The more I look at the two candidates for president of the U.S., the more I start missing Barack Obama. He has some months left in office, but his steady, calm style, more than his policies, remains remarkable in these violent times.
As Timothy Egan wrote recently in the NYTimes (7-15), Obama has been a classy model of dignity whose personal behavior--no scandals--"has set a standard few presidents have ever reached."
As consoler-in-chief, this masterful speaker has been widely praised for providing unity in a time of chaos. This cool, unflappable, patient guy is the same man attacked viciously by the right wing for the past seven years, having his Americanism challenged as well as his religion; yet he has responded with predictable eloquence, not anger.
A careful thinker and writer who spends hours alone reading in his private study after he has said goodnight to his family, Obama is the kind of thoughtful leader we need, the kind who rarely misspeaks or makes embarrassing errors. He remains who he was in 2008: a family man who reads widely, thinks carefully, and knows who he is.
Obama the man will be missed, even if Obama the president has made decisions that are questionable. His cautious foreign policy has been far from perfect in dealing with ISIS, yet he has moved away from the ideology of his predecessor to pursue new areas of engagement (with Iran and Cuba and Asia).
As Fareed Zakaria wrote some months ago, Obama has not been given credit for many significant achievements: his forceful response to the financial crisis of 2008, bringing the U.S. out of the Great Recession in better shape than any other major country. And he provided a health care program that covers 20 million more people, even recently taking the time to write, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a critique of Obamacare, offering suggestions as to how it can be improved. What other president would do this?
He has, says Zakaria, transformed energy policy (solar costs have plunged seventy percent). People will argue about these and other policies, but few can (honestly) say that Obama has acted dishonestly, embarrassing our country in the eyes of the world.
When I look at Donald Trump, I see the antithesis of Obama: I see chaos in the recent convention and campaign, not order; irrationality and anger, not patience or clarity in the face of complexity; carelessness and lies, not a clear policy; and a bleak view of a new dark age that has supposedly fallen on America and the world that only Donald can, single-handedly, fix. Trump is a ludicrous figure who makes Obama's scandal-free White House and his calm, reassuring message of hope and clarity all the more remarkable.
I predict a valuable post-presidency for Barack Obama. He will continue to do important work in the world.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
The Problem with Maureen Dowd
I've sometimes wondered why the New York Times maintains Maureen Dowd as a regular opinion columnist. But then I realize that she attracts readers, like me, with her brand of acerbic wit and gossipy sarcasm.
No one takes her too seriously, and I trust she knows this. Today's column, for example, about Mr. Obama is another predictable iteration of her stereotyped view of the President: he is an aloof loner, who seems bored, like a bird in a gilded cage. She has played this tune for at least five years.
As with everyone who reduces complex issues to simplistic formulas, Dowd likes to skewer and satirize Obama, just as she stereotyped his predecessor, whom she called "W," and Mr. Clinton before him. And she has an attitude toward Hilary that has already been reworked many times. Attitude always replaces ideas for Dowd.
This is not to say that her criticism of Obama is without foundation.
As an intellectual who too often shuns wheeling and dealing a la LBJ, Obama is probably a political failure in a key area: negotiating with Congress. But he has been so reviled by members of the GOP, so resolutely opposed on nearly every issue, that he is given little respect as chief executive and even less leeway to get laws enacted. And as a man of integrity who provides steady leadership, Obama deserves better treatment.
Rather than bored and detached, Mr. Obama seems to me to be exhausted; and who wouldn't be, given the problems he faces?
Like his predecessors in modern times, he has an impossible job and, as a person, is too complex to be reduced to the stereotypes that Dowd thrives on.
For eight years or more, she played, over and over, one theme with George W. Bush: his imagined rivalry with his father. It was all about the Bushes. Ideas about what went wrong in that presidency according to Dowd were replaced by snide attitude and the gathering of Washington gossip.
So readers find her columns often entertaining in that they provide supposedly the inside scoop on pols. What they don't find are original ideas or political analysis or suggested solutions to world problems. What they are given is slick, superficial, and shallow.
Dowd has turned political writing into show biz.
No one takes her too seriously, and I trust she knows this. Today's column, for example, about Mr. Obama is another predictable iteration of her stereotyped view of the President: he is an aloof loner, who seems bored, like a bird in a gilded cage. She has played this tune for at least five years.
