Like many smart, verbally skilled political leaders, President Obama has a way with words. He is more measured than loquacious, and he is a master of conveying calm, thoughtful deliberation. That leads many people to misidentify him as a moderate or a pragmatist. After all, his calm delivery and measured cadence are the antithesis of how we expect radicals or revolutionaries to speak.
Yet tone and substance are not synonymous, although they can be related. Calming cadence can be the low-keyed vehicle of large ambitions, and harsh rhetoric can be the sharper pitched vehicle to help achieve them.
One of the surprises about President Obama, if you follow him closely over time, is that he can be demagogic and is on record having done so not only to groups with which he disagrees, but also with specific individuals, not all of whom are in politics. This tendency was evident early in the president's political career, but was, at the time, lost in the fierce glow of heralding a rising star.
In 2002 Mr. Obama gave an anti-war speech, his first major political speech, in which he listed his objections to the war. They reflected standard Democratic views at the time, with the exception of Obama saying he was not against war, but "dumb wars".
However, he then went beyond the standard critique to the very personal:
What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income — to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
It is not a far distance from that to the president using harsh hyperbole, singling out those who disagree with his policy views in very public venues, as he did with Supreme Court Justices in his State of the Union address. And he has done that repeatedly as these samples reflect:
On Evangelical Christians: "[I]t's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia."
On doctors during his heath care push: "You come in and you've got a bad sore throat, or your child has a bad sore throat or has repeated sore throats, the doctor may look at the reimbursement system and say to himself, 'You know what? I make a lot more money if I take this kid's tonsils out.'" (Emphasis added)
On Wall Street, insurance and oil companies: "[I]f you're a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules, regardless of the consequences for everybody else."
To Hispanics about those who oppose the president's preferred immigration legislation: "If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, 'We're going to punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,' if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's going to be harder and that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2." (Emphasis added)
Who might those immigration enemies be? Why Republicans, of course.
Next: The President's Immigration Villains: Part 2