A President of All the People
In the grand scheme of things, and particularly in a critical election year, the issue of presidential audiences is probably not of the greatest importance. Except that where and to whom a president speaks tells us a lot about how he views his relationship to the people he is oath-bound to serve. Before we see the last of the incumbent president, I hope someone takes the trouble to review all the public speeches the president, and for that matter the vice-president, and for that matter the entire cabinet, have given and the nature of the audiences to whom they spoke. The point is simple: this administration's officials from the top down do not speak to general audiences representing a cross-section of the American people.
This Bush administration has systematically, and cynically, chosen to speak only to audiences whose acceptance and acceptability are guaranteed. Without any research whatsoever, and based only on observation of the staged backdrops to presidential and other speeches, I am willing to wager that George W. Bush and virtually his entire cabinet have never, during this entire administration, spoken in a forum whose doors were open to all.
Think back. Can you remember a presidential speech where the audience was not hand-picked? My guess is this paranoid manipulation and hand-selection of favorable audiences dates to the second Nixon administration, where the president became so unpopular he could not appear before ordinary Americans. This, of course, was also the period that gave rise to the Cheney-Rumsfeld, Addington-Yoo, blue state-red state carving up of America into us versus them and the anti-Constitutional "unitary executive" imperial consolidation of power.
If you are out to set up an imperial presidency and an imperial foreign policy, you are probably well advised to speak only to audiences of carefully selected robotic ditto-heads, those who surrendered objectivity, critical judgment, and reflective thought a long time ago and who will chant "stay the course" and "support the president" every time stage manager Rove flashes the cue. But if you still believe, as I do, that we live under a Constitutional government where are leaders are elected to serve all the people under a system of checks and balances and are to be held accountable in every regard to the people they serve, then we should demand leaders with the courage to face all their constituents on all occasions and address all relevant issues of the day.
By the way, I also don't recall even one press story in the past seven years calling into question this undemocratic practice of imperial audience staging.
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Nixon asked, "Why do they hate me?" I'm from Whittier. I could tell you stories about why he was hated even before I was old enough to vote.
Bush shares a similar hatred. Here's why.
In 1979, President Carter announced an energy plan that would wean us off of foreign oil. Eventually, he wanted us to use renewable energy sources. He installed solar panels in the White House. Ronald Reagan took the White House after the October surprise that delayed the release of the hostages to cause a decline in President Carter's popularity. At that time, the oilmen took over our energy policy and counter-terrorism policy.
The solar panels came down in the White House. Now the rivers are running dry, bio-diversity is vanishing, there has been an explosion of economic activity based on petroleum, and we have reached "peak oil." Our income taxes are paying for the conquest of the Middle East to feed the "beast." The cost of gas in this country is $10 to 15 per gallon if you count the cost of these "resource wars."
One-half of all federal discretionary spending goes to supporting the conquest for oil in Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia, as well as other missile shields and nuclear attack capabilities need to protect out resources.
Nixon spawned the Addington-Yoo legal mumbo-jumbo about subverting the constitution so that Cheney could take over the reins of the energy policy and counter-terrorism operations. The later did not even meet until September 2001. By then, the blowback from the resource wars resulted in 9-11.
President Bush cannot and will not answer the question as to why his friends and supporters in the oil, oil service industry, and the MIC have made hundreds of billions of dollars while the country has borrowed massive amounts. Oil is now at $95 per barrel and gas is going up from $4 to 10. Global warming is unchecked. The constitution is out-the-window. Why would anyone like this man?
The only thing Bush is oath-bound to is the oath he took when he joined Skull and Bones. I suspect he cleaves unto that oath like flies on shit.
Why are we not seeing you on television, Mr. Hart? After all this time, I still check every once in a while to see if you've revived your blogsite__always disappointed.
We need statemen like yourself back in office.
Great minds with great courage are in such short supply just when our nation needs them more than at anytime in our history.
Dubya is way too busy Deciden' and Leadin' to take time to talk to anybody. He just needs people around as props when he delivers this weeks mantra to Fox News.
"Can you remember a presidential speech where the audience was not hand-picked?"
Sure the State of the Union Address...
oh never mind, forgot, Turd Blossem and Diebold ran (ruined?) the congressional elections too.
And it's not just how the hand pick who they do talk to, but how they AVOID those who disapprove. They have procedures for how to stay clear from protesters, and how to make sure they don't come near the president. How this president has avoided and silenced this nation's dissenters should be considered an infringement on our right to protest. Being able to dissent against the government is what made this country great, and makes it what it is. How this administration and many republicans have changed the term dissenter to mean "un-American" is far more un-American.
I have been on the street in a so called "free speach zone". Ringed by police, not allowed to be seen or heard. What happened to "we" the people?
even FEMA likes the approach
I have to disagree with you emphatically. More recent speeches, given by the President have been more carefully over seen, but that could be due to the rhetoric and fervor that people not unlike yourself, have whipped the loons and nut cases, into. (Hoping for a possible assassination attempt?)
Yet this President has traveled to dangerous places and has gotten virtually no credit for it. Was it the meeting with the Chilean President, when President Bush's Secret Service protection was stop, not allowed into the door to protect him, roughed up by the Chilean guards, and President Bush, went back, waded into the fray and freed his man?
WHAT other President, in recent history have you seen do that?
I suppose you believe all the audiences in various Countries he visits are hand picked as well?
Do you actually think, when he speaks to the military in Iraq or at home they are hand picked? Our military is a cross section of Americans.
The paranoia is in your corner, so why don't you stop this now, with ONE year to go before elections, let American's catch a break and not have the hate diatribe coming at them, on a non-stop basis.
"We the People" have been carved up into essentially isolated special interest groups, to be pandered to individually. That way, no candidate or office holder (particularly Republicans, but Democrats aren't exactly immune to the temptation) ever has to try to convince a hostile audience. Makes them feel good, makes them look good, and keeps them under the illusion that everyone else agrees with them. It's a terrible practice, and should be subjected to unremitting ridicule. Unfortunately, the media in all its forms seems to have accepted it as business-as-usual.
Gary, thanks for posting on HuffPo. That's all.
Hear Hear, Thank you Gary.
We want to undue what has been done.
HR Bill 3835 The American Freedom Agenda Act
Get it passed!
and vote for Ron Paul
blue dog dem for ron paul
bush, the windshield cowboy, ain't got the balls for that. i guess he doesn't want to be the first president covered from head to toe with rotten tomatoes every time he steps out the door. his solution... get more extreme and limited. he never was a real president. a real president tries to govern for all. he governed for oil.
This is Bush's reality, plain and simple.
His people have put the bubble boy deep inside a separate world of uniform-wearing,flag-waving, syncophants. Variables are not left to chance, infact the only audience that is even remotely hostile is the Washington press corp, and they are rather docile, too.
Dear Senator Hart,
You have brought us here at Huffingington post, many fine essays/posts, but none quite so profound, poingnant, eloquently expressed, and succinct.
Agape.
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