The missing Obama

[KEND]

washington post.
The missing Obama
By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, November 24, 2009

In my set, I am known as the guy who always had some reservations about Barack Obama. Sure, I supported him in the primaries against Hillary Clinton and I voted for him, with both glee and enthusiasm, especially after John McCain uttered the most shocking words in American politics -- "Sarah Palin." But I had such qualms about Obama that I even disparaged his famous speech on race, which almost everyone else thought was just about the greatest ever given on the subject. I just reread it -- and I was a bit chastened (I was too severe), but mostly I was saddened. Where is the man who once gave that speech?

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The speech, delivered in Philadelphia in March 2008, was compelled by the rantings of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had been Obama's pastor and spiritual adviser. Wright, a man of a certain age with the emotional scar tissue that comes from a life in a harshly racist society, had let loose his anger -- and it had been caught on tape and YouTubed around the world. A sermon that had a context and an appreciative audience looked like sheer demagoguery and madness on the small screen. Obama had to kiss off Wright.

He did so with style and with dignity. But more than that, to reread the speech is to be impressed once again with the fluidity of Obama's mind -- his logic, his reasoning and his immense writing talent, which made a great impression on the impressionable people in my profession.

But to reread the speech is also to come face to face with an Obama of keen moral clarity. Here was a man who knew why he was running for president and knew, also precisely, what he personified. He could talk to America as a black man and a white man -- having lived in both worlds. He could -- and he did -- explain to America what it is like to have been a black man of Wright's age and what it is like even now to be a black man of any age.


Somehow, though, that moral clarity has dissipated. The Obama who was leading a movement of professed political purity is the very same person who as president would not meet with the Dalai Lama, lest he annoy the very sensitive Chinese. He is the same man who bowed to the emperor of Japan when, in my estimation, the president of the United States should bow to no man. He is the same president who in China played the mannequin for the Chinese government, appearing at stage-managed news conferences and events -- and having his remarks sometimes censored. When I saw him in that picture alone on the Great Wall, he seemed to be thinking, "What the hell am I doing here?" If so, it was a good question.

The Barack Obama of that Philadelphia speech would not have let his attorney general, Eric Holder, announce the new policy for trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Sept. 11 defendants in criminal court, as if this were a mere departmental issue and not one of momentous policy. And the Barack Obama of the speech would have enunciated a principle of law and not an ad hoc system in which some alleged terrorists are tried in civilian courts and some before military tribunals. What is the principle in that: What works, works? Try putting that one on the Liberty Bell.

Of course, there's a difference between campaigning and governing. There is no reality to campaigning. You want Guantanamo closed, you say you'll close it. You want to close it as president, and all of a sudden it becomes a political crisis that costs you your White House counsel, an experienced and principled man named Gregory Craig. Governing is hard.

But governing has to be informed by moral clarity, by the sense that we always know the president's interior life -- his bottom lines. Obama's political career has been too brief for us to know his bottom lines by votes cast in any legislative body or decisions made as an administrator. He had little record but lots of rhetoric -- much of it morally stirring and beautifully written.

As president, though, he has tried so hard to be the un-George Bush that the former president's overweening moralism -- his insistence on seeing things as either black or white -- has become an Obama gray. Human rights in general has been treated as if it's a Republican idea. Obama should reread his Philadelphia speech. He'll find a good man there.

[email protected]

[Michael]

"He'll find a good man in there"
You were duped. "In there" is a fantasy with no evidence to back it up. One of the most glaring examples for me, partially because it was touted on one of the threads on this board a year ago, was that because Obama had been a Professor and taught Constitutional law at Harvard, he must respect and understand the Constitution. All theory, no reality. He specifically criticized Bush several times on signing statements, a constitutional figment of Karl Rove's imagination, and now Obama is doing likewise.

Classes, speeches, teleprompters. It's all theory and no reality. The reality is that the US presidency has been captured by people who's opinions and beliefs were succinctly spoken by Bush the younger when he said the Constitution is just a G-D piece of paper. It is people of that mindset who run the country through their various spokesmen, such as Obama.

[edededed]

Hmm, these same people who often cite the second amendment and all that, right?

People like the document(s) when it agrees with them, they don't like it when it don't. (Same with other documents, like the Bible, which then gets open to interpretation, etc...)

People need to be less extreme (read: brainwashed by the parties) and open their minds a bit. (At least this guy recognizes the stupidity that is Sarah Palin, though.) In the end, we know little about politics except for what the media tells us, anyway.

[grzegorz]

You won't find someone who believes that Tibet and Xinjiang are occupied nations more than I do.

But having lived in China and having dealt with some of those in authority I can tell you that in China a kind gesture goes a lot further than strong words.

With the Chinese you get one shot at trust once you violate that can never regain again.

I believe the fact that Obama didn't meet with the Dali Lama (before his trip to China) shows that he has a deep understanding of the Chinese.

I realize we Americans love to shove our politics down people's throats but reality is not much could have been accomplished by meeting with the Dali Lama.

Also in response to the original article I'd say that being a humanitarian takes more than just a photo opp and meeting with the Dali Lama. Obama is closing down Gitmo and pulling out of Iraq. It's not happening overnight but it is happening.

He is also finally putting the "master minds" of 9-11 on trial. A big departure from the previous administration.

[Michael]

You mean he's putting Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Richard Perle on trial? Awesome! About friggin' time. Oh no, wait, just a show trial for an unrelated psycho patsy who's been tortured nonstop for 8 years.

Obama's had 11 months to close down Gitmo. Time has expired.

And Greg, I love how you focus on the unimportant stuff like the Lama. How about responding to the signing statements issue, huh?

[grzegorz]

And Greg, I love how you focus on the unimportant stuff like the Lama. How about responding to the signing statements issue, huh?

No.

You're a grown man Michael you can make your own opinions.

[Michael]

Fair enough, but I feel that people on this board consistently focus on fluff to express their opinions on controversial topics. Very disappointing, but certainly their choice.

[grzegorz]

I hear you Mike. I too think the executive branch is more powerful than it should be thanks to W.

But I'm realistic about politicians. People who become politicians become politicians because they seek power so the last thing I'd expect even the most "honest" politician do is give away power.

[Michael]

That's a realpolitik way of looking at it. My point would have been that Obama continued signing statements not necessarily for reasons specific to him as an individual, but that it is the ongoing policy to concentrate power in the executive and wasn't specific to Bush. Not that I like Bush or am defending him, but that I want to emphasize that the policies that really matter are non-partisan, have nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans, and come from the true power brokers above the presidents/actors.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

The only thing anyone accomplishes by meeting with the the dl is they agitate china.