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President Barack Obama led his nation in the commemoration of the 81st birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King yesterday, drawing a parallel between the challenges faced by generations of freedom fighters and those facing contemporary Americans enduring a "hard winter" of financial hardship, war and persistent inequalities. In a homily delivered Sunday at Washington DC's Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, President Obama invoked a sermon given there by Dr. King in 1956, in the thick of the Montgomery bus boycott that counseled persistence and faith in the midst of a protracted battle against segregation.
Inevitably the Martin Luther King Holiday also brought debate over whether Obama's performance as president is worthy of the mantle of Dr. King, particularly since Jan. 20 marks the first anniversary of his inauguration to the presidency. Writing for the Huffington Post, Medea Benjamin argued that the President has fallen short in his policies related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a domestic agenda stalled by the logjam over health reform. In short, Benjamin said,
"[I]n the course of one year, those who thought President Obama would move our nation closer towards Dr. King's vision find themselves tottering, like King's memorial, between hope and despair."
Princeton University politics professor Melissa Harris Lacewell offered a scathing critique of left-leaning critics such as Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, who insists that Obama has not met King's standard as an advocate for racial justice:
"I disagree. Barack Obama is stunningly similar to Martin Luther King, Jr., but to see this similarity we must relinquish the false, reconstructed memories of perfection we currently project onto King."
As evidence, Harris-Lacewell recalled that Dr. King fired his close aide Bayard Rustin under pressure from critics such as Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, who was worried that Rustin's homosexuality could sabotage the effort to pass civil rights legislation. Rev. Irene Monroe recalls that episode as well:
"When Rustin pushed him to speak up on his behalf, King did not. In John D"Emilo's book Lost Prophet: The Life and times of Bayard Rustin, he wrote the following on the matter:
'Rustin offered to resign in the hope that his would force the issue. Much to his chagrin, King did not reject the offer..."
While Rustin was no doubt disappointed in King's failure to support him, I doubt that he was
surprised. Rustin was a master strategist and organizer who coordinated the 1963 March on Washington. He was also one of the movement's best fundraisers because he moved easily among the wealthy white civil rights sympathizers in New York an other cities. After the passage of the 1964 and 65 civil rights acts, Rustin argued that the best way forward was to shift from mass protests to electoral politics. His 1965 essay, From Protests to Politics, seems to anticipate the argument that Obama made Sunday:
"The role of the civil rights movement in the reorganization of American political life is programmatic as well as strategic. We are challenged now to broaden our social vision, to develop functional programs with concrete objectives."
In the past year, President Obama has had to confront the hard realities of governing. His approval rating is at 50 percent, according to a recent CBS poll. Interestingly, President Reagan's approval rating was 49 percent after the first year; President Carter's was 51 percent. It would be foolish to speculate on what voters will think of him when Congressional mid-term elections come this November, or when he stands for re-election in 2012. For his most fervent supporters in 2008, the answer may well hinge on the degree to which he can demonstrate that his pragmatism yielded results that move us closer to realizing Rustin and King's ideals.
