President Obama Should Say Yes to the NAACP Convention

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

An Obama will again address the NAACP’s annual convention starting July 9 in Kansas City. It just won’t be President Obama. First Lady Michelle Obama will give a talk, and it’s not really billed as a key note talk, more an informal workshop type discussion on her signature issue, the campaign against childhood obesity. She’s not listed in the confab’s 10 page schedule of speakers, panels and workshops.
There are two thoughts about the president’s no show at the convention. One he’s adhering to his avowed, cautious, goal of doing and saying nothing that belies his race neutral stance as the president of all the people. An appearance or a message to the convention wouldn’t violate that. He appeared last year and there was no issue. And every Democratic and GOP president including Reagan and W. Bush has either spoke to the convention or delivered a message to the convention since there’s been an NAACP convention. With the exception of Bush, and only because he boycotted the convention for the first six years of his White House tenure, presidential addresses raise no eyebrows. The other thought is that Obama fears that an appearance before a racial advocacy group like the NAACP will give more ammunition to the Obama loathers, Palin and tea party activists. This is even less plausible. A no-show at the NAACP convention won’t do anything to stop their non-stop pound of his agenda and him. And he almost certainly knows that.

Obama did not give an official reason why he’s skipping the convention. But one can fill in the surface blank. His plate groans with Afghanistan funding and logistic problems, putting the finishing touches on the financial reform bill, the BP spill, and the looming fight over energy reform bill, stalled jobless funding bills, and the never ending press of requests to promote Democratic candidates. These are all plausible reasons for skipping the convention. But there are problems with his no show. He’ll be in Kansas City the day before the start of the convention to attend a fundraiser for Democratic Senate hopeful Robin Carnahan; so isn’t a schedule tweak possible? If not, a video message from Obama to the convention is certainly more than doable. An appearance or a message from him is the politically expedient, the practical and just simply the right thing to do.

The black vote has been the Democrats' trump card in every election for the past half century, win or lose. If black voters had not turned the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries into a virtual holy crusade for Obama, and if Obama had not openly in the South Carolina primary and subtly in primaries thereafter stoked the black vote, he could easily have been just another failed Democratic presidential candidate. The Through its voter education, vote awareness, and get out the vote campaigns, the NAACP played a colossal role in galvanizing and boosting the numbers of black voters, nearly all votes for Obama.

This is not old history. The 2010 mid-term elections are fast approaching. Political analysts, pundits, and even Democratic consultants are near unanimous that the Democrats will lose seats in Congress to Republicans. The only real question is how bad the political hemorrhaging will be. A solid and united GOP, and droves of independents who are disillusioned, disgusted and even hostile toward Obama, should make the black vote loom even bigger in Obama's calculus. There's little margin of error with this vote. He needs a reasonable facsimile of the November 2008 black vote outpour to save as many Democratic seats as possible, and serve as a partial shield against the withering non-stop assault from the GOP leaders, tea party activists, Palin, and Limbaugh on his agenda and his person.

It’s the right thing to do. For the past half century, the NAACP has fought tough battles in the courts and the streets for voting rights, affirmative action, school integration and an end to housing and job discrimination. The group still accurately captures the mood of fear and hostility the majority of blacks feel toward the Republicans, and the chronic Obama bashers. Whether Obama appears, sends a message, or simply comes and quickly departs Kansas City the day before the convention, the NAACP will still exhort, implore, and cajole blacks to vote, which again means votes for Democrats. The aim is to insure maximum support for Obama’s agenda and to do damage control against GOP attacks.

Obama needs the NAACP and the NAACP needs Obama. He’s still their best hope to hold the line against the GOP assault on job, education and health care spending and programs, as well as the fight for immigration reform, and the always crucial Supreme Court appointments. These are bread and butter issues and concerns for Obama and the NAACP. President Obama should say yes to the NAACP convention.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

Sniffing Political Blood in the Oil Spill

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

The instant the BP ooze hit the Gulf’s surface the sniff of political blood was steady and strong. Virtually every reputable scientist, engineer, and technician made the point that given the complexity of the spill, the technical challenges, and constraints on the regulatory power of government’s agencies, the Obama administration has done everything it could to staunch the spill. But the cry still is: Blame Obama for it.

