the group’s psyche about their entitlements. Obama’s ensuing call for a bi-partisan approach to solving the catastrophic problems facing the nation fell on the icy wasteland that is the heart of this brazen opposition.

It should be clear even to President Obama by now that this entrenched, government opposition—who know they’re backed by the 55-percent, white McCain-Palin majority that voted against him—will settle for nothing less than the kow-tow, or failing that, denying Obama re-election in hopes of reclaiming what they misguidedly consider their entitlement by dint of birthright.

This Black History Month calls for a frank assessment not simply of the challenges the first African-American president faces, but also an examination of the larger possibilities for those who dared elect him. Can they create a true Omni-America where for the first time democracy can be made to ensure “liberty and justice for all?”

There is a strong tendency to deny race as a key factor in such high matters of government; however, every other conclusion about the Obama encounters, misses the central point of the lathered-up GOP House members going bare-knuckles with a sitting U.S. president before TV cameras.

And most significantly, the U.S. Supreme Court has unleashed unlimited corporate spending as insurance against, among other things, a repeat at the polls of the will of the white majority getting over-ridden by a coalition from the un-moneyed classes. 

As the world celebrated Obama’s inauguration last January, little was made of any violation of white privilege, except in e-mail blog traffic and on such media dung-heaps as Rush-Beck-O’Reilly and the Don Imus shows.

Polite public discourse cloaks this Obama race thing in euphemistic denial language about the articulate president and his sassy wife with the toned, over-exposed arms, who have replaced a foreign bust of Winston Churchill with a domestic one of Martin Luther King, Jr., and together with her bouncy two daughters and their black dog, Michelle has raised an outback garden without collard greens, imagine that, and managed to add a touch of well, sass, to the White House.

Let us now ponder those “unprecedented” challenges to Obama’s very authority aired on television last week; that up-close slap from Congress and the long-term maneuver from the Supreme Court.

As a poster child for the GOP opposition, one needs look no further than Rep. Marsha Blackburn questioning the president at the Caucus retreat. Peering over rimless spectacles, her nasty eyes brimming with contempt, the bleached Tennessee 

Congresswoman proposed “starting anew” under GOP guidance and this, despite the ‘08

elections following eight disastrous years of Republican dominance.

Then there was the smug Tom Price, of Georgia, and the buttoned-down Jeb Hensarling, of Texas, whose questioning style approximated that of Count Dracula turning on Abraham Van Helsing. The shadowy Hensarling finally moved even the mild-mannered Obama to get out his hammer and stake.

“You’re making a whole bunch of assertions, half of which I disagree with,” the president cautioned the mop-haired Texan mid-rant. Flagging his frightful budget assertions to a halt, Obama declared them “factually not true and you know it’s not true.” [Fact-checkers say Obama outscored Hensarling on the accuracy card.]

The Washington Post reported that Obama’s confrontation with the Conservatives was a “muscular defense of his first year in office in the most hostile of territories.” The unique sentiments driving this historic hostility, however, have been generally misread by the overall media, a fact that does not bode well for the next three years.

Dramatic hostility was on display earlier when Justice Samuel Alito mouthed his dismissive, “not true” as the president delivered his State of the Union Address to the nation, a few feet away.

Justice Alito’s put-down was in response to the president’s bold, and some say ill-timed criticism of the court’s decision granting corporations the “free speech” rights of citizens that allow them to make unlimited contributions to influence politicians and national elections.

It was perhaps the Constitutional law professor, if not the first black president, in Obama that made him decide to not let pass uncommented upon, this stark Supreme Court intrusion into the Congressional responsibility for campaign electioneering.

“The Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests - including foreign corporations - to spend without limit in our elections," Obama said in his Union Address. "Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America 's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that's why I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill to correct some of these problems."

Coming on the heels of the “08 presidential election, the hasty decision in “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” is another example of this Conservative, white male court (and let’s not split hairs over the 5-4 majority including the lily black Clarence Thomas) crossing the lines of its judicial authority. The decision also bears tell-tale signs that the court is vesting this unheard of political clout in Corporate America, another bastion of white male power, to curtail such democratic voting expressions as the last one that issued up the first black president—over the objection of a wide, 55-43, national, white majority.

The Omni-American voters who got Obama elected consisted of African-Americans, a majority of young and highly-educated whites, some two-thirds of Hispanic and pluralities of every other irregular voting bloc on the register.

While this constituency was able to elect Obama, it is proving no match during the governing process for the awesome, entrenched economic power wielded by the juggernaut fronted by the GOP. This beast bared its steel teeth at that GOP Retreat last week, and it heckled from the front row at the State of the Union Address. Further, the Supreme Court has now entrenched corporate henchmen to adjust the levers of political access and to safeguard their shared legacy of presumed group entitlements.

President Obama has indeed waltzed into a death-dance with powerful forces bent on entrenching for the foreseeable: the rule of the moneyed few over the will of the striving many.

So goes the struggle for democracy.