Obama: Rebuild Auto Industry, Repair Muslim Relations

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.

We have our Friday features for you. Later in Faith Matters, we'll tell you about a group of clergy, predominantly African-American clergy, who are rallying in support of same-sex marriage. They say they want to fight the perception that members of the clergy, especially black clergy, are anti-gay. We'll talk about this in just a few minutes. But first is our political chat. It's been a very busy week for President Obama, domestically and overseas. On Monday, the Obama administration took the long-anticipated step of pushing General Motors into bankruptcy. The next day, the president's Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, began making the rounds on Capitol Hill. And yesterday, President Obama made a landmark address from Cairo to the Muslim world.

Considering how much has happened in the last five days, we thought it was a good time to check in with some critical voices as part of our ongoing series, "The Loyal Opposition." That's where we've been keeping 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 first, though, we're going to 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 politics and culture magazine The Nation. Welcome to you both. Thank you for joining us.

Mr. CHRISTOPHER HAYES (Editor, The Nation): Thanks for having me.

Mr. GLEN FORD (Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report): Great to be here.

MARTIN: Let me start off with the big news from overseas, the president's address from Cairo. Needless to say, it was a very comprehensive address. I'm just going to play a short clip for people who missed it, to get a sense of the tenor of the speech. And here it is.

President BARACK OBAMA: America respects the right of all peaceful and law-abiding voices to be heard around the world, even if we disagree with them. And we will welcome all elected, peaceful governments - provided they govern with respect for all their people. This last point is important because there are some who advocate for democracy only when they're out of power. Once in power, they are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others.

(Soundbite of clapping)

MARTIN: Christopher, if I could start with you. And I think in the interest of full disclosure, we should mention your wife does work for the administration. She is an associate counsel on the White House Counsel's Office. The president's address in Cairo, as he said, meant to reboot the U.S.'s relations with the Muslim world, if there is such a thing, if we can use that term, and some people argue about that. But was this a useful step?

Mr. HAYES: Yeah, I think it was a useful step, certainly. I mean, I think it was both, you know, sort of, if you separate out the actual content of the speech, just giving the speech, I think, was probably a good idea. And I think, you know, there is a certain degree to which public perceptions really matter. There is a certain degree to which tone really matters, particularly in diplomacy in international affairs. And I thought it was tonally quite astute, in fact, if there's - you know, you can say a lot of things about Barack Obama, but he is real - kind of genius for tone, I think, generally.

MARTIN: Well, some people dispute the tone, some people particularly object to the notion that the president made an analogy between the Palestinian experience and, for example, the experience of African-Americans in the U.S., that sort of thing.

Mr. HAYES: Yeah. I actually thought that was one of the more powerful moments of the speech. Because I think that, you know, what it amounted to was - the entire sort of rhetorical objective of the speech was to try to sort of reach across these divisions and boundaries. And to say, you know, we do have some sort of shared conceptions of a sort of just, humane and peaceful future. And as the first African-American president to sort of call on that experience from the United States and sort of talk about it in the context of the Middle East, I thought, was actually a really powerful moment. I don't think he was saying that Palestinians live in something that came to slavery, yeah.

MARTIN: Okay, obviously we could spend our entire hour talking about this speech.

Mr. HAYES: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: …so we apologize for the shorthand. But there are a lot of things we want to talk about. Glen, your take on the president's speech - useful?

Mr. FORD: Oh, it was a profoundly different tone, and it was a very healthy shift in tone. George Bush did what Republicans have been doing for about two generations. He stirred up racial passions in an effort to get broad American support for his wars. And it's very much like the politician who stirs up, who makes blacks into the villains in order to get domestic support. And so it's a very healthy thing that Barack Obama has changed the tone. It was healthy that he assert that the United States is not engaged in a jihad or a crusade against Muslims. And it's healthy for the world that he didn't use those words, terror.

And that he did use the term occupation when he described what the Israelis are doing in Palestine. And he even admitted that the U.S. played a big role in overthrowing Mossadeq in Iran in 1953. These are all good things in and of themselves in order to counteract eight years of racism on an international scale, stealing from the mouth of George Bush.

MARTIN: Well, speaking of the whole question of racism, another hot topic -especially here in Washington - is President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. Of course, a very exciting pick for some people, but others are accusing her of being a reverse racist. Glen Ford, in your publication, Black Agenda Report, you have an article calling her - well, here's the title, you say, she is no Clarence Thomas but no Thurgood Marshall, either. Now should I interpret that as a rather lukewarm assessment by you? And what's your take on that matter?

Mr. FORD: Well, our managing editor, Bruce Dixon, wanted to point out, he wanted to put her nomination in perspective, that she was a corporate lawyer unlike Thurgood Marshall, who was a civil rights lawyer. Let's not get carried away in our euphoria at not having a George Bush-nominated prospective justice. The problem here is that she may be too late. Very shortly, the Supreme Court may launch an assault on - basically on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in possibly overturning the New Haven case that was decided by Judge Sotomayor. This could be a benchmark, and a bad one, for civil rights in America.

MARTIN: So you think she's really not a game changer, per se. You're saying that this is not as significant a nomination as some are making it out to be?

Mr. FORD: Well, you know, the Latinos have their Obama moments, and that's a good thing. And so I suppose from a Latino standpoint, it is a significant moment just as Obama was a significant moment for most black folks. But in terms of the impact on the court, again, the presently sitting court is going to decide the New Haven case. She won't be on that. And they may, in fact, reverse her decision as an appellate judge.

MARTIN: Okay. Chris Hayes, what's your take on the whole Sonia Sotomayor story?

Mr. HAYES: Well, yeah, I think one of the things that's gotten lost is the substance of her record, which is really quite moderate. I mean, she is sort of a moderate, you know, centrist-y, clearly, you know, towards the liberal side but squarely, squarely, squarely in the moderate mainstream. She was also a prosecutor and if you look back at - you know, and God bless prosecutors - but if you look back at her record, you know, she has sided quite often, routinely, with police and the state and prosecutors against the rights of defendants in terms of whether evidence gets thrown out or things like that.

MARTIN: So what do you make of the whole reverse racism issue?

Mr. HAYES: I think, you know, I don't know I want to…

MARTIN: I know Reihan Salam is going to want to talk about this because this whole thing is driving him crazy and…

Mr. HAYES: Yeah, I don't want to sound hyperbolic but I think it's been really crazy. I mean, I don't, you know, she gave this one speech. If you read the context of the speech, it's just impossible, I think, as a good-faith reading, to conclude from that speech that she is, quote-unquote, a reverse racist. And I have been really kind of shocked by the amount of toxicity and venom from certain quarters that her nomination has called forth. It is as if it must be the case, because she is Latina, that somehow she has gotten to this position in her life through, you know, these massive subsidies and advantages that are given to Puerto Rican women from the Bronx and…

MARTIN: (unintelligible) this whole question of the other, you know, the other, so therefore you have to prove your bona fides.

Mr. HAYES: I don't know, you know, even before her nomination there was this strange kind of obsession with, you know, you had journalists saying, well, you had people already talking about, like, will he have the guts to nominate a white man if a white man is the most qualified? The fact of the matter is, as Jeffrey Toobin wrote in The New Yorker recently, the court - first of all, the idea that there is one most qualified person is a ludicrous notion when conceiving the Supreme Court. There are dozens of people who are, you know, very qualified, very smart, you know, very accomplished. And the court has always, from its earliest days, been this kind of totemic area for diversity and the symbolism of sort of the kind of fabric of American moxy.

So it was a big deal when you had a Jewish justice. It's a big deal - Eisenhower picked Brennan because he wanted a Catholic justice. Diversity has always been a kind of a biding imperative.

MARTIN: We only have a couple of minutes left. So I just want to get the take from both of you on the whole General Motors bankruptcy. The government will own 60 percent of the automaker. Glen Ford, is this a good thing or not a good thing? Was this a good idea?

Mr. HAYES: Oh, what has happened with General Motors cannot in any way, shape or form be called a good thing. It did, however, provide President Obama an opportunity to show how profoundly he would, if given the opportunity, intervene federally in the economy. Many people on the progressive side were fantasizing, it turns out, that with a say in a revamped General Motors, a big public say, we might see their factories retooled to build public transportation, to build a railroad and subway cars and such.

But Barack Obama has indicated he has no interest in the federal government having a hand in the direction General Motors is going to do outside of its financial affairs. So that's a great disappointment for those who expected that these green industries might get a boost directly from federal involvement.

MARTIN: Chris, we only have a minute left. Your final thought about General Motors?

Mr. HAYES: You know, it's a very confusing situation. And I just sort of recall - I think it was the Ho Chi Minh quote about whether the French Revolution was a success, and he said it was too early to tell.

(Soundbite of laughter)

So I think it's going to be a long time until we figure out, you know, what actually comes out on the other end of this process, which is so far quite messy.

MARTIN: Christopher Hayes is the Washington editor at The Nation. He joined us in our Washington, D.C., studios. Glen Ford is the executive editor of the weekly online publication the Black Agenda Report. He joined us from member station WBGO in Newark, New Jersey.

Coming up, we'll hear from the conservative voices of the Loyal opposition about the week in politics. Please stay with us on TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin.

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.