Divider-in-Chief (14 page)

Anita Dunn, who served as the 2008 Obama campaign's communications director, told Suskind that on the campaign trail she was “shocked to find that in spite of Obama's popularity with female voters, his campaign had more to do with frat house antics than third wave feminism.”
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Former head of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) Christina Romer said she “felt like a piece of meat” whenever she visited the president.
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As president-elect, Obama met with Romer in Chicago to discuss her possible appointment to the CEA.

“But their first meeting would open on an odd note,” Suskind recounts. “Before exchanging hellos or even shaking hands, the president-elect delivered what seemed intended as a zinger: ‘It's clear monetary policy has shot its wad,' he said.”
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Suskind continues:

Suskind noted that by early summer 2009, “There was a nascent gender struggle in the White House.”
¹³

Many senior-level women complained that they felt invisible during meetings with Obama. They felt dominated by the male personalities in the room and frustrated by Obama's deference to them. The men included Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, Senior Adviser David Axelrod, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Geithner privately conceded to Suskind, “The perception is that women have real power, yet they all feel like shit.”
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Suskind writes, “The president had hired an array of strong-willed, accomplished women who felt the same way Romer did: ignored.”
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“‘[L]ooking back,' recalled Anita Dunn, when asked about it nearly two years later, ‘this place would be in court for a hostile workplace ... because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.'”
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Rahm Emanuel and Larry Summers (who had previously been a subject of controversy at Harvard, where he was president, for his comment that men were better than women at the sciences and engineering, and later for the revelation that only four of his thirty-two tenured appointments to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were women) were the worst offenders. At one point a woman staff member complained directly to the president about Emanuel's rough and chauvinistic demeanor, and indirectly suggested that Obama consider letting Emanuel go. Suskind writes:

“The president has a real woman problem,” an unnamed high-ranking female official told Suskind, adding, “The idea of the boys' club being just Larry [Summers] and Rahm [Emanuel] isn't really fair. [Obama] was just as responsible himself.”
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In
The Obamas
, journalist Jodi Kantor also examined the White House's male/female dynamics. Kantor describes how senior administration officials reacted when they learned that a
New York Times
reporter was writing a story about the hostile work environment for women in the White House.

The
Times
reporter got a call from senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who defended the president. “Her tone on the phone was defensive, insistent,” the reporter told Kantor.
¹⁹

Kantor reveals that the White House opposition to the piece “was being managed behind the scenes by none other than the president, who was personally dictating talking points to the aides who would speak to the reporter.”
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Once the story was published, Obama responded by inviting Melody Barnes, his chief domestic policy adviser, to join him for a round of golf—the first time a woman had joined his foursome. “The gesture caused a collective cringe among some women in the West Wing, because it was so transparently triggered by the story,” Kantor wrote.
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When the environment continued to deteriorate for women staffers, Obama hosted a women's-only dinner to discuss their grievances. The
meeting began with Obama peeking at his watch and asking, “Are there genuine concerns that I need to know about?”
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“It was an awkward, silent dinner where we were given one glass of wine and a piece of fish,” one participant told Kantor.
²³

Obama's White House was supposed to be different. Bush was allegedly the towel-snapping ex-fraternity president (though there is no evidence women who worked in the Bush White House were treated with anything but respect). Obama was supposed to be the personification of the progressive ideal of politically correct inclusiveness; but, as with much in the Obama White House, there was a deep disconnect between image and reality.

Inappropriate. Mean. Insulting. These are a few of the words President Obama used in condemning Rush Limbaugh's verbal broadside against Georgetown Law student and abortion activist Sandra Fluke. The president rarely misses an opportunity to ally himself with “aggrieved” women—so long as those women advance the liberal cause, or at least his own reelection chances, as he sees them.

Would that the president displayed as much sympathy for abused women who do not share his political views. But misogynistic attacks against conservative women are almost always met by Obama and the left with deafening silence. It's noteworthy that Obama claims to stand up for women, then abandons them if their ideology differs from his own. Not only does Obama decline to defend conservative women, he implicitly condones those attacks by continuing to associate with the perpetrators.

