Fareed Zakaria: 'Liberals Need to Grow Up' and Stop Criticizing Obama
Liberals need to grow up and stop criticizing President Obama.
So said Fareed Zakaria Sunday on the CNN program bearing his name (video follows with transcript and commentary):
FAREED ZAKARIA, HOST: Over the last week, liberal politicians and commentators in America took to the air waves and OpEd pages to criticize the debt deal that Congress reached. But their ire was directed not at the Tea Party or even the Republicans, but rather at Barack Obama, who, they concluded, had failed as a president because of his persistent tendency to compromise. This has been a running theme ever since Obama took office.
Exactly what news outlets does Zakaria frequent if he believes the ire of liberal politicians and commentators last week "was directed not at the Tea Party or even the Republicans?"
From the moment stocks began declining after the debt ceiling was raised, the blame has all gone to the Tea Party and the GOP.
Did Zakaria somehow miss all the left-wing talk about the Tea Party Downgrade? Is this man completely oblivious to what happens around him, or does he believe much like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that there should have been absolutely no reporting of conservative views concerning the debt ceiling?
Whatever the answer, Zakaria started his opening op-ed with a deeply flawed premise, and it was all downhill from there:
ZAKARIA: I think that liberals need to grow up. As "The New Republic's" Jonathan Chait brilliantly points out, there is a recurring liberal fantasy that if only the president of the United States would give a stirring speech, he would sweep the country along with the sheer power of his poetry and enact his agenda.
In this view, write Chait, every known impediment to the legislative process - special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macro economic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public policy - are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech. This does happen if you're watching the movie "The American President," but not if you're actually watching what goes on in Washington.
Maybe this "recurring liberal fantasy" was fostered by folks like Zakaria that presented Barack Obama to the American people as a messiah. If the public has a Hollywood-like view of this president, it's because the media put him on a pedestal like nobody before him.
It is therefore quite hypocritical of Zakaria to scold citizens for behaving exactly the way he and his colleagues trained them to:
ZAKARIA: The disappointment over the debt deal is just the latest episode of liberal bewilderment about Obama. "I have no idea what Barack Obama believes on virtually any issue," Drew Westen writes in "The New York Times." Confused over Obama's tendency to take balanced positions, Westen hints that his professional experience, which is as a psychologist, suggests deep traumatic causes for Obama's pathology.
Let me offer a simpler explanation. Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist who understands that in a country divided over core issues, you cannot make the best the enemy of the good. Obama passed a large stimulus package within weeks of taking office. Liberals feel it should have been bigger. But, remember, despite a Democratic House and Senate, it just passed by one vote.
He signed into law an unprecedented expansion of regulations in the financial services industry, though it isn't one that broke up the large banks. He enacted universal health care through a complex program that was modeled after the Republican Mitt Romney's plan in Massachusetts. And he's advocated a balanced approach to deficit reduction that combines tax increases with spending cuts.
Now, maybe he just believes in all these things. Maybe he understands that with a budget deficit that is 10 percent of GDP, the second highest in the industrialized world, and a debt that will rise to almost 100 percent of GDP in a few years, we cannot cavalierly spend another few trillion hoping that it will jump start the economy.
Maybe he believes that while American banks need better regulations, America also needs a vibrant banking system and that, in a globalized economy, constraining American banks alone will only ensure that the world's largest global financial institutions will be British, German, Swiss and Chinese. He might understand that Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are smart people, who, in long careers in public service, got some things wrong, but also many things right.
Perhaps he understands that getting entitlement costs under control is, in fact, a crucial part of stabilizing our long-term fiscal situation and that you do need both tax increases and spending cuts - cuts, by the way, that are smaller than they appear because they all start from the 2010 budget, which was boosted by the stimulus.
Is all this dangerous weakness, incoherence, appeasement? Or is it just common sense?
Or is this an extremely unqualified individual who is way over his head and should never have been given the adulation and sycophantic praise he's received from so-called journalists as well as those in the entertainment media since the moment he tossed his hat into the presidential ring back in 2007?
No matter what the answer, it is fairly clear that Zakaria is not likely to become an Obama critic regardless of what happens to the economy, the debt, or the nation's credit rating.
That's all the Tea Party and Republicans' fault because "Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist" possessing "common sense."
