reflections on obama

David Brooks has been - along with Andrew Sullivan - Obama's most prominent and longstanding enthusiast in the intelligent media, and one of his most interesting annotators. His ardour famously runs hot and cold (or at least, warm and lukewarm) but unlike Sullivan he's never really fallen out of love with this president. His latest column, however, is perhaps the closest he's come to admitting, in his mild way, disillusionment. 

Brooks take up the same theme I've been harping on recently (I'm sure he's an avid Marbury reader): does Obama's prudence and caution conceal strategic clarity and Ike-like wisdom - or just passivity?

Eisenhower was president at a time when American self-confidence was at its zenith; Americans were content with a president who took small steps. Today, most Americans seem to think their country is seriously off course. They may have less tolerance for a president who leads cautiously from the back.

Prudence can sometimes look like weakness. Obama said his cautious reactions to the Libyan revolution amounted to “tightening the noose” around Qaddafi. Yet there is no evidence that Qaddafi is feeling asphyxiated or even discomforted. As he slaughters his opposition, Western caution looks like fecklessness.

Prudence is important, but Americans do have an expectation that their president will be the one out front, dominating the agenda, projecting strength and offering vision.

Brooks ends his column on a note that is half-way between bafflement and disappointment:

All in all, President Obama is an astoundingly complicated person. During the 2008 presidential campaign, and during the first two years of his term, I would have said that his troubling flaw was hubris — his attempts to do everything at once. But he seems to have an amazing capacity to self-observe and adjust. Now I’d say his worrying flaw is passivity. I have no confidence that I can predict what sort of person Obama will be as he runs for re-election in 2012.

I have to say, I'm not sure that Obama is that complicated. I think our responses to him are complicated. We keep seeing things in him that aren't there or are only half-there; hazy reflections of our own hopes and fantasies of leadership.

Here's perhaps the most striking thing Obama said in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

"I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them." 

Obama may be a more consistent and simpler character than we've imagined; a thoughtful, cautious incrementalist who has neither the boldness nor the imagination to make big mistakes or to shoot for big changes. After Bush, some may accept that as a pretty good deal. Others will be disappointed.

Comments

[Tony]

I think this is spot on.

Funnily enough - I suspect this may not be a view with which you have much sympathy - I feel somewhat similarly about David Cameron. There have been moments since he assumed the premiership when I have genuinely felt that he is set to exceed all expectations, that we have as Prime Minister a cunning strategist with the potential to be a very good PM indeed. Then other times I've found myself thinking that perhaps he is just a knee-jerk tactician, the over-hyped PR man his critics have always alleged. I suspect the two aren't mutually exclusive, though I'm inclining toward the latter interpretation more as time goes by.

[Chris]

I thought that Obama was Clinton, not Ike? Reagan?

Really, can we stop with the pointless comparisons, it’s beginning to grate.

As for the lack of ‘vigah’ in Obama’s foreign policy my own take is that he is being bounced around by Clinton and the other hawks in the NSC establishment. I think his gut is probably more dovish. He escalated Afghan when I doubt he believes in it and it was a bad decision, politically and strategically (never mind morally). Yet Gates and the military continue to make cryptic comments about never leaving. This rightly gets the base worried.

As for Egypt and Libya – again the standard line prevails. I’m no Chomsky-ite (I don’t think most Americans would actually appreciate their President actively jerking around with the stability of the oil supply) but the realpolitik is poorly disguised. So the messages of support are tepid and hollow. A Libyan intervention (I’m talking a UN-authorized NFZ here) might buoy faith in American ideals, but Obama sticks to the caution no doubt emphasized by his advisors. The same goes for Israel-Palestine. Nothing new here.

On foreign policy I certainly get the feeling that he is reading the script rather than writing it.

On domestic policy I don't know what to think.

Brooks might read this blog y'know. It is the top result for 'marbury' on Google (the famous court case is third, behind an NBA player). The popularity is well deserved.

[elemjay]

Commanders need to command, leaders need to lead. He does get (eventually) where he wants to go, but it looks pretty painful in the meanwhile. Did we expect this style in office when looking at the decisive, vigorous campaign? Probably not....