The latest lie: Barack Obama did not say it was a “tragedy” that Supreme Court didn’t address “redistribution of wealth”
The right-wing geniuses are falling all over themselves about a 2001 radio interview done by Barack Obama, who was then a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago. The meme that’s emerged from the brilliant right-wingers and John McCain - Barack Obama wants to stack the Supreme Court with activist judges that want to make the U.S. a communist haven.
The fact that he said the complete opposite makes no difference. From the Washington Post:
“Obama Bombshell Audio Uncovered. He wants to Radically Reinterpret the Constitution to Redistribute Wealth!!” runs the YouTube headline from the conservative video blog Naked Emperor News. “This video exposes the radical beneath the rhetoric.”
On closer inspection, the “bombshell audio” turns out to be a rather wonkish, somewhat impenetrable, discussion of the Supreme Court under Earl Warren. Obama, then a University of Chicago law professor and Illinois state senator, argued that the courts have traditionally been reluctant to get involved in income distribution questions. He suggested that the civil rights movement had made a mistake in expecting too much from the courts — and that such issues were better decided by the legislative branch of government.
You can read the entire transcript of the interview here, courtesy of Fox News, but here is the passage in which Obama explains that courts are “not very good” at redistributing wealth:
“Maybe I am showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but you know I am not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know the institution just isn’t structured that way…. Any of the three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. I think that, as a practical matter, that our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it.”
In other words, Obama says pretty much the opposite of what the McCain camp says he said. Contrary to the spin put on his remarks by McCain economics adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, he does not express “regret” that the Supreme Court has not been more “radical.” Nor does he describe the Court’s refusal to take up economic redistribution questions as a “tragedy.” He uses the word “tragedy” to refer not to the Supreme Court, but to the civil rights movement:
“One of the tragedies of the civil rights movement was that the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think, there was a tendency to lose track of the political and organizing activities on the ground that are able to bring about the coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.“
Holtz-Eakin “read a different interview to the one I heard,” said Dennis Hutchinson, a University of Chicago law professor who joined Obama in the panel discussion. “Obama said that redistribution of wealth issues need to be decided by legislatures, not by the courts. That is what a progressive income tax is all about.”
That Conservatives are deliberately turning this interview 180 degrees is no surprise. They do everything based on their belief that their followers are mindless drones unable to understand complex sentences. Luckily, the latest polls show that only 24 percent of hardcore right-wingers are that dense.
–WKW
October 28th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Of course the statement can be interpreted several ways, however, looking back in retrospect while recalling his comments to [ Joe the plumber ] one can easily understand why the reader would put two and two together and come up with the conclusion that this is a plan waiting till the right time and position to execute it. Give us all a break, only a fool would ignore or otherwise rationalize the comment believing otherwise that …oh, he would never do that. The handwriting is on the wall, one would think that the hidden agenda of the Democ-rat party and it’s candidate B.H. Obama would be more closely scrutinized by the general public than it has been so far. This indicates to me that many voters lack the ability to discern, sad to say it may be too late to bring it to their addled attention…..GEK
October 28th, 2008 at 11:16 am
George:
Coupla quick thoughts on your post:
First, if any readers could successfully put “two and two together,” wouldn’t Palin accuse ‘em of being elitist academics who are out of touch with real Joe SixPacks across the nation (who, she will proudly tell you, have no idea how many beers are actually *in* a six pack — and they like it that way, dontcha know, fer sure [wink!]).
Second (and more important), the great hue and cry in response to Obama’s “spread the wealth” line to the apparent standard-bearer for the Republican Party (that’d be the omni-present J.t.P) is evidence that the Repub base actually *doesn’t* care about the details.
Cuz if they did, they’d listen to the entire exchange & realize that the “spread the wealth” line was in reference to providing greater opportunity for more people to attain financial success, which results in more folks having more money to spend on things like (oh, I dunno) high-end plumbing services that can actually push J.t.P to the $250,000 level that he falsely claimed to already be at.
This idea is reminiscent of the one that that ol’ socialist Henry Ford advocated with his communist-inspired plan to ensure that folks who worked in his factories could actually afford to buy the products they were building.
October 28th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
George, it’s all a bunch of foolishness brought on by desperation, an old GOP line about big government that’s kind of hard to sell coming out of the most fiscally irresponsible period in American history with the largest expansion of government since WW2 (if not ever) brought to you by…..The Republican Party.