New York Times White House correspondent Michael Shear specializes in one-sided fawn-a-thons over President Obama, and Wednesday's report on a panel discussion at Georgetown University featuring Obama talking race and poverty was the work of a master: "Obama Urges Unity in Poverty Fight."
Shear, who carried Obama's water over the president's anti-business "you didn't build that" comment, and even bragged about Obama's NCAA basketball bracket in 2011 ("Mr. Obama knows his hoops"), failed to issue a single critical comment on his big-spending solutions to racial problems.
President Obama on Tuesday called for liberals and conservatives to break through their decades-long disagreements about how to confront abject poverty in America, but he expressed skepticism that it would happen.
Speaking to a gathering of faith leaders at Georgetown University, Mr. Obama said it was his job to “guard against cynicism” while pursuing policies that might improve the lives of poor people in the country. He said he believed that conservatives cared about the poor.
But in an hourlong conversation with a liberal professor and a conservative economist, Mr. Obama lamented what he said was a refusal by his Republican adversaries in Washington to put their concern into practice.
There's hope for you wretched Wall Streeters: Obama doesn't think you're evil! Just greedy.
The president said his unsuccessful effort to raise taxes on hedge fund managers was an example of the refusal by conservatives to compromise for the benefit of the poor. He noted that the top 25 hedge fund managers make more than all of the nation’s kindergarten teachers combined. He said that hedge fund managers were not evil, but that Republicans should be willing to tax their incomes at the same level as they do kindergarten teachers’.
(The text box: "Prodding lawmakers to put empathy for the poor into practice.")
Mr. Obama’s appearance at the Georgetown conference was the latest indication of his new interest in talking about the poorest citizens. During two campaigns and most of his time in office, Mr. Obama has often portrayed himself as the champion of a middle class fighting to recover from a devastating economic collapse.
But eruptions of racial tensions after black men were killed by the police in Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island have accelerated a shift in the later stages of Mr. Obama’s presidency, as the nation’s first black president begins to refocus his administration’s attention on the plight of the poor, especially in African-American communities.
Shear let Obama tee off on religious conservatives without rebuttal.
And he chided religious organizations for sometimes focusing too heavily on issues like abortion rather than keeping the pressure on politicians to confront poverty.
“This is oftentimes viewed as a nice-to-have relative to an issue like abortion,” Mr. Obama said. “I think that there’s more power to be had there, a more transformative voice that’s available around these issues” from religious groups.
Some of Shear's lines could have come off a campaign press release.
Mr. Obama has long argued for building “ladders of opportunity” for those who are struggling economically. But as he campaigned in the elections of 2008 and 2012, he frequently spoke about ensuring that those ladders reach middle-income workers. When he became president, he pursued policies aimed at helping workers get jobs, increase their salaries, purchase homes, pay for college and buy health care.
His recent, frequent emphasis on the severely poor is new, as is his increasing willingness to speak bluntly, and often, about the needs of African-Americans, and especially young black men.
After the rioting in Baltimore that followed the death of Freddie Gray last month, Mr. Obama called for national “soul searching” about poverty and accused Americans of failing to pay attention to the plight of the poorest citizens except “when a CVS burns,” a reference to the looting in the city. The simmering racial tensions, he said, must be addressed in part by confronting poverty.
Shear even posed Obama as a racial prophet:
But even in that interview, which took place well before the recent police shootings involving young black men, Mr. Obama predicted that the country’s economic anxiety would exacerbate racial tensions.
As if a president is absolutely powerless, and bears no fault in failing to deal with such "economic anxiety."