As with everyone who reduces complex issues to simplistic formulas, Dowd likes to skewer and satirize Obama, just as she stereotyped his predecessor, whom she called "W," and Mr. Clinton before him. And she has an attitude toward Hilary that has already been reworked many times. Attitude always replaces ideas for Dowd.
This is not to say that her criticism of Obama is without foundation.
As an intellectual who too often shuns wheeling and dealing a la LBJ, Obama is probably a political failure in a key area: negotiating with Congress. But he has been so reviled by members of the GOP, so resolutely opposed on nearly every issue, that he is given little respect as chief executive and even less leeway to get laws enacted. And as a man of integrity who provides steady leadership, Obama deserves better treatment.
Rather than bored and detached, Mr. Obama seems to me to be exhausted; and who wouldn't be, given the problems he faces?
Like his predecessors in modern times, he has an impossible job and, as a person, is too complex to be reduced to the stereotypes that Dowd thrives on.
For eight years or more, she played, over and over, one theme with George W. Bush: his imagined rivalry with his father. It was all about the Bushes. Ideas about what went wrong in that presidency according to Dowd were replaced by snide attitude and the gathering of Washington gossip.
So readers find her columns often entertaining in that they provide supposedly the inside scoop on pols. What they don't find are original ideas or political analysis or suggested solutions to world problems. What they are given is slick, superficial, and shallow.
Dowd has turned political writing into show biz.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Guns in America
I doubt if I can say much that is startling about the current gun control debate or the American love affair with guns--except for this chilling fact: there are reportedly 300 million guns in the U.S., about enough for every man, woman, and child.
Do we feel safe yet?
The obsession with guns and the paranoia of the NRA (National Rifle Association) in recent years is a bit of a mystery to me, having grown up in an apparently innocent time, the 1950s, when guns were only part of my fantasy world.
I played with guns, imagining myself to be a cowboy, like the ones I saw in movies and later on TV, but I knew no one who actually owned (or admitted owning) a gun. No one in my family was a hunter. When I got to high school, there was, among all the various student groups, a Rifle Club, but I paid no more attention to that than to my cousin's BB gun.
I lived in a Midwestern city, St. Louis, with plenty of crime, but I have no memories of seeing actual guns, except occasionally on the holster of certain police officers. No one I knew talked about, collected, or used guns.
Was I being cheated of true masculinity?
In any case, the gun-soaked culture of violence of recent decades, stoked by increasingly violent movies TV programs, and video games, continues to alarm and surprise me. This is especially true of the sale of military weapons, which have nothing to do with the legitimate right of self-protection or hunting, both of which are covered by the Second Amendment.
What bothers me most is the fear that grips people, terrified of what they imagine to be a federal takeover of their right to do as they please, whose fear turns into hatred. So last week we found the right wingers calling Obama a fascist, tyrant, king, and worse because he proposed some sensible, legal guidelines on guns.
Even after the horror of Newton, Conn., where 20 kids were killed last month, millions of men and some women in this country still resist any common-sense effort to curb the availability of handguns and assault weapons, which all too often are bought and used by those least capable of responsible action. They are terrified of change and a supposed loss of freedom, as if the president were intending to confiscate their gun collections.
It seems to me that the extremism of the NRA and the Tea Party anti-Obama folks will backfire (no pun intended): their madness will be seen for what it is by the majority, and background checks will be mandated, even if the cannot be universally enforced. Common sense will prevail.
Clearly, something must be done by the federal government--and in a calm, civil manner that overcomes extreme fear with a concern for the common good: the safety of children in their schools, of workers in their offices, of any of us in public places. And a realization that we have long had more than enough guns for our own protection and sport.
Do we feel safe yet?
The obsession with guns and the paranoia of the NRA (National Rifle Association) in recent years is a bit of a mystery to me, having grown up in an apparently innocent time, the 1950s, when guns were only part of my fantasy world.
I played with guns, imagining myself to be a cowboy, like the ones I saw in movies and later on TV, but I knew no one who actually owned (or admitted owning) a gun. No one in my family was a hunter. When I got to high school, there was, among all the various student groups, a Rifle Club, but I paid no more attention to that than to my cousin's BB gun.
I lived in a Midwestern city, St. Louis, with plenty of crime, but I have no memories of seeing actual guns, except occasionally on the holster of certain police officers. No one I knew talked about, collected, or used guns.
Was I being cheated of true masculinity?