The good news for Zakaria is this intransigence represents job security.
If CNN ever tires of him, he certainly has a home at MSNBC.
- Noel Sheppard's blog
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Comments
Farouk........or whatever is
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:04am.
Farouk........or whatever is name is.........got it HALF right!!! Boy Barry also needs to grow up!!! But at least Zackariah is on the right track.
And I believe that Barama has given many 'stirring speeches' (although I'm not going to say what they were stirring!!!), and what have we learned, or gotten, from them??? To quote an old blues riff.............'you've got a mouthful of nothin'..........and a hand full of much-obliged'..............
Wait!!! I got that blues riff
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:10am.
Wait!!! I got that blues riff wrong!!! It's 'you've got a handful of gimme..........and a mouth full of much obliged'...........
But, hey........even the wrong verse makes sense!!!
hukk
Submitted by elvis on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 4:36pm.
hyuk, hyukk hyuk. That there's a dang knee slapper!
Marxist heretics! They need
Submitted by rbosque on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:03am.
Marxist heretics! They need to stay in line with the rest of the lemmings!
"Quiet, children!"
Submitted by Chris Norman on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:05am.
So Zakaria admonishes these critical liberals, like they're disruptive children and tells them to "act like adults" - and sit quietly and not criticize their father - er - president while he conducts adult business? Boy, it is true - liberal elites look on everybody - including other liberals and even other liberal elites - as children.
"Now sit quietly and
Submitted by johnsonl on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 6:10am.
eat your peas."
OK......one more thing. Can
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:07am.
OK......one more thing. Can anybody here give me any coherent answer to the statement that Boy Blamegame is a 'pragmatist'?? Am I going to have to look it up in the dictionary, because the definition in my own little peabrain doesn't jive at all with that statement??? Or is he a 'self-pragmatist'...........just lilke he is a 'self everything else'???
It's what most Presidents tend to become once in office...
Submitted by Jer on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:12am.
after engaging in a lot of ideological chest-thumping to fire up the base prior to their nomination.
Jer
No no no Jer.........I'm not
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:17am.
No no no Jer.........I'm not buying that answer, and I haven't had my first black cherry/vodka drink yet, either. I want to know what kind of 'pragmatic' actions that Barama has made - other than for himself.
But, He's Barak Obama!
Submitted by Chris Norman on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:20am.
But I thought Barak Obama was going to be a "new kind of president" - able to move the country - not to mention mountains - with his sheer brilliance and his breathtakingly soaring oratorical skills. And now you lay on us that he's like "most presidents". Boy, what a letdown....
Hmmmm..........'move' the
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:54am.
Hmmmm..........'move' the country.......Barack.........we could call it a BM????
LOL
Submitted by Chris Norman on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:04am.
LOL. Unintentional, I assure you. That said, if he has - er - "moved" the country - then we need a candidate (in the parlance of George HW Bush) with the "Big I" (Big Imodium). :)
oBaMa
Submitted by whw on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 7:21am.
Leave out the vowels and what are you left with?
To continue...
Submitted by Chris Norman on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:00am.
Change the "V" to a "B" and what do you have? :)
Jeez...............you guys
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:03pm.
Jeez...............you guys have really expanded and expounded (and beaten the hell out of) this little riff while I was sleeping!!!
Obama's back on the campaign trail, Jer.
Submitted by CobraMan on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:09pm.
Obama's back on the campaign trail, Jer. So I guess it's back to ideological chest-thumping for Obama, is it not? So much for "pragmatism."
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States. The US Constitution
Unless you're a fetus. The US Supreme Court
Or Anwar al-Awlaki.
Cobra...
Submitted by Jer on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 7:37pm.
To some extent, but probably not as much as when he was vying for the nomination in '08.
Jer
I would say that "pragmatist"
Submitted by Bhaal on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:15am.
I would say that "pragmatist" is used to cover for that fact that he hasn't been able to achieve his goals, so instead of failures, he has compromises because he's a pragmatist. Oh, and he's very intelligent too!
LA times (ugh) reports:
Submitted by Slyrr on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:21am.
LA times (ugh) reports: 'Obama to GOP: 'Put country before your party!'
GOP (and the rest of America) to Obama: 'You first, liar!'
