Is Barack Obama is a platonic ideal?
Why did it take me so long to get around to reading David McCullough's wonderful biography of our second president, John Adams? Last night I finally finished it. It was a great read.
There are many things about Adams' life that remind me of our present era. Not the least of these is the tendency of the newspapers back then to lionize the candidates of their own party and demonize those of the opposition. Indeed, the kind words the Anti-Federalist newspapers had for Adams upon his election are all the more striking for their departure from the norm.
It didn't last. Adam's lack of enthusiasm for the French Revolution and his preference for a strong executive was somehow spun even by his friend Thomas Jefferson into a charge that he was at heart a royalist rather than a republican. That was hogwash, of course- and Jefferson, deep down, probably knew it. But the mud flew in both directions in the campaign of 1800, one of many in our history whose remembrance places the slanders against George W. Bush and the stridency of the opposition to Barack Obama into perspective. There were green states and orange states long before there were red states and blue states, and periods of relative civility in our public life have been the exception rather than the rule.
A friend of mine whose academic pursuit of our mutual interest in history went a bit farther than mine once chuckled at my distress at the lack of civility in contemporary politics. It's always been that way, he reminded me. Of course, on some level I already knew that. Character assasssination has been more the norm than the exception in American presidential politics. Who can forget the election of 1884, in which Republican reminders that Democrat Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock-"Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?-" received the response, "Gone to the White House- ha, ha ha!," once Cleveland had safely defeated "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine- the continental liar from the state of Maine!"
In a day in which Newsweek recently featured a sycophantic cover story on President-elect Barack Obama suggesting that he (metaphorically) "channels" Abraham Lincoln, it's easy to forget that just as George W. Bush is "the smirking chimp" to his opponents, so our greatest president and Obama's fellow Illinoisan was "the original gorilla."
Nor is it a new thing that journalistic admirers of a candidate should idealize him. That being the case, Richard Cohen's odd piece suggesting that that Barack Obama has merely spent his public career pretending to be a radical in a fashion any insightful person should readily have seen through contains a great percentage of pap. It is certainly the case that Obama- with the help of a media almost entirely in the tank for him- suppressed his own record of far Left positions and sympathies and ran a remarkably contentless campaign, centered on one hand around the rather obvious fact that he was not George W. Bush , and on the other the dubious premise that John McCain actually was.
I share Cohen's expectation that Obama will govern from the center. Now that he has power, that's the only way to hold it. Moreover, Obama is smarter than his ideological history suggests. He's proven himself quite capable of learning as his level of experience and knowledge has increased. No doubt the Obama of today is far more of a centrist than the Obama whose long-standing connection to weatherman Bill Ayers (who hosted a coffee for Obama in the president-elect's first campaign for elective office, and served with him on the boards of several non-profit agencies) and his radical (though heavily- and dishonestly-rationalized) history on the subject of abortion, or his twenty years listening to the anti-American diatribes of his hate-filled minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright- before being shocked to learn of the content of what he'd been listening to for twenty years might suggest.
But Obama is a human being like the rest of us, and Cohen's fantasies to the contrary, he will not govern as one "above politics." Nobody can. Every idea has its antithesis, and in order to avoid partisanship Obama would have to avoid doing anything with regard to any problem concerning which any difference of opinion exists among anybody. Even then, a failure to act would doubtless draw criticism.
Sorry, Mr. Cohen. Barack Obama is not the platonic ideal of a president you fantasize about. Such a creature might actually exist in one of those nations in which the president is merely the head of state, and a prime minister or chancellor is the head of government. In such a nation, a president might maintain a bi-partisan personal popularity precisely because it is no part of his job description to offend anybody. But the American presidency involves headship of government as well as state, and requires that he who holds it actually govern. And he who governs- be it ever so wisely- creates controversy by that very act.
The "cool "style and godlike "detachment" you praise, and which served Mr. Obama so well in the recent campaign, cannot last. As tragic as it might be to those who treasure the illusion of Barack Obama, beginning on January 20 he will have to govern. And once he inherits responsibility for all those matters concerning which he and his admirers have found it so easy to criticize George W. Bush, he will inherit every bit of controversy that attends them.
