In 1968, the McGovern-Fraser Commission altered the power dynamic of the electoral system. The disconnect today between vaunted American ideals of multiculturalism and the reality of Anglophone dominance in the presidency can in large part be traced to the American electoral system. President Obama is not the first President to lack multilingual faculties, nor should he shoulder all the blame for this being the case. He cannot converse with foreign leaders in their native tongue, nor can he speak with the millions of immigrants in this country in their first language. Although the annals of American political rhetoric are replete with laudatory remarks for the diverse combination of peoples, cultures, and languages unique to the United States, our Heads of State have been largely unrepresentative of America’s lingual vibrancy.
Ironically, however, President Obama cannot speak a second language himself. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.” “Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English - they’ll learn English - you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. At a 2008 campaign event, Senator Barack Obama responded to the perennial conservative impulse to make English the official language of the United States:
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