Economy, Not Diversity, Obama's Greatest Failure

Some of President Obama’s usual allies are suggesting he’s not as “down with the cause” as he should be.

On Thursday, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) told MSNBC that “it’s embarrassing as hell” that the Obama White House lacks diversity. “It could be the Harvard problem where people just know each other, trust each other and women and minorities don’t get a chance to rub elbows and their reputations and experience is not known,” he lamented.

Rep. Rangel made his comments after the New York Times published a picture of Obama surrounded by 11 advisers–totaling ten men, eight of whom were white.

This isn’t the first time black lawmakers have expressed racial indignation toward Obama. Two years ago, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Rep. Emanuel Clever (D-Mo.) told the Miami Herald “If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House.” Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) delivered even harsher criticism, saying, “We want to give [Obama] every opportunity, but our people are hurting. The unemployment is unconscionable.”

Perhaps, under the banner of “diversity,” Rep. Rangel is looking for the president to make more White House appointments with black faces. In the past, however, Obama has thrown black White House officials under the bus. From his former radical “green jobs czar” Van Jones to his current Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, when the going gets tough, Obama gets politically expedient. Newsflash to Rep. Rangel: even if Obama appoints more blacks, he’ll gladly ditch them if they impede his ability to implement his far-left vision.

The media should be asking how it is that Obama’s big government, tax-and-spend agenda has handed blacks–his most ardent supporters–four straight years of historically high unemployment, soul-crushing welfare dependency, and a grim economic future wrought with more of the same. Nearly half of all college graduates can’t find work, and every fourth child in America is on food stamps. But a more diverse White House will somehow heal the broken economy? I think not. 

To Rep. Rangel and the Beltway establishment, the question isn’t whether Obama’s policies are slamming America into an economic iceberg. No, their concern is with the color of the chairs on the deck.

“Embarrassing as hell,” indeed.