Live Chat: Robert Scheer on Obama’s State of the Union Address

Posted on Jan 28, 2011

In a live video Q & A session, Truthdig Editor and columnist Robert Scheer answered readers’ questions about his latest column, “Hogwash, Mr. President,” and Obama’s second State of the Union address. You can read the full transcript below or listen to the podcast by clicking on the link.

AUDIO ONLY

VIDEO

Kasia Anderson: Welcome back to Truthdig’s Robert Scheer-column extravaganza. This week we’re discussing your latest column, Bob, on the State of the Union address. And we have some questions that both agree with what you say and challenge you, so we’ll get to both of them. Are you ready?

Robert Scheer:  I’m ready, Kasia.

Anderson: OK. So our first question comes from Tyler in Louisville, Ky. He starts off with the statement: “I’m over Obama, so what actual progressive alternatives are available for a primary challenger in 2012? And how can such a leader be recruited quick enough to compete with the corporate GOP (and DNC)?”

Scheer: Well, I think it’s … I think we’re in the middle of a political process in which Obama has, I think, very unwisely chosen to move to Wall Street, to move to what would have normally been a right-of-center Republican position, somewhere to the right of Richard Nixon and certainly Dwight Eisenhower, where he’s bringing in all of the Wall Street hot shots. He’s basically counting on playing to their blackmail: “You give us what we want and we’ll create jobs,” and so forth. And that’s his strategy. It’s the old, as I said, Republican right-of-center strategy. And I think it’s really important to challenge his narrative, and to talk about how is it really working. Are the jobs coming back? What kind of jobs? Are they low-paying jobs? Even in auto now, there are people with experience making $15 an hour. What happened to decent working conditions? Why are you bringing in the head of GE, who has exported hundreds of thousands of jobs abroad to China and other places, to be your head of job creation?

So I think what we need is a debate in this country based on the facts as people are experiencing them in their own community, in terms of jobs, the value of houses, their own economic situation, and to put pressure on their representatives, whether they’re from the right or left, and on the political leadership to take into account how it’s really working out. Because what we’re hearing now is all pie in the sky. If corporate profits are high, even if they’re high because they’re trading more abroad, that’s considered a sign of prosperity. And people who are hurting, which is most Americans, who are hurting, have got to register their pain, and they do it politically. They do it through letter-writing, they do it through demonstrations, picketing, what have you. But that’s the stage we’re at now.

Anderson: OK. And here’s another question I know you’ll probably cotton to, by Dylansdad15, a Truthdig member: “Why does the president continue to ignore the ‘real’ unemployment statistics? Real unemployment hovers around 19%, and America needs to recognize this problem.”

Scheer: Well, we had a manifestation of real employment statistics just today, as we were going to air on Thursday—the first time applications went up. Because anytime it looks like there’s a possibility of getting a job, people come back into the work force and try to find work. And you’re right, the real unemployment figure is horrendous, because so many people have given up or are in despair. And obviously, the president is not focusing on that, because he’s looking for good numbers. He’s trying … you know, the speech was deceitful in a very significant and disturbing way. The speech … you know, it’d be one thing if he tries, “OK, let’s rally the troops, let’s try to have an optimistic view, let’s try to. …” I’m all for that. You know, I don’t want to drown in despair. But to give a speech on the state of the union and not devote significant energy to joblessness, to the low price of houses, to people’s mortgage foreclosures—50 million Americans suffering with homes that are either going to be foreclosed or are deeply underwater—and to ignore all that, and to have this Pollyannaish speech about how Wall Street is booming, and the economy is booming—I thought it was, frankly, obscene. I mean, it was … you know, this is the community organizer? This is the guy who’s supposed to feel the pain of ordinary Americans? And it was really a “what’s good for Wall Street is good for America” kind of speech, and it was truly depressing. And so obviously he’s focusing on whatever statistics he can focus on that make it all look rosier than it is.

Anderson: Well, here comes someone with a little defense of Obama. Maybe you could speak to this. It’s Truthdig member Gaylordcat, who wants to know: “Mr. Scheer, you said you supported Obama when he ran for office, and I also read that you have become disillusioned in him since he took office. I share your feelings. However, after reading your comment on his State of the Union address, I ask you: What would you do if you were president? I’ve pondered that question relative to myself and I’m stumped. I read Richard Reeves’ piece on ‘What It Was Like to Be John Kennedy.’ What I sensed from the article was that unless one is president, one does not know what the job entails. I’m wondering if we are too hard on Obama because we don’t know what he is facing. We see it from a very different perspective than he does. Any comments?”

Scheer: Well, I wrote a book called “Playing President,” and I relied on interviews that I did with Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and the first President Bush, and so forth. So I understand something about the pressures on the president and the difficulty of making decisions. But this is pretty clear stuff here. Obama came in saying that he was going to do, basically, two things. One is he was going to be a peace president, and not get us involved in unnecessary wars, and I think his record there is not a good one; it’s actually quite abysmal. He escalated the war in Afghanistan, and our military budget, which the first President Bush had said should have been instantly cut by one-third because the Cold War was over. We’re now spending upwards of a trillion dollars a year on so-called defense, which is really aggression. And you’re not going to get big savings in the budget if you can’t cut defense, and there’s no real sign of that happening. They’re talking about, what, $70 billion over five years, or something; it’s not real significant. But his biggest failure is he was supposed to be concerned about ordinary Americans. And instead of—and he should still do it—instead of coming to the aid of homeowners who are suffering, and forcing these banks that he’s bailed out to do cramdowns, to do mortgage adjustments, which is not happening … keep people in their homes, you know, this is their nest egg, this is their savings, and if you can’t make them feel secure about their homes, they’re not going to be shopping out there. So that’s number one.

And then number two is the job creation. And he hasn’t … you know, we’ve given a lot of money to the corporations, we’re in what Paul Volcker called the liquidity trap, we’ve made a lot of cheap money available to the big banks and to the big corporations, and they’re hoarding that money. And so what is he doing now? Instead of pressuring them to go out and invest it, he’s coddling them and saying “No, please, help us out,” and he had all these guys come to the State of the Union and so forth; it was just awful. And if you look at the key people, his chief of staff, [William] Daley, was the key lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase. And he made $8 million just leaving JPMorgan; he was getting $5 million a year, and what was he doing for the last three years? This is Obama’s new chief of staff, the guy who guards the door to the president, the guy who controls the information to him. He was lobbying against financial regulation! He was lobbying against the Consumer Protection Agency. That tells you, really, all you need to know about what Obama is doing. He’s listening to the wrong people and he’s moving in the wrong direction.

 

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