Bill Moyers Quotes
It’s not that Obama compromised too easily. He treated too lightly the people and forces determined to destroy him. They spat in his face and didn’t even get ticketed for a misdemeanor.
President Obama was a true Constitutionalist who, unlike other modern presidents, truly believed that members of Congress had a right to express their views and act on them and the President should not retaliate against them for opposing him on major issues. Unfortunately, this was interpreted by most people as weakness. It also hurt his legislative initiative, as no one feared his retaliation or was intimidated when he asked for their vote.
Bill Moyers, Journalist, Special Assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, White House Press Secretary, Interview, The Progressive, March 6, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The historian was comparing Obama to other historical presidents who either had a majority of both Houses of Congress or had an opposition party that was generally quite cooperative and willing to compromise for the sake of running the country smoothly. At this point in time there was a Tea Party wing of the Republican that was particularly negative and obstructionist. They tended to threaten and intimidate the main stream Republicans who used the filibuster to block legislation the majority of Senators had voted for more times than all the other Congresses in American history. And that was only in Obamas first 6 years.
Twenty years earlier (see related quote) Mugabe invited the whites to stay in the country promising a non discriminatory government of racial equality. However, when he lost favor and grew unpopular and was about to be voted out of office, he started a race conflict, and destroyed what had been one of the strongest economies of Africa in the process. Mugabe sanctioned the murder of a number of whites as well as Blacks who did not share his racist views.
Many Republicans, having been mostly in the minority for decades had come to see their roles in Congress as doing whatever they could to attack and obstruct any Executive Branch initiative or activity. However the extreme Republican conservatives have generally also worked to obstruct centrist and liberal Republicans as well as Democrats.
The bitter partisanship of the time was as intense as any in our history. Jefferson was attacked more frequently and more virulently than even William Clinton. Further, there were still major issues of Congressional vs. Presidential power, and there were those who believed the President should not at all concern himself with the legislative process but should merely carry out those laws that Congress passed.
The congressman had a 93% Conservative voting record and was castigated by right wing talk radio so much that he lost his Republican primary election after 12 years of excellent representation in Congress.
This quotation is an example of the political extremes that can occur when there is hyperpolarization in American politics. In this case the Republicans had enough power in the Congress to prevent the Democrats from passing any legislation to fix any of the problems in the Affordable Health Care Act, the way normal large legislation is amended after it is passed, and problems and unexpected consequences are revealed. The Republican strategy was to prevent the bill from being fixed, lest President Obama and the Democrats could claim victory, while they could point to the consequences of the problems to show the Democrats passed a bad law. It was better for them to criticize the Democrats than it was to improve the law and the services to citizens. This was very rare because usually both parties, after a bill passes, help to fix flaws and improve the bill regardless of whether or not they opposed it originally.
The threat was delivered to Mark Sanford a conservative Congressman from Southg Carolina, Sanford had stated that he would vote against Trump's plan for a replacement to Obamacare. He paid no attention to the threat and the intent of intimidating other Republican members of the House of Representatives failed, There were so many Republican defectors who would not vote for the bill that House Speaker Ryan, withdrew the bill at the last minute has the majority Republicans had so many defectors that the Obama Care replacement coult not possibly pass. This was a great blow to Presieent Trump and not President in history had been thwarted so early in his administration on a major bill. Worse Trump's own party contolled the majority and the entire party had run their campaingns with the "promise" to repeal ObabaCare. However when they tried to do it, they cound it was not so easy and even most of the conservatives proferred ObamaCare to the propsed legislation that the Speaker or the House and the Presidenet were advocating.
Billy Don Moyers is an American journalist and political commentator. He served as the ninth White House Press Secretary under the Johnson administration from 1965 to 1967. He also worked as a network TV news commentator for ten years. Moyers has been extensively involved with public broadcasting, producing documentaries and news journal programs. He has won numerous awards and honorary degrees for his investigative journalism and civic activities. He has become well known as a trenchant critic of the corporately structured U.S. news media.