Soon after the Limbaugh-Fluke flap, Michelle Obama appeared on David Letterman's
Late Show
to plug her new book. Recall that in 2009 Letterman joked that Sarah Palin's then-fourteen-year-old daughter Willow had been “knocked up” by baseball player Alex Rodriguez while attending a Yankees game.
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More recently, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was Letterman's target when he bizarrely mocked her physique, suggesting that
her “ass” was too large. Rather than challenging Letterman's attacks, the Obamas enjoyed the media spotlight from Michelle Obama's appearance on the show.
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An entire book could be written that explores the left's vile attacks on conservative women. But one attacker in particular stands out: comedian Bill Maher, the host of HBO's
Real Time with Bill Maher
. Maher is a well-known liberal and an aggressive atheist. He's also a raging misogynist. Maher regularly insults conservative women in the most degrading terms. Maher has called Palin a “dumb tw*t” and a “c*nt.”
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In September 2011, Maher was discussing Texas Governor Rick Perry's debate performance and then joked about Sarah Palin. “He sounded like a sixth grader who didn't do the reading. Garbled syntax, messing up simple facts, sentences that went nowhere. Sarah Palin was watching and she said, ‘If only he was black, I'd f*ck him.'”
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He's called Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann “mentally retarded” and compared Newt Gingrich's wife, Callista, to a Martian. He's also theorized about the sexual practices of conservative commentator Michelle Malkin.
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But while liberals hyperventilated over Limbaugh's insults against Fluke, they had nothing to say about Maher's hateful and disgusting attacks. The week that Obama spoke up about Fluke, reporters reminded White House spokesman Jay Carney about Maher's prior comments, and asked if the president was prepared to denounce them, too.

Carney said the president would not get involved in the Maher battle, saying that it's not the president's place to be the “arbiter” of every controversial remark. Obama's silence was perhaps explained by the fact that Maher has been a huge donor to Obama. In February, Maher made a million-dollar donation to Obama Super PAC Priorities USA Action.
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The left thinks it can be as misogynistic as it wants in attacking conservative women, just as long as it guarantees a “woman's right to choose” an abortion and subsidized access to contraception. And that might be the most misogynistic attitude of all.

T
he Obama administration takes an extremely limited and divisive view of women's rights. In the Obama administration, “women's rights” is synonymous with free birth control and abortion-on-demand. Nowhere is that more the case than in the administration's policy toward women internationally. Indeed, abortion is at the heart of the Obama administration's diplomatic agenda.

On only his third day in office, Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, which prohibited organizations that receive U.S. taxpayer funding from promoting or performing abortions abroad.
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Obama's top diplomat, Hillary Clinton, is dedicated to spending billions to spread abortion abroad. Soon after becoming secretary of state, Clinton announced in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “We are now an administration that will protect the rights of women, including their rights to reproductive health care.”
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This was an ironic claim given how little concern the Obama administration has demonstrated for women across the globe, especially those oppressed in the name of Islam.

Clinton added, “We happen to think that family planning is an important part of women's health, and reproductive health includes access to abortion that I believe should be safe, legal and rare.”
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In 2010, during a Group of Eight (G8) meeting in Ontario, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper discussed an initiative to reduce maternal mortality in poor countries. The plan didn't address abortion, and later, when Hillary Clinton was visiting Quebec, she felt the need to weigh in. “I've worked in this area for many years,” she said at a press conference. “And if we're talking about maternal health, you cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.” Clinton's meddling was described by the
Toronto Star
as a “grenade in the lap of her shell-shocked Canadian hosts.”
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Earlier in 2010 Clinton had announced that the United States would engage in a massive funding push over the next five years to promote “reproductive health care and family planning” as a “basic right” around the world. “All governments will make access to reproductive healthcare and family planning services [also known as abortion] a basic right,” she declared.
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Congress appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and health programs globally, the largest allocation in more than a decade.

These programs were part of the Global Health Initiative (GHI), which Clinton said would commit the United States to spending $63 billion over six years.
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As if to reinforce the Obama administration's aggressive abortion mission within GHI, in 2011 Obama appointed abortion activist Lois Quam as its executive director.

In 2009, Secretary of State Clinton unsuccessfully lobbied the government of the Dominican Republic to reject a pro-life provision to its constitution.

The Obama administration had greater success in Kenya, where, in 2010, it spent $23 million to promote ratification of a national constitution that radically liberalized the country's abortion laws.
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Abortion had been illegal in Kenya except to save the life of the mother, a position that reflected
the views of the religiously and culturally conservative nation. In August of that year, Kenyans were to vote up or down on a draft constitution that included language that would legalize most abortions, making abortion a constitutional right.

The Obama administration and its abortion advocate allies were very involved in the lead-up to the referendum. The Center for Reproductive Rights pushed the administration, through Secretary Clinton, to “send a message to Kenya expressing support for the Draft Constitution and opposing any amendments to eliminate abortion language.”
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After the Kenyan Parliament approved the abortion liberalizing draft constitution, the White House released a statement praising the parliament's decision and telling Kenyans that a “united effort to see this important reform element through can help to turn the page to a promising new chapter of Kenyan history.”
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Vice President Biden was sent to Kenya to lobby for the constitution's passage, at one point telling a crowd of Kenyans that they should adopt the new constitution in order “to allow money to flow” to Kenya from other nations.
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“The United States strongly supports the process of constitutional reform,” Biden said. “Dare to reach for transformative change, the kind of change that might come around only once in a lifetime. If you make these changes, I promise you, new foreign private investment will come in like you've never seen.”