Obama’s Gates Trainwreck

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


The stock basketball one liner came to mind when I heard President Obama utter his now infamous “acting stupid” line referring to the cuffing of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The star player takes a wild shot and the livid coach screams “no,” “no” “no” and then when the improbable happens and the ball swishes through the net, the coach’s livid “no,” “no,” “no” instantly becomes a fist in the air shaking “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”
My response was the same only in reverse. I said an instant and visceral fist shaking yes, yes, yes to Obama’s Gates quip. After all, the president spoke boldly and unhesitatingly on the always contentious, divisive and painful issue of racial profiling. But then just as quickly I said “no,” “no,” “no.” No, not because I didn’t think it was the right thing to do, and no not because I didn’t think he didn’t have the right to give an opinion, and it was just that an opinion on a touchy issue.

All presidents weigh in with their personal views, opinions, and thoughts, no matter how ill informed, at unscripted White House press conferences, and in countless network TV interviews on every subject under the sun. And certainly I didn’t say no because Obama shouldn’t toss racial matters and racial profiling out on the nation’s table. No apology necessary for that. The no, was because I knew that Obama would take a monster hit for piping up on a racial case that’s a ticking time bomb that could explode in his face. President’s can and do recover from ill chosen words on emotion charged issues.
In this case, though, his words came at the worst possible time; a time when the president needs to squeeze and squeeze hard every ounce of the considerable personal and political capital that he’s painstakingly built up over the past few months to get an ever growing number of push back Democrats, dogged obstructionist Republicans, and the recalcitrant powerhouse trio of insurers, medical professionals, and pharmaceuticals who flatly oppose or are waffling on Obama’s public option component of health care reform. This is the centerpiece of the reform package, without it reform is a meaningless exercise in political gamesmanship.

Two new presidential approval polls from Rasmussen and Zogby, confirmed my “no,” “no,” “no” shout. The Rasmussen is an absolute number’s nightmare for Obama. His disapproval rating has soared to nearly 40 percent among voters. Those that strongly approve of his performance sunk to 29 percent. That wasn’t the worst of the bad news. A bare 25 percent of voters thought his answer was good. More than 60 sixty percent thought it was fair or lousy. Even more ominous was the voter breakdown. The crack in Obama’s hitherto impregnable black vote support was glaring. Nearly 30 percent of black voters broke ranks with Obama on his Gates’ answer.
Among Obama’s two other huge breakthrough groups, independents, and young voters, the blowback was even more disastrous. Nearly 70 percent of Independents and nearly 50 percent of young persons rated his answer “fair” or “poor.”

This is just the opening that the usual suspect Obama foes need to pound the president, and by extension his policies on health care, the stimulus, on foreign policy overtures. All are suddenly back in play and in question as set hit pieces for the Obama mashers; but especially health care reform. The issue is no longer the standard knock that it is too costly and a gross case of too much government interference in health care. Obama is now anti-police and an out of the closet race inflamer whose judgment can’t and shouldn’t be trusted on the crucial issue of health care reform.
The more charitable don’t go that far, but instead firmly declare that the presidential honeymoon is officially over. The only good news is that Obama’s popularity outside the U.S. is still off the charts. But foreigners can’t vote for or elect the congresspersons and senators who make and decide major policy decisions, health care reform being front and center the most pressing.
Even Obama’s still high personal popularity ratings don’t mean much. Popular ratings are just that, over-hyped numbers that measure a president's likeability, not his leadership effectiveness.

The true test for a president and how the public rates him is the quality of his leadership. A foreign crisis, a souring economy, out of control partisan battles with Congress, fights with major labor and industry groups, and prolonged military adventures are the things that inflict mortal wounds on presidents. The same is true for real or perceived gaffes, slips, and shoot from the lip comments.
President Obama spoke from the heart and said would needed to be said about the thorny issue of racial profiling. Again, no apology needed for that. He just said it in the wrong case and at the wrong time. Gates was the trainwreck waiting to happen, in other words, “no,” “no,” “no.”

