Staunchly liberal voice Martin Peretz, longtime editor of The New Republic magazine, has unleashed an attack on President Barack Obama, saying he fears a “betrayal” on a number of issues.
Peretz bought The New Republic in 1974 and served as its editor in chief for 33 years beginning in 1978. He was a strong supporter of Obama in 2008. But in an article published Sunday in The New York Times Magazine, Peretz revealed his disenchantment with Obama.
“I’m not sure I feel betrayed, but it’s close,” Peretz told the Times. “Our first African-American president has done less to fight AIDS in Africa than George Bush. He’s done nothing on human rights, nothing to fight rape in Africa.”
Peretz, an outspoken supporter of Israel, has been increasingly critical of Obama. He wrote in one column: “Frankly, I am sick and tired of President Obama's eldering — more accurately, hectoring — Israel's leaders. It is, after all, they whose country is the target of an armed and ideological cyclone that Obama has done precious little to ease.”
In November, Peretz suggested that Democrats might be better served if they did not nominate Obama for re-election: “Wouldn't it be better that, rather than have a Republican candidate trounce him in the general elections, a Democrat try to unseat him in the party primaries and at the convention. Surely, there are many sensible Democrats who realize that the ‘yes, we can’ dream is, in fact, Obama's own hallucination.”
