For a variety of pretty good reasons, we’ve never really known the extent of the threat Barack Obama has faced as the nation’s first black president. But one of the silver linings to the Secret Service scandal of recent days may be that some of the people in a position to know are providing more details than we’ve previously had about how serious that threat has been and how it’s changed over time.
From Juliet Eilperin’s piece today in the Post, this stands out:
After nearly six years in the White House, the number of overtly racist threats have subsided, but the threats in general continue. Today, the dominant theme of grievance in threats against the president is government overreach, according to current and former Secret Service officials, as critics suggest Obama is abusing his power and trampling the Constitution. …
Today, racially based threats constitute between 5 and 10 percent of the threats made against the president, according to individuals familiar with the matter. …
During the early days of Obama’s candidacy and his first year of his presidency, according to several individuals familiar with the matter, many of the threats against him had a frightening racist quality.
“If you had seen the stuff we were reading, it would have made your jaw drop,” said one former agent, who asked not to be identified, because of the sensitive nature of the topic.
“We continue to see a tremendous amount of anger against Obama,” she said, adding that much of it focuses on assertions that he has overstepped his constitutional authority.
Others have written eloquently about how the critiques of Obama for government overreach are not grounded in the historical reality of the use of executive branch power by his predecessors. Still others have made the sharp point that Obama’s supposed trampling of the Constitution is just a more polite way of delegitimizing him, in the same vein as Kenyan-born, birth certificate conspiracies, and the rest.
But this is the first time that I’ve seen so clearly how the mostly failed racist rhetorical attacks against Obama morphed, at least in the minds of those crazy enough to openly threaten the President, into the government overreach attacks. It’s not his race that makes him unsuitable for the highest office, it’s his demonstrated disregard for the Constitution and American traditions. It’s his assault on America that justifies assaulting him. But you can’t help but notice how the evolution of the threats against him tracks with the evolving political attacks against him that we treat as mainstream and acceptable. It’s a dark place we’re in.
