Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa said the following while speaking at a Labor Day rally, prior to President Barack Obama speaking there:
“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere: It is the Tea Party. And you know, there’s only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner: It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America! We’re going to win that war … President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”
Leaving aside that the correct phrase should be either “sons of bitches” or “sons of a bitch”, Obama said nothing to denounce Hoffa’s name-calling. This, despite his repeated pleas for civil debate and to eliminate of vitriol and violent rhetoric from our political discourse, particularly since the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and several others:
“[I]t’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds … We should be civil because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American Dream to future generations.”
But Obama has been happy to say that Republicans are putting party ahead of country. And he’s been happy to stay silent as members of his party — like Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN) — have resorted to accusations of racism:
“This is the effort that we’re seeing of Jim Crow. Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens. Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.”
If Obama does get around to addressing the name-calling from Hoffa and fellow Democrats — perhaps in his Thursday speech on jobs to Congress — he’ll likely do so in a way that ducks responsibility. He’ll do what Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz recently did, brushing off Hoffa’s name-calling by pointing out that her opponents don’t impartially denounce invective. Or he’ll do what he’s done before — for instance, while addressing Tea Party member Ryan Rhodes’ complaint about name-calling from Vice President Joe Biden (Biden said Tea Party Republicans had “acted like terrorists”) — and he’ll point out that he’s a victim of name-calling (“I have been called a socialist who wasn’t born in this country”).
Of course it’s true that Republicans don’t denounce name-calling from their own side. And it’s true that conservatives have made any number of unfair accusations about Obama. Talk radio pundit Rush Limbaugh hasn’t stopped accusing Obama of intentionally trying to ruin the country and the private sector. And fellow pundit Mark Levin hasn’t stopped calling Obama a jerk and an idiot who spends like a drunken Marxist.
But it’s not relevant. Just because Obama’s opponents are misbehaving doesn’t prove that he isn’t doing the same. He is. And, because he’s the president, the obligation to set a good example is even greater for him.
Obama is squarely failing to live up to that obligation. This should be no surprise, because he never had much of a record of living up to it. But it is a failure nonetheless. We need someone else to lead us when it comes to civil debate.