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Blacks and Hispanics Biggest Losers if Real Health Care Reform Flops

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

If President Obama’s drive for some form of universal health care falters the biggest losers by far will be African-Americans and Hispanics. According to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, blacks and Hispanics make up nearly half of the estimated 50 million Americans who have no health care insurance. But the danger signs for reform are real. A Washington Post/ABC News poll found that public support for Obama’s plan is badly fraying. This is no surprise.
The instant that Obama announced he would make health care reform his defining issue the health care reform opponents kicked their attack into high gear. The two hit points are that it’s too costly and too intrusive; meaning that it will snatch from Americans their right to choose their own doctors and health plans and dump health care into the alleged slipshod, inefficient hands of government bureaucrats. The real fear of private insurers, pharmaceuticals, and major medical practitioners is that they’ll have to treat millions of uninsured, profit losing, health challenged blacks and Hispanics.
The huge racial disparity in the number of uninsured has been a sticking point for every Democratic president since Harry Truman proposed the first national health care plan in the late 1940s. The numbers of blacks and Hispanics without a prayer of obtaining health care at any price has always been wildly disproportionate to that of whites, even poor whites. It has steadily gotten worse over the years.

The legions of black and Hispanic uninsured are far more likely than the one in four whites who are uninsured to experience problems getting treatment at a hospital or clinic. This has devastating health and public policy consequences. A study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies found that they are far more likely than whites to suffer higher rates of catastrophic illness and disease, and are much less likely to obtain basic drugs, tests, preventive screenings and surgeries. They are more likely to recover slower from illness, and they die much younger.
Studies have found that when blacks and Hispanics do receive treatment, the care they receive is more likely to be substandard than that of whites. Reports indicate that even when blacks and Hispanics are enrolled in high quality health plans, the racial gap in the care and quality of medical treatment still remains.

Private insurers routinely cherry pick the healthiest and most financially secure patients in order to bloat profits and hold down costs. American medical providers spend twice as much per patient than providers in countries with universal health care, and they provide lower quality for the grossly inflated dollars. Patients pay more in higher insurance premiums, co-payments, fees and other hidden health costs. At the same time, government medical insurance programs shell out more than public insurers in other countries with universal health care.


With much fanfare, three major hospital groups and the pharmaceuticals in June and July announced that they would plough more than $200 billion into health care reform. This appeared to be a major step toward breaking the age old logjam on getting real health care reform. That’s hardly the case. Neither the pharmaceuticals, the hospitals nor private industry groups publicly pledged to fully drop their opposition to providing coverage and at cost medicines to those considered “high risk” or, less charitably, “undesirables.” Those are the millions who suffer chronic and major diseases—cancer, diabetes, asthma and heart disease.
Blacks and Hispanics have far greater incidences of these ailments than whites. Even when they can pay for medical coverage, they can be excluded from coverage if afflicted with these medical maladies. The health care industry’s reform plan is vague, tentative and subject to change at every step of the negotiating process. They still have a free hand to exclude high-risk cases from coverage.
The much debated “public option” is the only government check and balance to guarantee coverage and treatment for the uninsured and those labeled as high risk.

Yet, industry groups have mounted a major effort to kill outright or water the public plan down to where it is meaningless. In a press conference in June, Obama sent a mild signal that the public option is open to negotiation. Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel went further and privately told opposing Republican Senators and doubting conservative Democrats that Obama will consider “alternatives” to the tepid government option. Emmanuel didn’t say what the alternative is other than a nod toward an even vaguer and unproven system of loosely regulated, non profit health care co-operatives.

For decades, the health care industry has gutted every proposal for expanded health care. It has couched its attack by posing as the noble public spirited guardian of the nation’s health and pocketbook; arguing that a public plan is too costly, inefficient and entails too much heavy-handed government control and interference. The Post/ABC Poll shows more Americans are buying their spin. This is catastrophic news for the millions of black and Hispanic uninsured who desperately need real health care reform.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com