The New Yorker editor compares the current atmosphere in the U.S. to what happened in Israel under Yitzhak Rabin: the far right stirred things up so much that the political atmosphere became, literally, murderous.<br /><br />Question: How far <br />left is Obama? David Remnick: I think the notion that <br /> Barack Obama is a radical is preposterous. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who <br />is quoted in my book as saying that the only radical thing, the only <br />true radical thing about Barack Obama is that he's African-American. And <br /> I think that's true. That his politics are center/center-left, they <br />come out <br />of the tradition of the Democratic Party. In many ways they are <br />continuations of lines taken by the Clinton Administration. You know, <br />look at the healthcare bill itself. This is a more modest healthcare <br />bill than many proposed by others. He got what he could get and he <br />succeeded. Look at the so-called radical nuclear arms treaty just signed <br /> with the Russians. There's a lot of criticism on the right saying, <br />Barack Obama is giving away our security. He is stripping us of our <br />capacity to project strength in the world and to protect ourselves, and <br />in fact, the great left-winger Ronald Reagan was far more radical when <br />it came to nuclear arms policy. Remember, Rekjavik in the <br />period, <br /> I think Gorbachev-Reagan period were those two men who were intent on <br />reducing nuclear stockpiles to nothing. And here we've reduced it by a <br />third. I mean, the notion that Barack Obama somehow came out of a <br />radical cauldron in Chicago and somewhere in his desk drawer, in the <br />Resolute Desk in the Oval Office is a copy of Marx and Gramsci and Lenin <br /> is just obscene. It's ridiculous. And there are just too many elements <br />in the media and in politics trying to stoke these fires for those <br />absurd notions to disappear. Question: Will the <br />Republicans win in the midterm elections? David Remnick: <br /> It's very difficult to see. Look, I think there is a legitimate <br />conservative opposition, as you would expect. Of course that's going to <br />happen. There's going to be a legitimate Republican opposition, there's <br />going to be battles. What concerns me is not that so much. What concerns <br /> me deeply is the outer edges of it and the nature of the outer edges of <br /> it, and the way the outer edges are provoked by certain politicians and <br /> <br />certain parts of the internet and television, cable television and all <br />the rest. And the end result of some of that kind of ugliness can be <br />beyond our reckoning; really beyond our reckoning. And I don't want to <br />be too alarmist of it, but I remember, for example, in Israeli politics <br />during Yitzhak Rabin's time, when the far right there stirred things up <br />to such a degree that the political atmosphere in certain quarter became <br /> quite literally murderous. So, I think we need to be very <br />careful about lumping everybody together in, even the Tea Party <br />Movement. I might not agree with any of it, but the extremes of it are <br />really alarming. Recorded on April 9, 2010
