Rising Clamor: Obama Should Reinstate Shirley Sherrod

President Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack find themselves besieged today with demands from a vast array of liberal voices -- and some prominent conservatives -- to reinstate hastily fired USDA regional official Shirley Sherrod.

As new facts have emerged -- all of them pointing to the capricious nature of Sherrod's sacking -- the White House has found itself the target of stinging criticism from voices that are usually raised in defense of Democrats. Vilsack and Obama are being vilified not just for the pell-mell nature of Sherrod's firing, but for cravenness and cowardice as well.

Influential liberal columnist David Corn, no fan of George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, writes (almost admiringly) that the previous administration would never allow itself to have been sucker-punched in this way. "If a left-wing website had set up a Bush administration official during the Bush-Cheney years . . . the Bush-Cheney folks would have battled back," he wrote this morning. "You don't allow ideological enemies -- who want you to fail -- to define the terms."

Then again, it's almost as if the Obama administration sucker-punched itself. That's the take of Harvard government professor David Gergen, who worked for four presidents (three Republicans and one Democrat, Bill Clinton). To Gergen, Sherrod's firing illustrates how toxic our nation's civic discourse had become. "This has ripped away the veil and shown us all that is wrong with politics today," Gergen told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "An ideologue injects poison into the Internet, other people rush to judgment on camera, and an administration gets stampeded and commits this travesty of justice."

A contrite White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in apologizing to Sherrod, "I think if we look back and decide what we want to learn out of this, it is [that] everybody involved made determinations without knowing all the facts and all of the events."

To recap the story ever-so-briefly: Shirley Sherrod, a mid-level political appointee in the Georgia office of the United States Department of Agriculture, spoke recently at an NAACP regional meeting in which she told of her own journey confronting racism. The tale at issue concerned a white farmer whom Sherrod initially found off-putting until she realized that he was poor, too, and that he feared losing his farm just as much as the black farmers she had been trying to help.

More Shirley Sherrod Coverage:

- Vilsack Apologizes to Sherrod, Offers Promotion
- Shirley Sherrod Gets a White House Apology, Deserves a Book Contract
- Transcript of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' Remarks on Shirley Sherrod
- Shirley Sherrod Wasn't a Coward -- and She Paid the Price
- The Sad Tale of Shirley Sherrod: Vilsack Is the Villain
- Vilsack to Review Dismissal of USDA Official in 'Reverse Racism' Case
- RedState, NAACP Agree: Shirley Sherrod Got a Raw Deal
- Shirley Sherrod, Ousted USDA Official, Defended by Farmer She Helped, Others

An incomplete snippet of her talk was posted on BigGovernment.com by conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart, in which Sherrod is portrayed as a dawdling government bureaucrat practicing reverse racism. As it turns out, the incident was 24 years old, Sherrod was working for a local non-profit, not the government, and she ended up helping the man keep his land. The farmer's name is Roger Spooner and both he and his wife, Eloise, sing Sherrod's praises to this day. "She'll always be my friend," Eloise Spooner told Fox News.

But Sherrod wasn't allowed to give her side of the story to her bosses; she apparently was fired in mid-news cycle by hyper-insecure Ag Department officials desperate to keep her off Glenn Beck's Fox News program. And now the administration is paying the price for this seat-of-the-pants -- and spectacularly wrong -- judgment.

Writing on The Huffington Post, an influential site that two years ago virtually devoted itself to electing Barack Obama president, Adam J. Rose began his account with this pithy observation: "Shirley Sherrod has accomplished a number of things in her career, but she had never planned on uniting Glenn Beck and the NAACP."

And yes, it's true: Beck, the populist ogre whom Vilsack was so eager to avoid stirring up, attacked Obama, all right -- for getting rid of Shirley Sherrod. "She should not have been fired or forced to resign," Beck said. After interviewing none other than Shirley Sherrod herself (who can now go on any show she wants), Beck pointed out that her remarks were obviously taken out of context, and quipped that she should not only get her job back but a promotion as well.

Liberal Washington columnist Richard Cohen had a clever idea about just which job at the Ag Department that would be. (Hint: Tom Vilsack, brush up your résumé.) For his part, Vilsack said he was reviewing the matter -- even as the ubiquitous "Reinstate Shirley Sherrod" Facebook page was going viral.

As Vilsack and the White House were contemplating damage control, a rising crescendo of voices from the Tea Party's Mark Williams to the NAACP's Benjamin Todd Jealous (and not forgetting Farm Aid hero Willie Nelson) called on the White House to simply give Sherrod her job back. Sherrod's own take? She's not all that sure she wants it.