#96 OBAMARAMA
#96
PRESIDENTIAL VICTORIES OFTEN COME WITH A HIDDEN, OH PARDON ME
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
T
he first time I saw on television the person who would become president of the United States, I was more than impressed by the immense crowd that had gathered there to listen to the candidate at Mile High Stadium in Denver, Colorado. Who was this politician that could draw so many supporters to his nomination for president?
Barack Obama spoke to people with a seamless oratory that made you believe he was sincere and genuinely interested in listening to the people – once he was finished talking to you, saying what he had to say.
That was a continuing thread throughout Obama’s eight years as President of the United States, that he seemed to genuinely enjoy communicating with people.
I was skeptical no doubt. But then I heard he still got together to play a school yard game of basketball.
The previous administration had left the country in financial crisis with the collapse of the housing market and a host of finger pointing at Wall Street for riding the global markets into yet another recession. The 401K pension fund was gone. And any value you thought you had in your home was never really there in the first place.
The United States was also full throttle into the deeply personal and nationalistic 9/11 Wars in which the Generals were not sent there to win so much as to exact punishment for the terrorist attacks, and to warn all other adversaries not to bother unless they had the same nihilistic sadomasochistic urges as the jihadists that hijacked and weaponized the commercial airliners on September 11, 2001.
Mr. Obama’s enigmatic oratory and his message of hope in a time when the country was in desperate need of a reversal drew 80,000 people to one place and time, on one day during August of 2008.
I did not really envy him, me not having had any faith in politics for quite some time.
And then there he was in Washington all dressed up and in charge, finally. One could see the delight in his step at being President, almost as though he was relieved after working so hard for so many years and then finally being successful in doing so.
And I had been to law school and so I knew what those lawmakers were like, and I did not even consider coveting that position in having to at least be seen to try, more often than not in vain, to create bipartisan legislation knowing that there be few fruits from those endeavors.
But still I watched as he tried, and try he did, he tried and tried and tried only to have the next administration and the new composition of the Supreme Court rip it all apart whatever he may have thought he may have accomplished after two terms and 8 years in the highest office in the land. Obama tried and tried again, and that is how he earned my respect.
I was nearly always aware of who resided at the White House probably since the President Richard M. Nixon Watergate scandal. The collapse of the Nixon presidency was so dramatic, the constant news coverage created very early memories for me.
US President Ronald Reagan was perhaps the most popular president during my early years as an armchair political pundit, egged on by my mother who liked the political debate as much as anyone else, although I did not always agree with his policies. I distinctly remember deciding against him when he decided that he was helping poor families stretch school lunch money by labelling ketchup as the vegetable component of a balanced diet. That to me did not qualify as political cache.
But Reagan had this enigmatic charm that he had learned in Hollywood as a film star that allowed him to say just about anything for however long he wanted in front of the national and international press.
When Reagan knew he had spoken a sound bite that would be replayed around the world all week long, he would have this tender smile on his face and a bright glint in his eye just before turning his head away ever so delicately.
I am too young to know one of the greatest Presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR may still be president today, he was so popular, had he not died in office. But he would have otherwise aged out of life by now. Roosevelt was struck with a paralytic illness while in office and then eventually succumbed to an intracerebral hemorrhage before the end of his fourth 4 year term.
Roosevelt saved the nation from the Great Depression and rescued Britain and Europe from Nazi Germany and also ended the gruesome killing in Southeast Asia by Japan during World War II, although FDR had passed away just before the war end to see his intervention in global conflicts come to fruition.
FDR’s liberalism involving state intervention in the lives of Americans and the American economy still resonates today in a nation dominated by conservative principles such as ‘no government is a good government’ and ‘let the free market drive the capitalist economy’.
Presidents often make substantial irrevocable mistakes. Roosevelt allowed the enemy to dig in. Truman dropped the atomic bombs. Kennedy was slow to realize on his promise of civil rights reform. Nixon taped conversations inside the Oval Office. Reagan ate too many jellybeans.
The political climate in Washington is so divisive that many competing sides would rather ruin each other’s reputations than compromise for the electorate and hand the opposing part any modicum of victory. Obama had represented Chicago in the Senate before becoming president. And so, he was well aware of the dilemma. And instead of sidestepping the issue, Obama took on the challenge by concocting a political formula involving the intent to govern in a bipartisan manner.
Regular walks down the colonnade reminded Obama of the need to avoid the missteps of his predecessors.
REGULAR WALKS DOWN THE COLONNADE REMINDED OBAMA TO AVOID THE MISSTEPS OF HIS PREDECESSORS
Kennedy had betrayed the CIA in the Bay of Pigs. Nixon became known as a liar. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was sand bagged by the OPEC Crisis and the US hostages taken during the Iranian Revolution. Reagan was too opposed to a social safety net for America’s children who were living in poverty and going to school without a school lunch.
Obama seemed in trouble from the start, not because of his values, but because of what his processor had left him, with everyone wondering if the first 100 days would be all that the young Senator could muster as president. But Obama dealt with it rather than avoid, really without any choice to do otherwise, and then he moved on, looking to everyone watching to be a better person than he was expected to be as a result.
You could kind of anticipate that he had to appease the old ways and the old guard in the White House and Congress, just to stop the delegates from knocking on the doors of the Oval Office, before moving them aside.
