Difference Between Bush and Obama?
Is president Barack Obama, our nation’s first African-American president losing steam with black leaders and the African-American community?
With a current national approval rating below 50 percent, prominent African-Americans are increasingly showing impatience with President Barack Obama. Some such as actor Danny Glover are even going as far as proclaiming that there’s no policy difference between former president George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, the actor says Obama’s policies, so far, are no different than his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
“I think the Obama administration has followed the same playbook, to a large extent, almost verbatim, as the Bush administration. I don’t see anything different,” the activist movie star said of Obama’s policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. “On the domestic side, look here: What’s so clear is that this country from the outset is projecting the interests of wealth and property. Look at the bailout of Wall Street. Why not the bailout of Main Street?”
“He may be just a different face, and that face may happen to be black—and if it were Hillary Clinton, it would happen to be a woman,” Glover said. “But what choices do they have within the structure?”
More in sorrow than in anger, Glover went on: “What choice does he have—in four years, eight years? Let’s just call a spade a spade. Really. There are no choices out there.”
President Obama recently had to dismiss criticism from The Congressional Black Caucus who claims the president is not doing enough in regards to financial reform for blacks. And then there’s the Reverend Jesse Jackson; there’s always Jesse. Here’s a quote from Reverend Jackson:
“Let me distinguish African-American support for the president from the need to challenge policies and protect our interests. This doesn’t always turn on a race-based analysis. It doesn’t always have to be a function of animus.”
AgressiveFruit.com also stated that Rep. John Conyers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has been so vocal about his displeasure with Obama, the President actually called him and asked him to stop criticizing him. Conyers says that when Obama called him, he told the President that he wasn’t in the mood to talk to him, and hung up.
Conyers feels that Obama is getting bad advice from “clowns” and that he needs to stop “bowing down to the nutty right wings.”
So what say you? Do these prominent leaders represent the current voice and opinions of the majority of African-Americans in the country? Are African-Americans citizens and its leaders expecting too much from Obama when it comes to social and financial reform for blacks or is there a growing consensus in the African-American community that the nation’s first black president is just another George W. Bush?
Obama must be doing something right when the right wingers think he’s too liberal and the left thinks he’s not liberal enough (although I’d prefer a lot more liberal).
Man, my cousin is getting rough on the Prez.
As a american black woman (born & raised in Richmond Virginia , not Africa), I dont expect for the president to make things right for me. He not finding a job, running errand nor paying bills for me. We still have to go on with our lives, regardless of who is the POTUS. Our communities need to get it together for ourselves. To tell the truth, the only black people he needs to look out for is his family.
To clarify: I never claimed myself as African American. I’m fine with American Black or Black.