The Emperor Will Take No Questions

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Sun, 11 Dec 2005 21:32:59 -0800 (PST)

The Emperor Will Take No Questions

 

 

 

Gary Hart

Bio

 

 

12.07.2005

 

The Emperor Will Take No Questions The first U.S. president I ever

saw was Dwight Eisenhower during the presidential campaign in 1956. I

was in the top most balcony of the Oklahoma City civic center

auditorium and there were probably two or three thousand people

between me and the president.

 

But it was a great thrill to be there with a cross section of citizens

of Oklahoma City.

The event was open to all and, except for the big-wigs, we were

admitted on a first-come, first-served basis. The event did not lend

itself to questions and answers, but my recollection was that, in

those days, presidents did have a give and take with ordinary citizens.

 

If anyone then had told me that, in my lifetime, U.S. presidents would

appear only in select audiences of their hand-picked partisan

supporters, before patriotic tableau carefully designed by their

" communications directors, " and take questions only from pre-screened,

adoring fans, I would have scoffed at the idea of such

quasi-authoritarian practices ever becoming commonplace in the

republic of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Madison.

 

But, in the early 21st century here we are. I cannot recall an event

since the early Republican primaries in 2000 when George W. Bush has

gotten anywhere near a cross-section of the American people he has

been elected to represent and to govern. Here in Denver a few months

back, some local Republican hack who got himself up to appear to be a

Secret Service agent (a federal crime) hustled three local people out

of the hall where the president was to speak simply because they had

some kind of " no more war for oil " bumper strip on their car. The

White House still claims they had nothing to do with it.

 

Even today, President Bush used the august platform of the Council on

Foreign Relations, most recently granted to that great fraud and

pretender Ahmad Chalabi (who should have been held to account for the

deaths of 2100 Americans but was not), but only on the condition that

the president would not take questions from the kind of knowledgable,

informed leaders the Council seeks to attract.

 

How can a president govern who is so isolated, so cocooned away from

the American public, so protected from any question, let alone voice

of dissent? And how can the press, not only protected by the First

Amendment, but also heavily obligated by that protection, not

regularly report that the president has not seen a variety of real

Americans for FIVE YEARS?

 

This kind of unAmerican behavior destroys the very core of democracy.

It is more characteristic of a Latin American dictatorship than the

American republic. Of even deeper concern, this is the behavior of

frightened people. What is the Bush administration frightened of? Are

they really convinced the president is incapable of handling himself

in the give-and-take of democracy? Or are they simply afraid of the

American people?

T

hey may be afraid of me. But I'm even more afraid of them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/the-emperor-will-take-no-_b_11878.html