Put not your trust

Long-time readers will recognize this post as yet another long, rambling, unfocused attempt to focus my own thoughts.

As I usually do, before going to the actual effort of articulating my own views, I hunt around, trying to find someone who says it better, so I con’t have to bother. I found three. But I’ll still bother.

First, I agree with a bit of this post at the Volokh Conspiracy critiquing the inaugural gestalt that seems more in common with a monarchy than a republic founded, in part, out of a desire for limited government. This is not an Obama issue. It’s an issue related to the increasingly vexing matter of the role of the president in American government and life. I say “increasingly vexing” because I do believe the confusion and pressure is getting worse as government grows. I thought about this often during the campaign, particularly during the debates. Think about it – these candidates are put up there in the debate context, not allowed to use any notes or references, and are expected to be comfortably expert on any and every aspect of domestic and foreign policy that might affect a nation of 300 million people as evidenced by their ability to speak extemporaneously and unaided.

Why?

Does this expectation meet in any way the realities of presidential decision and policy-making?

I disagree with the post, though, in regard to having the transition be a relatively private affair. Of course it shouldn’t be. An election is public, the president is elected by the people, and they deserve as much transparency as possible.

In addition, the reality of our situation is that a 2-year (or longer) campaign almost necessitates some sort of massive, cathartic moment, particularly when the transition is between parties.

What this leads to is more reflection on the role of presidential leadership in America, as well as what is, as we can see from the past few days, a clearly spiritual dimension to all of this.

I confess I am puzzled by the nature of much of the hope being placed in an Obama presidency. I’ve tried to sort it out, and some of it makes sense, but some of it doesn’t, to me at least:

• The hope that the Obama presidency represents a giant step forward in the achievement of racial equality and equal opportunity. Check. Got it. Agree.

• The hope that Obama and the Democratic leadership represent a shift in the priorities of a GOP administration. Check. Got it. Don’t completely agree, partly because I don’t share many of the values and priorities of the Democratic party, and partly because the difference between the two is shrinking,  because of the spending spree of the last eight years, the apparent devotion of both sides to the “grab anything off the shelf and pay for it with play money” theory of economic recovery, as well as Obama’s .That maybe he’s not going to change everything right away. For Now. Maybe.

• Now the weirdest hope. The hope that an Obama presidency will “change” America. Or buck us up as a country.  Or make things all better, not because of a policy, but because this guy and his nice family is in the White House. No check. Don’t get it.

The first thought that comes to me are general questions about how one discerns a country’s “mood” anyway. I know it is common to do so, and a convenient shorthand for how we view history, but I am unconvinced that it ever has any validity, except perhaps in exceptionally dramatic moments in time such as during or after a war.

Reading Obama’s speech – and recalling some of his more important campaign speeches – one senses that the primary problem the United States faces is a crisis of identity, purpose and self-regard.  We have lost hope, we need to be recharged and inspired again.

I seriously have no idea what any of this means.

When I look at the primary problems facing the United States, I see two: the threat of terrorism and a new kind of war-making, and the economy. Neither of these issues are related to emotions or a need to retrieve a lost vision of hope. The economy, in particular, is a complex, global and extremely technical problem that requires clear-headed, objective problem-solvers to even begin to get a handle on. Ideological and even sentimental patriotic language serves to obscure, not solve the problem.

I have written about this before in relationship to what I see as the great failure of current Catholic discussions about civic and economic matters in the public, popular sphere. It is all about rhetoric and ideals, with cross-accusations of insufficient adherence to Catholic social teaching tossed fast and furious and in very predictable ways, with hardly anyone attending to the realisties at hand. Health care broken? Certainly. “Well,everyone has a right to health care.” Okay…so? What kind of health care? How much? Who pays? How? Who decides what health care I’m going to get that I don’t have to pay for?

Serious questions are pushed aside, in Catholic discourse (I’m focusing here for a bit)  because of ideological certainties about “Catholic Social Teaching” on both sides. It is distressing and relegates us to irrelevance.  How many blog discussions, for example, are instantly derailed because one individual’s points are derided as “NRO Talking Points” no matter how factually-oriented they may be or another’s perspective is dismissed because he or she is a “Commonweal Catholic?”

