Just when you think Washington has exhausted every possible political argument, somebody finds a way to drag out one that should have been retired years ago. This time it’s former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd, who offered a remarkable explanation for why many Americans viewed Barack Obama as a liberal president.
According to Todd, it wasn’t Obamacare. It wasn’t climate policy. It wasn’t the Iran deal. It wasn’t the massive expansion of federal regulations. It wasn’t executive actions on immigration. Nope.
According to Todd, the reason many Americans viewed Obama as liberal boils down to one thing: Race.
Todd made the comments during an appearance on Chris Cillizza’s podcast while discussing Obama’s legacy and the political reaction he generated. “The far right viewed Obama as some left winger when Obama was basically a degree more liberal than Bill Clinton,” Todd said.
Cillizza jumped in and described Obama as, “temperamentally a moderate,” though “probably liberal on policy.”
That wasn’t enough for Todd. He immediately challenged the idea. “What policy was he that liberal on, Chris?”
Before Cillizza could finish his thought, he offered a theory of his own. “It’s because he was Black.”
Todd responded: “Thank you, the only reason people think he was liberal is because he’s Black.”
He then added: “Like it’s this, he governed more closely to George W. Bush than Donald Trump.”
Now let’s stop right there. Because this is where the conversation takes a sharp turn from political analysis into political mythology.
The idea that conservatives viewed Obama as liberal simply because of his race requires people to forget an awful lot of actual history. Remember Obamacare?
The Affordable Care Act wasn’t exactly a minor adjustment around the edges of government. At the time it was the largest restructuring of the American healthcare system in generations. Conservatives opposed it fiercely. Not because Obama was Black. Because they believed government was becoming too involved in healthcare.
Remember the administration’s climate agenda? Remember the Clean Power Plan? Remember DACA? Remember the aggressive use of executive authority when Congress wouldn’t cooperate? Remember Obama’s own declaration that elections had consequences?
These weren’t imaginary policy fights invented by talk radio. They happened. And people argued about them openly.
The funny thing about Todd’s argument is that it accidentally reveals a bigger problem inside much of the legacy media. Whenever conservatives disagree with a liberal politician, there is often an impulse to search for a deeper explanation. Maybe it’s racism. Maybe it’s misinformation. Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s resentment. Anything except the possibility that conservatives simply disagreed with the policies.
That’s the part that always seems to get lost. Millions of Americans opposed Obama’s policies while simultaneously admiring his personal story, his political talent, and his historic significance. Those ideas can coexist. In fact, they often did.
Obama himself frequently acknowledged political differences and ideological disagreements during his presidency. His supporters certainly viewed many of his accomplishments as progressive victories at the time. Now, years later, some commentators appear eager to rewrite the debate entirely. The effort to recast Obama as little more than a moderate misunderstood by conservatives feels a bit like trying to convince football fans that Tom Brady was actually just an average quarterback.
People watched the games. They remember.
One of the laziest habits in American politics is assuming disagreement must be explained by something other than disagreement. What makes Todd’s comments especially odd is that they require ignoring the fact that Obama was celebrated by progressives for many of the very policies now being described as moderate. Back then, supporters proudly pointed to healthcare reform, environmental regulations, executive actions, and expanded federal involvement in major sectors of American life as evidence of progress. Now we’re being told conservatives imagined all of it.
That’s a tough sell. The eye-roll moment is the suggestion that tens of millions of Americans couldn’t possibly have reached their conclusions based on policy differences and therefore must have been motivated by race.
