MICHEL MARTIN, host:
I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.
Coming up, we go behind closed doors to talk about what might be a silent epidemic among teenagers, violence in their romantic relationships. We'll have that conversation a bit later in the program, but first, it's been a little over 50 days since Barack Obama became president. Just seven weeks ago, nearly two million people ignored frigid temperatures and crowded the National Mall to applaud his historic inauguration.
In the days and weeks after those cheers faded, the new president has presented his first budget and an array of new policy ideas. And the critics have begun to make their voices heard too. So we decided it was time to welcome back some of those critical voices to our ongoing series, The Loyal Opposition. It's where we keep tabs on the Obama administration's progress through the eyes of his more pointed critics on both the left and the right.
We're going to hear from two conservative voices in a few minutes, but for now, though, we hear from the progressives. Joining us are Glen Ford, the executive editor of the weekly online publication, Black Agenda Report, and Christopher Hayes, the Washington editor of the political and cultural magazine, The Nation. Welcome.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER HAYES (Editor, The Nation): Thanks for having us.
Mr. GLEN FORD (Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report): Good to be here. Thanks for the invitation, Michel.
MARTIN: Well, okay, Glen, I'll start with you because you were here with us before. We're going to tackle some of the specifics in a moment. But for now I want to ask whether you think it's even fair to offer an assessment at this point, even though I asked you, but is 50 days reasonable?
Mr. FORD: Well, 50 days, he said he was off to a fast start, and I guess the question is down what kind of path. And we think it's quite evident at Black Agenda Report that he's down - going down a very decidedly corporate path. We don't need more than 50 days to discern that.
MARTIN: Okay. Chris Hayes, your thoughts?
Mr. HAYES: Yeah, I think you can make some assessments about the inclinations and dispositions of the administration, but I would say that, you know, given the fact that there is so much going on in the world and so much that has to be done at a federal level, I think I'm disposed to be fairly charitable in my assessment.
MARTIN: Okay, what is your assessment?
Mr. HAYES: Well, look, I think you could sort of break it up into three areas. I think on domestic policy, I think the stimulus and I think the budget they laid out is good. I think that the provisions for cap-and-trade and also health care are two very important needed structural reforms for the basic social contract in America. I think on foreign policy they've been bad, particularly the things that they've - elements of the Bush administration policy on the war on terror, which they seemed to be kind of on a glide path to continue the escalation in Afghanistan and the plans on Iraq.
And on the financial rescue, I think they've been ugly. I think that the financial rescue has been largely a disaster. I think we're continuing to shovel billions of the taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the malefactors, and I think if that continues, it will ultimately undermine the entirety of the agenda.
MARTIN: Nothing big, just undermining the entire agenda.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: Okay. Glen Ford, your assessment. You said he's going down a decidedly corporate path, and you don't think that's what the country needs. Tell us more.
Mr. FORD: Certainly in the key area of health care, we just recently witnessed a White House sponsored health forum, with about a 150 participants. And yet, initially, not one supporter of single-payer health care - which by the way, is supported by a majority of people in most of the polls that have been taken -not one supporter of single-payer health care was initially invited.
Finally, on the Wednesday before the Thursday forum, under tremendous pressure from labor and other groups, the White House relented and invited just two single-payer supporters, Congressman John Conyers and Dr. Fine of a physicians group in favor of single-payer health care, into that forum. And this shows Barack Obama's modus operandi.
What he does is he shuts out progressives, so that in the end he is the most progressive-seeming voice in the room. And that his agenda, in this case, a health reform that includes the for-profit insurance industry, he seems like he's the only voice in town - the only viable option. And if he continues this, then we can really conclude that he is determined to have a kind of center-right administration - center-right, certainly, in terms of the Democratic Party.
MARTIN: It's interesting that you mentioned health care because one of the criticisms of him from people who, well, I'll let you characterize, that has been that he's trying to do much and that perhaps he shouldn't even be focusing on health care at this point - that the people like Warren Buffett, former GE CEO, Jack Welch, complained he's taking his eye off the ball.
David Brooks, the conservative columnist for The New York Times wrote in this March 11th op-ed that he's taking his eye off the ball as he spends hours every day working on health care, education and energy - worse, he adds uncertainty into the market. If by summer the crisis has passed, then he should go back to the long-term stuff, but the world is too uncertain just now.
If the economy collapses, history will judge him harshly for having a budget process that is on an entirely separate track from his crisis response project. I'd like to ask each of you about this. Chris, why don't you take that first?
Mr. HAYES: Yeah, I think Glen's point about his - the president's inclination to shut progressives out of the conversation is both very astute and worrisome to me, as well. But I think it's important to make a distinction between his tendency to do that rhetorically and where things are legislatively. If we're looking at what is going to be produced by the combination of this Congress and this president, Barack Obama is not the right-most boundary for what's going to be produced.
