But in our first hour, do we really have the best democracy money can buy and is it better to be respected or feared? I want to take on these two memes. Over the past 30 years lobbyists have taken over the job of writing major parts of most legislation. Now they’re even writing the speeches for our legislators to give on the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate and to insert into the Congressional record. I’m gonna document what’s happened to our democracy, what we may be able to do about it.

And also what about that bowing? Well, conservatives are hysterical here in the United States that President Obama performed a diplomatic correct bow to Japan’s Emperor Akihito. ... I’ll share with you the reaction of the Japanese themselves, it will make the conservatives' heads explode, assuming of course that they bother to read the Japanese press which is probably a lot to assume because conservatives aren’t generally known as good readers or well informed. So let’s start right out with that.

The Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, President Obama met with them and did as George Washington was wont to do. Carl Wolfson was telling me this morning. George Washington preferred not to shake hands with people he liked to bow to them. So following in the tradition of our first president, actually following in the tradition of the people he was visiting. This is a matter of respect. This morning on Fox News, the official not a news source, the official propaganda arm of the Republican party, Carl Rove came out and as we might expect attacked the President for this. Here’s the video of that… Oh we’re not getting the audio, so, anyhow, we’ll figure this out.

But here’s the bottom line. Carl Rove said, ‘I think it’s best if American Presidents do what they’ve always done which is to stand for our small r republican values and do not bow to monarchs.’ Well as I said, this is just a matter, well, we don’t need to play it now, I just read it. But this is just, this is just a matter of decency, it’s just a matter of, you know, it’s like George Bush’s presidency was characterized by American flipping the bird to the rest of the world. And the rest of the world pretty much didn’t like that and it really didn’t help us as a consequence.

Now we have a President who is saying to the rest of the world, you know, we’re America, we’re proud of being Americans, we also honor and respect you and your traditions, we can all get along here. And while the conservatives are bloviating about this and hysterical about this on right wing television and I guarantee you every right wing talk show host in America today, you know, got the memo from Fox News, these days they don’t even need to get the memo they just watch Fox News in the morning instead of doing show prep. And they’re all going nuts about, 'oh my god we’ve got a President who is bowing to a former head of state?' Well, first of all I would ask the question of these people, uh, if you’re so upset about Barack Obama bowing to the Emperor, which is what is expected, everybody bows to the Emperor. Why were you not upset when George W Bush was kissing Saudi sheiks on the mouth and the face and walking around Crawford, Texas, holding hands with them? Or for that matter taking money from Osama Bin Laden’s half brother to bail out his failing oil company? Where were you then?

But here’s where it gets really interesting. We’ve got conservatives hysterical here, but what are the Japanese saying? Let me share with you some of the headlines. This I got from Examiner.com and I believe it was a link over at Democratic Underground that led me to it, DemocraticUnderground.com. These are all comments translated from the Japanese, most of them are headlines in the Japanese news. This is what the Japanese think about the fact that our President cared enough, had enough respect for the Japanese emperor to bow to him as people typically do when they’re brought before him. You know, there is this thing called protocol. Here are the quotes:

• “What a bow!”
• “Such a deep bow from Obama, what a fine guy.”
• “I’m surprised he bowed. He’s really trying hard to meet the Japanese way!”
• “President Obama is a top-class person, isn’t he? Amazing!”
• “The Emperor is giving a nice smile!”

I mean Japanese headlines, Japanese comments.

• “I laughed because it was a much better bow than I had imagined.”
• “Obama has more of a true Japanese heart than most Japanese do.”

You know, the conservatives are acting as if the Japanese are saying ‘Well we sure got one on that guy, what a sucker.’ No it’s the exact opposite. The Japanese are saying, you know ‘Finally, a US President who is taking us seriously. A US President who is paying attention to us. A US President who is actually behaving like the diplomat he is. What a surprise.’ What a shock, oh my god a President who’s behaving like a President should? Can we have this?

Let me tell you, the real issue here, now that I’ve ranted on this for a couple of minutes and shared with you my thoughts on it. Let me share with you my real thoughts and this is the real issue. And this is, I mean, certainly there’s an element of the reich saying whatever they can say to hurt Obama. You’re never going to hear nice words about President Obama out of Carl Rove’s mouth, that’s not his job. His job is to trash Obama so that he can reinvent Bush’s presidency and legacy so that 30 years from now, just like when Ronald Reagan left office most Americans breathed a huge sigh of relief and said 'thank god we got rid of him', and now 30 years later they’ve managed, through having spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars burnishing his reputation with the Reagan Legacy project, we’ve somehow managed to forget all those horrible things that he did and that happened on his watch, or at least modern conservatives have, they’re going to do the same thing with Bush. And part of that is villainizing Obama the same way that they villainized Jimmy Carter before Reagan and they villainized Bill Clinton after Reagan.

But here’s the real issue. The conservative world view, and this goes back to Niccolò Machiavelli, "The Prince" published in 1515. He said, “Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?” He said, “love is preserved by the link ... which ... is broken at every opportunity ...; but fear preserves you by a special dread which never fails.” And that’s the conservative world view. The conservative world view is very Machiavellian. They would like a President to go to a foreign country and basically say, 'do it our way or we’re gonna punch you in the face and drop bombs on ya!' And what they don’t get is that in a multi-national world, in a multi-lateral world, that’s a world view that actually doesn’t work. That’s a world view that harms America. Most of us understood this over the last 8 years.

Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.