In any case, the gun-soaked culture of violence of recent decades, stoked by increasingly violent movies TV programs, and video games, continues to alarm and surprise me. This is especially true of the sale of military weapons, which have nothing to do with the legitimate right of self-protection or hunting, both of which are covered by the Second Amendment.
What bothers me most is the fear that grips people, terrified of what they imagine to be a federal takeover of their right to do as they please, whose fear turns into hatred. So last week we found the right wingers calling Obama a fascist, tyrant, king, and worse because he proposed some sensible, legal guidelines on guns.
Even after the horror of Newton, Conn., where 20 kids were killed last month, millions of men and some women in this country still resist any common-sense effort to curb the availability of handguns and assault weapons, which all too often are bought and used by those least capable of responsible action. They are terrified of change and a supposed loss of freedom, as if the president were intending to confiscate their gun collections.
It seems to me that the extremism of the NRA and the Tea Party anti-Obama folks will backfire (no pun intended): their madness will be seen for what it is by the majority, and background checks will be mandated, even if the cannot be universally enforced. Common sense will prevail.
Clearly, something must be done by the federal government--and in a calm, civil manner that overcomes extreme fear with a concern for the common good: the safety of children in their schools, of workers in their offices, of any of us in public places. And a realization that we have long had more than enough guns for our own protection and sport.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Lessons from the Election
It's a great relief that the election--the most expensive in history at something like $4 billion in campaign funding--is at last over.
There are several lessons to be learned. Among them:
1. Americans are not stupid or lazy or apathetic. The majority are progressive and think about the future. Millions vote, even if the lines are long. And they are not greatly influenced by all the money-driven ads and negative campaigning.
2. The campaign season is obscenely long and costly and should be changed. The big bucks of PACs organized by Karl Rove and others are wasted. Why not use this money to help where it's really needed?
3. The right-wing take-over of the Republican Party must give way to reality. We are not a nation of 1950s white Americans who think like Mitt Romney. The majority of the country is diverse, ever-changing, ever-creative.
4. The Catholic bishops should stop their politicizing. The faithful do not listen to them on topics relating to women and marriage. They voted heavily for Obama; they know that gay people are here to stay--traditional marriage is not threatened by gay marriages--and that the church should focus on social justice issues. The alliance between right-wing politics and religion has done great harm and has now become an embarrassment. Let us move from moral battles to social reality, finding ways to heal divisions and develop new jobs.
5. The superb Obama campaign would be nothing without the unusual man who deservedly got re-elected--not merely because he should finish what he boldly began four years ago but because he has been a steady, intelligent, widely respected world leader. I admire a man who listens to the voice of history, who reads widely and writes much of his own material, and who thinks before he speaks.
As one of my GOP friends said on election day, "May the best man win." He did. It is hard for many white men of my generation to admit that an African-American is not only gifted but worthy of re-election.
Obama was a classy candidate who now needs the prayers and support of the country. He leads a deeply divided America, polarized by the very political system he has mastered.
There are several lessons to be learned. Among them:
1. Americans are not stupid or lazy or apathetic. The majority are progressive and think about the future. Millions vote, even if the lines are long. And they are not greatly influenced by all the money-driven ads and negative campaigning.
2. The campaign season is obscenely long and costly and should be changed. The big bucks of PACs organized by Karl Rove and others are wasted. Why not use this money to help where it's really needed?
3. The right-wing take-over of the Republican Party must give way to reality. We are not a nation of 1950s white Americans who think like Mitt Romney. The majority of the country is diverse, ever-changing, ever-creative.
4. The Catholic bishops should stop their politicizing. The faithful do not listen to them on topics relating to women and marriage. They voted heavily for Obama; they know that gay people are here to stay--traditional marriage is not threatened by gay marriages--and that the church should focus on social justice issues. The alliance between right-wing politics and religion has done great harm and has now become an embarrassment. Let us move from moral battles to social reality, finding ways to heal divisions and develop new jobs.
5. The superb Obama campaign would be nothing without the unusual man who deservedly got re-elected--not merely because he should finish what he boldly began four years ago but because he has been a steady, intelligent, widely respected world leader. I admire a man who listens to the voice of history, who reads widely and writes much of his own material, and who thinks before he speaks.
As one of my GOP friends said on election day, "May the best man win." He did. It is hard for many white men of my generation to admit that an African-American is not only gifted but worthy of re-election.
Obama was a classy candidate who now needs the prayers and support of the country. He leads a deeply divided America, polarized by the very political system he has mastered.
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