President Obama is about as socialist as Ronald Reagan
Over the past three years or so, I, for a variety of reasons, have had to just “grin and bear it” while a significant number of my middle class friends, colleagues, and associates repeatedly and rabidly rant about how President Obama–a wealthy, biracial, former head of the Harvard Law Review, is some sort of “socialist” Robin Hood who wants to take from the rich and give to the poor. The irony, of course is that President Obama is advocating cutting taxes for many of the same middle class, rank-and file Republicans who have ranted the loudest against him. So I began doing some research to give credible support to what I already believed in my heart and mind: President Obama is NOT a socialist. He may be a politician, a pragmatist, a “rockstar”, and any number of other things—but he is NOT a socialist. So since I’m mad as heck, and I’m not going to take it anymore, I’d like to take this time to quickly elaborate on why,when it comes to Obama, his detractors are entitled to their own opinions, but they’re not entitled to their own facts:
Fact #1: The tax rate on the wealthy was greater under Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton and the entire first Reagan term than it currently is under Obama. The top tax rates under FDR, Truman and Eisenhower were all in excess of 90%. They dropped to 70% during the Kennedy/Johnson /Nixon years. It was 50% during through the entirety of Reagan’s first term, until he cut it to 35%. Clinton raised it back to approximately 40% . Technically Bush II’s 35% was higher than the rate was under Bush I when the tax rate on the richest of the rich was as low as 29% in some cases. Currently, the top tax rate is the same now as it was under Bush II. Even if Obama had been successful in raising the top tax rate back to “Clintonian levels”, he still wouldn’t have even come remotely close to the top tax rates from 1942 through 1986. So how come no one ever called Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, or Clinton a socialist?
Fact #2 The concepts of welfare, social security, medicare , and government funded healthcare were not the “brainchildren” of President Obama. They were here long before he was even born. Those of us who didn’t sleep through our history classes remember that in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt implemented the “New Deal”– a cluster of programs designed to produce government jobs for the unemployed, economic recovery, and Wall Street reform. Social Security, the FDIC, and the Securities Exchange Commission are all components of the “New Deal” that have survived through every administration from Roosevelt’s through Obama’s. Not even the most conservative of our conservative Presidents have seen fit, or been able, to get rid of them. Several political historians have stated that as early as 1912, Theodore Roosevelt included universal healthcare as part of his political platform. About twenty years later, Teddy’s cousin, FDR, proposed making healthcare a part of the “New Deal” but abandoned the idea after receiving much the same criticism from his political opponents that Obama currently receives from his. In the sixties, President Lyndon Johnson didn’t push for universal healthcare, but did sign medicare and medicaid into law, which still exist even today. Surprisingly, even Richard Nixon had his own plan for universal healthcare which, ironically was thwarted by Ted Kennedy because it didn’t have a “single-payer” option. Even though Clinton’s healthcare plan failed, in part because of Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in it, Bush II expanded upon LBJ’s medicare plan with a prescription drug benefit for senior citizens. President Obama is merely one President, in a long line of Presidents from both parties, who have pursued the prospect of universal health care. The only substantive difference between Obama’s healthcare plan and all the others that were proposed from 1912-2000 is that Obama’s plan was passed in both houses and was signed into law. Look folks, everything I told you is common knowledge to anyone with enough intellectual curiosity to bother to look it up. If we as a nation are going to have any sort of intelligent conversation or debate about the issues that plague our great nation, we’ve got to move away from overly emotional partisan hyperbole on both sides, and deal in simple facts and truths. Let’s stop with all the ridiculous Glenn Beck chalkboard explanations, the venomous Keith Olbermann “special comments”, and the fearmongering Alex Jones New World Order conspiracy theories because they don’t get us anywhere. 
Recognize the standard modern political pundit or commentator for exactly who he or she is—a person who gets paid for spouting talking points with more cleverness, wit, volume, or feigned indignance than the next guy (or gal). We are better than that. We MUST be better than that. If you don’t like President Obama’s rhetoric, than say so. If you don’t like his policies, than say so. If you think he’s taking the country in the wrong direction, than say so…but don’t call him a socialist, unless you’re willing to paint a whole lot of other Presidents (from BOTH parties) with the same “broad brush”.