But I have focused too narrowly here, and that is not my point.

Which is: I wonder if we, in our celebrity culture, still obviously yearning for a monarchy and even for spiritual leadership, place too much weight on the presidency.

Secondly, why do people need a president to give them hope? Let me repeat – I can see it in relationship to #1 above, that he functions in that way – but, in general, who needs the presence of a particular individual in the White House to shape how they feel about life, about possibility, about the responsibility to serve others?

The Obama speech just reinforces the question, and I was glad to see Juan Williams say the same thing in today’s Wall Street Journal:

If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else — fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism — then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.

Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.

This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise.

During the Democrats’ primaries and caucuses, candidate Obama often got affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media. Editors, news anchors, columnists and commentators, both white and black but especially those on the political left, too often acted as if they were in a hurry to claim their role in history as supporters of the first black president.

For example, Mr. Obama was forced to give a speech on race as a result of revelations that he’d long attended a church led by a demagogue. It was an ordinary speech. At best it was successful at minimizing a political problem. Yet some in the media equated it to the Gettysburg Address.

The importance of a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions was frequently and embarrassingly lost. When Mr. Obama’s opponents, such as the Clintons, challenged his lack of experience, or pointed out that he was not in the U.S. Senate when he expressed early opposition to the war in Iraq, they were depicted as petty.

Bill Clinton got hit hard when he called Mr. Obama’s claims to be a long-standing opponent of the Iraq war “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” The former president accurately said that there was no difference in actual Senate votes on the war between his wife and Mr. Obama. But his comments were not treated by the press as legitimate, hard-ball political fighting. They were cast as possibly racist.

This led to Saturday Night Live’s mocking skit — where the debate moderator was busy hammering the other Democratic nominees with tough questions while inquiring if Mr. Obama was comfortable and needed more water.

When fellow Democrats contending for the nomination rightly pointed to Mr. Obama’s thin proposals for dealing with terrorism and extricating the U.S. from Iraq, they were drowned out by loud if often vacuous shouts for change. Yet in the general election campaign and during the transition period, Mr. Obama steadily moved to his former opponents’ positions. In fact, he approached Bush-Cheney stands on immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperate in warrantless surveillance.

Some have noted Williams’ emotion during the inauguration. I didn’t see it, but what I did see last night moved me: on the Fox panel, Williams, obviously fatigued with more than just the day’s activities, said something like he hoped it would be a helpful thing to have an accomplished, intelligent black man in the Oval Office, and perhaps that image would make a difference in the black community and even overwhelm the power of (his words) the “rappers” and “gangsters” – (with a dismissive hand) that are (I think he said) “desecrating” the airways.

I don’t disagree.

But then, here’s my final point – at last!

This emotion and desire for hopeandchange can lead, not only to overextended expectations, but also to a subtle – or even not-so-subtle – demand that we all shut up and get on board for the sake of the national spirit, unity and all that.

“Petty political disagreements” will be mentioned as well as  “confrontational attitudes” “vision” and calls to give it a chance. Just a chance. Work with the man, please.

And so here we are back in the land of generalities.

There is no “national spirit” that is need of fixing. There are specific problems, great and small. There is an economic situation that needs close, objective work, not platitudes and pork.  There is a health care system and a public education system that require hard thinking and honest thinking about costs and consequences. And so on.

If Barack Obama or a Democratic Congress propose measures that strike us as problematic, counterproductive, harmful or even immoral, we need not be silent because we’re told not be all divisive and negative and stuff.  Drawing attention to aspects of a policy that will hurt the poor, threaten the lives of the voiceless and dependent or put too much power in the hands of government and its employees is not being unduly “confrontational” or “uncharitable” or “getting things off to a negative start.”

If we had no problem taking this stance during a Bush administration, then there should be absolutely nothing that changes about that simply because Barack Obama is president.

Right?

Oh, and the third? David Horowitz, here.

Two more links: The Reason guys keep me sane. Yes, they are frat-boyish, the comments sections are useless, and there are a few big issues with which I obviously disagree, but I find their equal-opportunity excavation and smashing what they find a good tonic.