Obama continued the bail out of Wall Street begun by his predecessor, even though the brokers kept on taking bonuses. And Obama bailed out the American auto industry still wasting the atmosphere on the internal combustion engine when the near future was so obviously in electric vehicles.
And Obama altered his election stated policies about the 9/11 wars and the prisoners detained at the high security military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Again, you could just imagine the Generals gathered at the Pentagon to brief the new president about the impossibility of ending the wars and releasing the high valued targets from Guantanamo.
The White House instead appeased the military hawks by targeting the enemy’s leadership. And Obama made sure to kill or capture the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attack before his first term at the White House was up.
During his second 4 year term, Obama kept on coming out to answer the call and speak to the people about the dilemma in Washington and his hopes for the country, when he did not have to anymore for reelection purposes, him having maxed out of the two term limit for presidents.
Obama remembered his mantra of always treating people decently, regardless of their world views, and to constantly push for universalism as opposed to reinforcing American myopia. The downside to this approach was the expansion of globalization, when we now see a lot of folly there with climate warming. I am not sure little Dorothy and Toto enduring the heat wave and tornadoes in the little towns of Kansas appreciate the expansion of commerce and the global interconnectedness of markets when there really is no need to ship in mangoes from 10,000 km away.
I seem to remember that he even opened up offshore drilling for oil.
Obama was instrumental in supporting the Paris Accord on Climate Change, though.
The young university graduate started out as a community organizer in Chicago partly tapping into his Christian values and wanting to offer redemption to the people suffering from the disorganized nature of the Inner Cities of America.
But you know, there exists that far down a hopeless battle with victories few and far between. So, Obama turned to politics, only to find out that politics up top in the state and national legislatures was barely any different than politics down below on the street, there being only small victories every once in a while.
People argue and cannot agree on common sense solutions because everyone wants to be the one that is correct. The complicated psychological makeup of people rarely allows for glory sharing moments.
When you read Obama’s writings before, during and after politics, he clearly believes that the ability to survive is deeply connected with an understanding of real life woes, of the harshness of life and the frailties of human nature, and the hatred one person can have for another person that gets in the way of the greater good.
Before the Roman Empire, the great Greek philosophers maintained the ancient civilizations for as long as they did by discussing the need for values and then using those distinct values often in a list to reinforce the desire for a virtuous life that simultaneously sustains value in life and value in civilization.
Obama’s view of reality was and likely is, even more so now that he has seen deep inside the beast of government, that the world is a violent difficult place where intentions get confused and humanity falls astray.
Entire civilizations realize this hopeless situation evident in reality from time to time. The great Chinese dynasties more often than not saw the ends of the great civilizations they had created. And instead of wasting resources to resuscitate them, like bringing Lazarus back from the dead, the Generals drove the collapsing civilization into winless battles against their greatest foes to bring a quick end to what was projected to be an inevitable demise.
Obama refused to embrace this ‘endless clash’ of polarized viewpoints, and instead endeavored to find a way to reach common ground. Whether the young President succeeded or not was answered by the American people getting behind his presidential successor.
WASHINGTON, JEFFERSON AND KING ARE ALL DOLLED UP ON THE NATIONAL MALL TO PERSONIFY CORE VALUES
The young Senator from Chicago had kept true to his own values but his political formula as president did not include making what moral ground he had achieved remain in Washington DC without him. And what is sad about America is that no one can.
America starts moving forward each election using the values of freedom and democracy and capitalism as an anchor for whatever astonishing pronouncements politicians will make when stumping. And the statues of heroic political figures are there in the Capital to reinforce the point.
George Washington rejected the tyranny of the few and handed the government to the people. Whether that thought has born fruit is debatable, some fruit perhaps, but how much fruit is a question open to debate, since the political stalemate in Washington does not serve the people but more so the politicians and the institutions they populate.
Christians, and there are many Christians in the United States of America dating back to the first Pilgrims arriving from Europe, always reach back to the Ten Commandments, which are a simplified synopsis of the scriptures. When the day does go sideways, think of the Ten Commandments.
Jesus teaches us to stay the course and to turn the other cheek and let them hit you again and again until they start to think otherwise.
And the United States Constitution is a similar type of instrument that facilitates a reset each day if need be. Oh yeah, the First Amendment guarantees free speech. That value is a core American value.
The 13 Amendment to the Constitution codifies the emancipation of the slaves. The 14th Amendment is the equality guarantee.
Now what is the Second Amendment?
American values seem so fanatical, you know: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr all dolled up for display on the National Mall and all, each biographical person becoming a personification of American core values.
The grandness of the past is a great seduction for a new starting point that resets every time the power elite want to drive their supporters into a sure death election.
And part of the American back story is about sacrificing themselves for those founding values and honoring those that have given so much to the civilization. This approach has no tricks or magic potions per se because the values are intrinsic qualities that resonate with humanity.
The proximity to power can be seductive to the point that the conservative ultraright define political debate in Washington as a dialogue between good and evil, whereas the liberals are doting and dithering about around those assertions.
Obama spoke of that scenario before becoming president. And I doubt very much that the former Mr. President would now amend those terms one bit.
Dreams from My Father, by Barack Obama, New York, Broadway Paperbacks, 1995. The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, New York, Crown Publishers, 2006. A Promised Land, by Barack Obama, New York, Crown Publishers, 2020. Barack Obama: The Story, by David Maraniss, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2012.