The right-most boundary is the 60th vote in the Senate and that's Olympia Snowe, or Susan Collins or it's Arlen Spector, whoever it is. So when you're looking at health care, when you're looking at cap-and-trade, when you're looking at a lot of the domestic - the major domestic policy issues that are coming through this budget - you know, a lot of it seems focused towards winning over that 60th vote. And that's, I think, a structural problem with the filibuster and the nature of American democracy.
MARTIN: Okay, but what about this he's taking on too much idea?
Mr. HAYES: I think that's silly. I mean, the fact of the matter is, they have a lot of capacity, there's a lot of things to get done and they have a lot of political capital. So I'm happy to see them tackling a lot.
MARTIN: Glen, I want to hear from you. Sorry, Glen, just need to jump in just for a minute to say if you're just joining us, you're listening to TELL ME MORE from NPR News. We're speaking with Glen Ford and Christopher Hayes, the loyal opposition, the liberal progressive side, and we're talking about the president's first two months on the job. Glen Ford, doing too much?
Mr. FORD: I don't know that - that's just the fat cats crying like babies because he's not paying all of his attention to them. They can never, of course, be satisfied. And a common gripe on the left is that he spends too much, far too much time, trying - and resources, by the way, tax cuts - trying to satisfy the fat cats who are insatiable. And it's not that Barack Obama himself represents the furthest position to the right, it is that he moves the bar in the totality of his actions.
He moves the bar to the right, as he did at that health forum, as he has done throughout the entire time that the broader country has known him on the Iraq war, to the extent that he has now positioned, in terms of Iraq, to the right of Democratic congressional leadership.
MARTIN: I don't have anybody talking about this, but we made so much of - so much was made of, this is the first African-American president, and I'm curious if anybody thinks that race plays a role in how his tenure is being evaluated. Chris, what you think? I'll ask both of you.
Mr. HAYES: Yeah, I mean, I don't think it doesn't play a role, but I do think that the enormity of the events and the challenges faced has sort of subsumed everything. I mean, it's really remarkable. It subsumed a lot of, you know, I've been watching, I've been watching "The West Wing" on DVD. And it's really hilarious to go back to that period of time in politics in which every episode is about flag-burning amendments and these kind of, what seemed to us now, I think, fairly trivial, kind of cultural war fights.
The stakes are so large for everything right now that I think a lot of the politics that is drawn around these sort of identity cultural categories has been subsumed underneath the weight of the recession.
MARTIN: I don't know, I still see a lot of letters to the editor about why does he not wear his jacket in the Oval Office, which I'm intrigued by.
Mr. HAYES: Yeah, I know. Yeah.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MARTIN: Clearly written by people with (unintelligible). Glen, what do you think? What you think, does race play a role in how he's being evaluated?
Mr. FORD: Well, certainly. Certainly in black America race plays a role. We have had a quietude in black America ever since Barack Obama became a serious candidate for president, that is, a organized black America has made no demands of this president - not even the mildest of suggestions to him. And I, in my entire career, and I'm no kid, have never seen organized black America so silent.
MARTIN: And is that a problem?
Mr. FORD: Oh, it's a great problem. It's a great problem for progressives as a whole because without the consistently progressive black constituency, there's no possibility of a progressive movement in America. So when black folks are quiet and not questioning what the chief executive is doing, then progressives have lost that at least half of their potency.
MARTIN: Final question to both of you. The president has another two months, I said before, that he gets his traditional 100-day progress report. And I'm not sure how I remember how that marker became the marker, even though it seems to have been, you know, we've accelerated that whole process. Glen, what does President Obama need to do to get a better grade from you in the next 50 days?
Mr. FORD: I don't know. But the 100 days stems from FDR. And progressives have constantly, wishfully said, I believe, that they think that Barack Obama has a chance to do what FDR did and that is to take advantage of the crisis and, in fact, that's what is - Hillary Clinton and Rahm Emanuel are always talking about, don't let a good crisis go to waste - and make some transformational changes in American society. And I see nothing transformational coming out of this presidency except the breaking of the color bar for the presidency.
MARTIN: Okay. Chris Hayes, you get the last word.
Mr. HAYES: Well, I think in terms of transformational, if we get cap-and-trade legislation that does not give away - that auctions all the credits - that would be truly transformational.
MARTIN: And explain that for people who don't know.
Mr. HAYES: So it would be a way of pricing carbon, essentially, in which we would cap carbon, and then carbon emitters would have to pay to emit carbon. And I think if we can - that is part of the budget and that's going to move through Congress - if cap-and-trade were passed in the next 50 days, that would count to me as a transformational change to American government.
MARTIN: And very briefly, what else does he have to do to get a better grade from you?
Mr. HAYES: Well, I think that he has to break more firmly from some of the war on terror precedence that had been set by the Bush administration.
MARTIN: All right. Well, we'll - to be continued. Christopher Hayes is the Washington editor of the political and cultural magazine, The Nation. He was kind enough to join us from our Washington D.C. studios. Glen Ford is the executive editor of the weekly online publication, The Black Agenda Report. And he was kind enough to join us from member station WBGO in north New Jersey. I thank you both so much.
Mr. HAYES: Thank you.
Mr. FORD: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