How Original of Him
Submitted by Chris Norman on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:28am.
That's the best message he can muster? Obama's rhetoric is beginning to sound like other failing and flailing politicians. His halo is all dented and rusty now...
Yeah........and Barama has
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:56am.
Yeah........and Barama has put HIS (view of the) country ahead of OUR (view of the) country..........and look what direction we've been going for two and a half miserable years!!!
Fareed at last, Fareed at last, Good Gahd Almighty....
Submitted by bigdaddy on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 2:22am.
...So the Tea Party are the "terrorists and hostage takers" while the liberals are "the children who need to grow up"...Someone actually gets paid to make this crap up, I blame Axelrod.
Not the stupid statement
Submitted by ferv888 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 6:33am.
Later on in this same program, the Villiage Idiot, in talking about jobs, made this claim. "A person digging a ditch and then filling it up is productive work, while interviewing two dynamic econimists. One was Paul Krugman, I will let that stand as it's own comment.
What the hell is wrong with liberals, when it comes to that comment, this guy becomes the face of liberal stupidity!!!!!
FERV888
Obamo is who we thought he was
Submitted by ChrisNH on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 6:46am.
It's too late for 'stirring speeches.' Obamo had a honeymoon to butter people up. He chose to 'declare' that a trillion dollars in the name of 'stimulus' would cure all ills. It didn't. And trust in the big-eared cigarette smoker went down from there. So anything Obamo said AFTER that--HCR debate would be 'transparent' and on CSPAN, for example--was wildly distrusted.
No more 'soaring rhetoric' from the village idiot Obamo. He's simply riding out his time before we get someone GOOD as president.
ZAKARIA: I think that
Submitted by motherbelt on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 7:10am.
ZAKARIA: I think that liberals need to grow up. As "The New Republic's" Jonathan Chait brilliantly points out, there is a recurring liberal fantasy that if only the president of the United States would give a stirring speech, he would sweep the country along with the sheer power of his poetry and enact his agenda.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
That's exactly what you all told them, Fareed!
And now you all say "Nevermind."
President Downgrade Is Finally Understood By All
Submitted by Motormouth KOS on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 7:22am.
I love this statement...
"I have no idea what Barack Obama believes on virtually any issue," Drew Westen writes in "The New York Times." Confused over Obama's tendency to take balanced positions, Westen hints that his professional experience, which is as a psychologist, suggests deep traumatic causes for Obama's pathology..."
Yes, I totally agree. Shall we list them?
The Obamination... A crisis leading to a catastrophe..(please donate to MRC)
When was everybody's favorite Kenyan
Submitted by Jer on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:55am.
Marxist Terrorist removed from the list? Add it back for the "Dirty Dozen". Of course, that still omits Muslim. Make it a "Baker's Dozen".
Jer
don't hear any neo conservative criticism of Obama's wars
Submitted by lrgon on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 8:46am.
In 2000 George W. Bush sounded like Ron Paul:
Foreign Affairs: Bush promised a "humble foreign policy with no nation building." He had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: 'If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that.'"
Let's see, Obama, Pelosi, Geithner, Holder
Submitted by TheHistorian on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 8:46am.
tell me which two in combination act like an adult?
Adult and liberal are mutually exclusive. Pay your own way is anathema for a liberal, all of which are scared of life.
Dennis Prager
Obama has a "persistent tendency to compromise"?
Submitted by SickofLibs on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 8:57am.
LOL. If this is 'GPS', then Zakaria obviously has trouble navigating out of his own driveway.
Zakaria sounds like Jay Carney
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:06am.
ZAKARIA: ". . . Let me offer a simpler explanation. Obama is a centrist and a pragmatist who understands that in a country divided over core issues, you cannot make the best the enemy of the good. . . . Now, maybe he just believes in all these things."
Coming from one of Obama's personal advisers on foreign policy, I'd say his entire diatribe can be dismissed as WH talking points.
Zakaria has absolutely no credibility when it comes to assessing the Obama Administration because he has willfully participated in it.
Obama is no centrist; his brief tenure in the US Senate testifies to that. He is a progressive ideologue adrift due to his own lack of leadership skills; a narcissist who is coping with half the country saying he's doing a bad job; a previously untested politician who is overwhelmed by the burden of the office he sought; an orator whose rhetoric falls on deaf ears.
