The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Paul Constant

What President Obama Can and Can't Do

Paul Constant — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:36:54 -0700

James Fallows writes about the response to President Obama's Morehouse graduation speech, and why it outlines how impossible it is to be Barack Obama:

Before I had a chance to write anything about the speech, I read two other reactions. One was from my former colleague Andrew Sullivan, who was defending the speech against idiotic accusations that it was "race-baiting" and too black. The other was from my current Atlantic colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates, who criticized the speech for being too hectoring of Obama's Morehouse audience in a way he wouldn't have been at Dartmouth or Stanford: "Barack Obama is, indeed, the president of 'all America,' but he also is singularly the scold of 'black America.'"

A lot of the problems the Obama Administration are going through right now are the fault of nobody but the Obama Administration. Their continued fumbling of the AP scandal is a disappointment and a disgrace. But a lot of this is simply coming from a place of hate. No president can ever totally satisfy all Americans—hell, no president can ever totally satisfy their base—but the dissatisfaction that surrounds every move President Obama makes is a special kind of dissatisfaction. Because of who he is, everyone holds him singularly responsible for the thorniest issue in the United States, and it's an issue he can never solve to everyone's satisfaction. It'll be fascinating to see how history judges this part of his legacy.

The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Paul Constant

What President Obama Can and Can't Do

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