What if the Next President Doesn’t Know History?

The gaffe has found its way on numerous websites: Michele Bachmann mistakenly confused New Hampshire’s Concord with Massachusetts’, botching history along the way. She is not alone in her personal revisionism: Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi seems to have forgotten much of the injustices towards African Americans in the history of his state. Mike Huckabee, in his own right, seems to have gone back in time and placed a young Obama in Kenya, where he supposedly learned about the Mau Mau Revolution from an anti-British perspective.
Did they simply misspeak? Or is there a serious lack of knowledge of historical facts in the Republicans’ top crop? And if so, should we be worried? My answers would be “no”, “yes”, and “absolutely”.
Maybe this isn’t surprising given that many Americans actually don’t have a solid grasp of much of our nation’s past. But, then again, most Americans aren’t running for President. We can be forgiving if a passing pedestrian doesn’t know about New England’s geography, Mississippi’s racial conflict history, or basic facts about our President’s life. But if you’re the President of the United States, who needs to know how to avoid fighting the wrong wars, how to revitalize the economy, how to improve education and infrastructure, and how to get our nation on the right track, you need to understand America’s past. It is imperative that our President know what the Presidents before them did. Conservatives may be furious with the fact that the “liberal elite media” is ecstatically plastering Bachmann’s, Huckabee’s, and Barbour’s gaffes all over the internet; to note, Conservatives4Palin has compared Bachmann’s fallacies with Obama accidentally calling Europe a country – but the analogy doesn’t work. While it is clear Obama misspoke, we cannot confidently state that Bachmann did the same. The “lamestream media” is right to call her, and other contenders, out.As for Bachmann, she should have known the basic facts about the Revolution. She was clearly using her non-fact to pander to New Hampshire voters, so we know that she was trying to use the fiction to her advantage. But it’s essential to properly understand our nation’s founding. How else can a President best understand a nation’s fundamental principles? This problem is especially pertinent because she was incorrectly educating voters. Our President needs to know the basic facts, and New Hampshire’s residents need to know the truth about their legacy. America rests on its foundation – let’s not forget what it’s made of, and let’s especially not misconstrue realities in order to win votes. TheTea Party movement itself is a reference to America’s past. Should it not be founded on an accurate understanding of what happened?
When you look at Barbour, you see everything the GOP does not want in a mainstream candidate. Though he is an effective governor who has served Mississippi well over the years, his historical blurring of racial injustices is deeply concerning. In a nation with a deep and troubled racial past, injustices are still alive and well. To airbrush history is to do injury to not just the truth, but also to our society. If people forget the mistakes and trials of the past, how can they possibly make amends? A President should be more responsible, and should have the courage to acknowledge mistakes and be ready to further equality. The status quo is not enough.
Most unjust, however, may have been Huckabee’s dishonest jab at President Obama, claiming that Obama was influenced by a childhood in Kenya. We know that Obama did not grow up in Kenya and barely knew his own father. To claim that the Mau Mau incident shaped Obama’s worldview, and affected his decision to swap a bust of Churchill with a bust of Lincoln is rather ridiculous. (The bust, by the way, went to another room, not back to Britain, according to Salon.com’s Steve Kornacki.) Salon.com’s Joan Walsh correctly notes that “if he’d traded Lincoln for Churchill the same people would be attacking him as a snobby Europhile”. Walsh is absolutely right: it is a strange hypocrisy that seeks to derail Obama’s Presidency. Republicans need to accept the facts that Obama was born in the US, and grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia. Of course, for Huckabee to then claim he was actually referring to Indonesia is ludicrous. Again, as Walsh notes, there was obviously no Mau Mau Revolution in Indonesia. And if Huckabee thought there was, then there are serious issues with his grasp of history – a president needs to understand international history to successfully shape international diplomacy.
America’s President faces an extremely difficult job. He or she needs to be someone who knows exactly what is going on today, what went on yesterday, and what went on ten, or even over a hundred years ago in order to best understand what needs to be done tomorrow. He can’t hesitate; he must have his facts right to begin with. Imagine if our 45^th President started a war for the wrong reasons? Some feel that has already happened once. We can’t afford to let it happen again.
Photo credit: Rtr10, Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Huckabee_SC_concession.JPG