The GOP got its first return on the hit attack on Obama for the spill with a USA/Gallup poll. A majority of Americans say that Obama did not do and say enough about the spill. An even bigger number finger point the government for inaction. This isn’t much of a consolation. Thanks to the drumbeat attack from the GOP, the Ron and Rand Pauls, tea party activists, shrill rightside bloggers, talk jocks and columnists, in much of the public’s mind the government and Obama are one and the same villains. The drumbeat attack on Obama for the spill has been so effective that some top Democrats who should know better buy into it. Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell loudly proclaimed that if Bill Clinton were president he would have been in Gulf water in a wetsuit. Rendell didn’t explain how Clinton in a wetsuit could cap a runaway well 5000 feet down. But that’s the kind of mindless idiocy that the bash Obama for BP has dredged up.

The worst part is that a big chunk of the press has beaten the blame Obama for the spill drum. The issue is not what Obama or the government could or couldn’t do, but how to wound Obama. The GOP angles for three big political payoffs in the political blood lust. Stick just enough of the oil tar on Obama to grab a few more seats in the house and senate in November. With many political contests rated horse races, a natural disaster can be massaged, exploited, and twisted to squeeze the maximum political benefit out of it, at least that’s the hope.

Obama’s energy plan, cap and trade, and climate control is also the target. Cripple them, or kill them, and then the GOP can wave the victory flag and claim that it rescued alleged flawed, business and energy industry unfriendly plans from being hoisted on Americans. A cynical dividend from this is that Obama embraced ramped up offshore drilling before the BP spill. The GOP’s mantra was drill, baby, drill. It relentlessly carried oil industry’s bucket for it and waged a two decade war against environmentalists to open up Alaska, and the coastal waterways, for drilling. Another cynical dividend is that the GOP gets to knock Obama for supposed lax regulation and oversight of the oil industry, the very things that it always regards as a plague on big business.

The GOP will paint Obama as weak, ineffectual, and clueless in the face of a major crisis. During campaign 2008, Republican presidential foe John McCain and mate Sarah Palin pounded him as an untested, greenhorn novice on terrorism and foreign policy. When the first major crisis hit, supposedly he’d come unglued. The crisis McCain and company had in mind was a major terrorist strike on US soil. That hasn’t happened. But BP did, and it’s as good a substitute as any for the GOP to ream Obama as inexperienced and frozen in place when it comes to taking decisive action to confront a crisis. It wasted no time in trying to plant the vision in the public mind of a comatose Obama reacting the way Bush did to Katrina. The vision hasn’t stuck mostly because the comparison is bogus, and the public hasn’t bought it.

The BP spill, though, does pose a grave political danger to Obama. The longer it takes to fully cap the well, the door stays wide open for the GOP to rivet public attention on the damage, spin it as the greatest environmental disaster in American history, and stoke public anger at Obama and the government’s supposed ineptitude. The Bush administration was hopelessly crippled after its gigantic Katrina bauble. The GOP banks the same thing will happen again and that voters will misconnect the political dots and punish incumbents in November for the perceived weakness or incompetence of the administration in power in dealing with a horrific disaster. In this case, the administration is Obama’s and the incumbents targeted are Democrats. More than a few Democrats have taken the cue, and remained stone silent on the crisis.

Obama has acted diligently, responsibly and professionally in dealing with an unexpected crisis that would have caught any administration off guard. A significant number of Americans understand this and even those critical of Obama for his handling of the spill still tag BP as the real bad guy. Still, no matter how well managed, disasters carry political risks, the BP spill is no different. The GOP will do everything it can to tag it as Obama’s disaster.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press).
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson