We know President Obama wants a lasting deal on immigration, something to make taxes fairer, a little help from a caveman Congress on climate change. If he’s lucky, he might get some of the above. But one thing his worst opponents have never given him, and probably never will, is respect. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
From the day he took office, his legitimacy has been challenged, his American birth has been suspect, and he’s been personally insulted, lectured, yelled at and disrespected in public, by public figures, in a way that few if any American presidents have ever faced.
The latest example of this may seem a trifle — the crude comments of a Republican congressional staffer, Elizabeth Lauten, about the first family. She resigned after making fun of Sasha and Malia Obama last month. And while Lauten certainly proved her shortcomings as a communications director, making the story about her instead of some platitudinous deed of her boss, Representative Stephen Fincher of Tennessee, her swift resignation was seen as validation for the last line of civility still standing in uncivilized Washington.
The impulse insults that flow from social media are invariably dismissible, and often forgivable. This is your brain without filter. Add an extra dimension for the young and impetuous. But overlooked in Lauten’s Facebook takedown of the Obama kids was a lecture on their family values:
“Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play. Then again your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department.”
The subtext, consistent with Republican treatment of the president since day one, is the idea that he and the first lady are not decent or normal people — expressed here as failed role models who have tarnished the positions they hold.
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