Democrats told us in 2008 that he was a brilliant, insightful man who would rapidly learn on the job and change the way Washington does business. Well, he's been learning for 2.5 years, and it is apparent that this as good as he gets. With economic trouble all over the globe, and the rise of Chinese power in East Asia, our President is not suited for the office we elected him to.
Second terms are usually far less productive for Presidents than their first terms. Considering Obama's performance up to this point, I don't think any Democrat can promise with a straight face that a second Obama term would be better than this one.
And the dilemma for the DNC is ---- many (if not most) Americans have figured that out, too.
Is that how they do it back
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 9:25am.
in the OLD country Achmed? Don't criticize the messiah or get your head chopped, right?
Say Hello to Achmed
Disgraceful
Submitted by Suilbup on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:00pm.
Where do people get the idea that it's OK to criticize the President? It's not - not when he's a brilliant Democrat anyway. It was fine to criticize Bush and to call him names and carry signs depicting him as any number of dreadful things (and illustrating terrible things happening to him). But this is different. THIS President should not be criticized by anyone, for any reason, ever. I am hopeful that some serious restraint on "free speech" can be imposed on the miscreants who would question or criticize our leader. After all, this criticism hurts interstate commerce and Congress has the duty to regulate that. Therefore, I say we throw the critics in jail as a way to regulate commerce and protect it. It just might work...
No one cares what Fareed
Submitted by buddyc on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:19pm.
No one cares what Fareed says. No one watches his show. He is the worst "news" show on the worst channel on television. Al Sharpton outdraws this guy. The Indians I know refuse to acknowledge he is Indian.
Probably because they're
Submitted by killa37 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:05pm.
Probably because they're Hindus, and not Moooooooooooooooslems.............I don't think the two religious/cultural beliefs get along real well with each other. But then again, do the Moooooooooooooooslems get along with anyone??? Even themselves???
No one cares what Fareed
Submitted by buddyc on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 12:19pm.
No one cares what Fareed says. No one watches his show. He is the worst "news" show on the worst channel on television. Al Sharpton outdraws this guy. The Indians I know refuse to acknowledge he is Indian.
Fereed, get used to liberals
Submitted by ForeverOnTheRight on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 1:30pm.
Fereed, get used to liberals being critical of Obama, as his poll number drops, their will be more and more criticism. Liberals will never grow up they are permanently in a state of mental and emotional immaturity lacking in any sense of logic or common sense.
Ever since Fareed went on
Submitted by tombaker on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:40pm.
Ever since Fareed went on Leno, saying that people with conservative view were just American's by the accident of birth, and that he choose to be here....I can not look at this guys face.
Fez actually said that?!
Submitted by HockeyKid on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:58pm.
Screw the pencil-necked geek. My family fought to get here 300 years ago, and we've been fighting to protect and defend our land and our country ever since. Fez comes here on his baba's dime to attend Yale and Harvard, then has the temerity to say such a thing about conservatives? Let the jerk go home. BTW, did you know that he was a member of the Party of the Right (conservatives) while at Yale? I guess the lure of filthy money changes the minds of the weak and unprincipled.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
I love reading Fez's transcripts.
Submitted by HockeyKid on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 3:52pm.
They're just collections of tired cliches and bumper stickers. "You cannot make the best the enemy of the good"---OOOOOOoooh, very impressive thought there, Fez. I bet you sat up all night wracking your brain for such a pithy point to make.
"Beauty is only skin deep, but liberal's to the bone." - me
Oh boy.
Submitted by ironhead4099 on Mon, 08/15/2011 - 4:35pm.
Is this guy Friut Loops? The only reason he can say this is because he is such a buddy with Obiwan, hell he's even one of his advisors. And we've all seen in the last 3 years, those guys,(his advisors) are nothing more than a bunch of spineless yes men, and policy wonks that have no real experience in the real world.
Liberals and growing up
Submitted by donaldduck on Tue, 08/16/2011 - 8:43pm.
Yo Phareek; Liberals just need to grow up, which, of course, would inhibit their congenital immature behavior. I know it isn't going to happen, so conservatives will just have to spank you silly in 2012 and continue spanking indefinitely.