And worse, he will actually have the responsibility of bringing them to a successful conclusion, and face the prospect of being held accountable if he does not.
HT: Real Clear Politics
There are many things about Adams' life that remind me of our present era. Not the least of these is the tendency of the newspapers back then to lionize the candidates of their own party and demonize those of the opposition. Indeed, the kind words the Anti-Federalist newspapers had for Adams upon his election are all the more striking for their departure from the norm.
It didn't last. Adam's lack of enthusiasm for the French Revolution and his preference for a strong executive was somehow spun even by his friend Thomas Jefferson into a charge that he was at heart a royalist rather than a republican. That was hogwash, of course- and Jefferson, deep down, probably knew it. But the mud flew in both directions in the campaign of 1800, one of many in our history whose remembrance places the slanders against George W. Bush and the stridency of the opposition to Barack Obama into perspective. There were green states and orange states long before there were red states and blue states, and periods of relative civility in our public life have been the exception rather than the rule.
A friend of mine whose academic pursuit of our mutual interest in history went a bit farther than mine once chuckled at my distress at the lack of civility in contemporary politics. It's always been that way, he reminded me. Of course, on some level I already knew that. Character assasssination has been more the norm than the exception in American presidential politics. Who can forget the election of 1884, in which Republican reminders that Democrat Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock-"Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?-" received the response, "Gone to the White House- ha, ha ha!," once Cleveland had safely defeated "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine- the continental liar from the state of Maine!"
In a day in which Newsweek recently featured a sycophantic cover story on President-elect Barack Obama suggesting that he (metaphorically) "channels" Abraham Lincoln, it's easy to forget that just as George W. Bush is "the smirking chimp" to his opponents, so our greatest president and Obama's fellow Illinoisan was "the original gorilla."
Nor is it a new thing that journalistic admirers of a candidate should idealize him. That being the case, Richard Cohen's odd piece suggesting that that Barack Obama has merely spent his public career pretending to be a radical in a fashion any insightful person should readily have seen through contains a great percentage of pap. It is certainly the case that Obama- with the help of a media almost entirely in the tank for him- suppressed his own record of far Left positions and sympathies and ran a remarkably contentless campaign, centered on one hand around the rather obvious fact that he was not George W. Bush , and on the other the dubious premise that John McCain actually was.
I share Cohen's expectation that Obama will govern from the center. Now that he has power, that's the only way to hold it. Moreover, Obama is smarter than his ideological history suggests. He's proven himself quite capable of learning as his level of experience and knowledge has increased. No doubt the Obama of today is far more of a centrist than the Obama whose long-standing connection to weatherman Bill Ayers (who hosted a coffee for Obama in the president-elect's first campaign for elective office, and served with him on the boards of several non-profit agencies) and his radical (though heavily- and dishonestly-rationalized) history on the subject of abortion, or his twenty years listening to the anti-American diatribes of his hate-filled minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright- before being shocked to learn of the content of what he'd been listening to for twenty years might suggest.
But Obama is a human being like the rest of us, and Cohen's fantasies to the contrary, he will not govern as one "above politics." Nobody can. Every idea has its antithesis, and in order to avoid partisanship Obama would have to avoid doing anything with regard to any problem concerning which any difference of opinion exists among anybody. Even then, a failure to act would doubtless draw criticism.
Sorry, Mr. Cohen. Barack Obama is not the platonic ideal of a president you fantasize about. Such a creature might actually exist in one of those nations in which the president is merely the head of state, and a prime minister or chancellor is the head of government. In such a nation, a president might maintain a bi-partisan personal popularity precisely because it is no part of his job description to offend anybody. But the American presidency involves headship of government as well as state, and requires that he who holds it actually govern. And he who governs- be it ever so wisely- creates controversy by that very act.
The "cool "style and godlike "detachment" you praise, and which served Mr. Obama so well in the recent campaign, cannot last. As tragic as it might be to those who treasure the illusion of Barack Obama, beginning on January 20 he will have to govern. And once he inherits responsibility for all those matters concerning which he and his admirers have found it so easy to criticize George W. Bush, he will inherit every bit of controversy that attends them.
And worse, he will actually have the responsibility of bringing them to a successful conclusion, and face the prospect of being held accountable if he does not.
HT: Real Clear Politics
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