Mort Zuckerman offers a spot-on analysis of Barack Obama, who has fallen so low from such extraordinary heights. See Zuckerman’s brilliant assessment at The Daily Beast. Zuckerman’s remarks are particularly poignant because he is among those who had such high hopes for Obama. 10 months ago, it seemed that the only thing right-wingers or Republicans could do was try to find fault with Obama or reveal themselves to be unwilling to accept the reality that winds of change had blown across America.
Yet, a year after one of the most extraordinary elections ever, Barack Obama seems to be a remarkably weak man—an individual utterly lacking in presidential timbre. The issue, obviously, is not his intellectual ability. He obviously surpasses many in that regard. And not even his enemies can deny that he is manifestly more intellectually capable than his predecessor, George Bush. This proves to be a quite riveting point; for it shows that sheer intellectual wherewithal does not suffice to make one a great president.
The most telling observation made by Zuckerman is that for all Obama’s talk about change, the simple reality is that the Obama administration has proven to be the billboard for business-as-usual. Only someone in utter denial—delusional, even—can fail to see the depth of corruption that has occurred under the Barack Obama administration.
The question that so forcefully presents itself is the following: How can it be that the very person who campaigned for change, and who captured the hearts of many by ever so articulately offering the hope of change, can have such corruption in his very own administration? This would be rather like me claiming that I do not tolerating cell phone use in the classroom, all the while ignoring the fact that someone is texting right before my very eyes.
It is simply not possible that Obama cannot see the extraordinary corruption that has occurred under his administration. So, the fact that he has been indifferent to it for all practical purposes is most revealing about him.
Perhaps the most damaging criticism of Barack Obama is that, in the end, he is manifestly not a man of integrity. This follows quite simply from the fact that he saw what he saw in terms of corruption in his own party and he did nothing at all about it. Indeed, he did not so much as even pretend to be concerned about all the corruption going on around him. Winning is all that mattered to him—not winning in the right way.
One might very well intone that this criticism holds of politicians in general. Alas, it is Obama who so very effectively raised the mantle of change—so much so that the one-time presumed presidential nominee, Hilary Clinton, found herself quite overshadowed by him. She represented the same-old-same-old. Obama represented change.
This brings me to the second aspect of Obama’s character that is to his detriment, namely that he is so besotted with his own orator skills that he fails to appreciate when he is missing the mark with others. That is, he is so convinced of his own thought that he does not know how to take seriously the reality that others are a very long ways from being convinced by him. A rather different way of putting the point might be that he does not know how to take criticism seriously.
Oddly enough, this may have something to do with his success as a black—but not in the way that one might suppose. I do not doubt for a moment his intellectual abilities; and people, including his mentors, are rightly impressed. But for a black of his intellectual ability, there is the danger of whites being so excited about having a black who is truly talented that they refrain from subjecting his views to the same level of criticism to which they would subject the views of an equally talented white individual.
There is a form of white liberalism in universities that does blacks a disservice by not fully engaging blacks at the critical level. Some of this is may be owing to a fear of being seen as racist. Some of this may be equally owing to taking such tremendous delight in the success of a talented black that the whites do not concern themselves offering the full range of criticisms that a person might normally encounter.
A striking example Obama not being nearly as reflective as he should is the way in which he handled the Henry Louis Gates matter. One could easily enough agree with Obama that racism is hardly dead in the United States without thinking for a moment that the Gates scenario was a very vivid example of the persistence of racism. The Gates case was fraught with difficulties that at the very least made it clear that racism was not the most salient factor, if a factor at all. So it could not serve as an illustration of the very thing that Obama claim moved him, namely that racism is hardly dead in America. Commonsense delivered this conclusion. Or so it does if, that is, one is sufficiently self-reflective.
People thought that George Bush was a bumbling idiot. The irony of ironies is that Obama is proving himself not to be much better than Bush in that regard. Bush, so it would seem, lacks the raw intellectual talent. Obama, by contrast, is not bringing his considerable intellectual powers to bear by being fully reflective and self-critical. This makes Obama his own worst enemy.
Obama reminds me of expression that is from an era gone-by: “Too smart for one’s own good”. Not in my life-time have I seen a man take the office of President of the United States with as much hope on the part of the citizens of America as Barack Obama did. Likewise, never have I seen a person more oblivious to the very hope that he had inculcated. And it takes a very morally vapid person to be indifferent to the very deep, deep hope on the part of that she or he has inculcated. If Obama is not such a person, I see no evidence that he is not.
As Zuckerman notes, it is possible for Obama to wrestle victory from what appears to be the jaws of defeat. And I hope that such a thing happens. If I am right, though, that will happen only if Obama takes himself seriously enough to engage in reflective self-criticism and to act accordingly. He cannot commit another Henry Louis Gates snafu. Nor can he ignore egregious behavior among members of his own party that is contrary to the very ideals that he espoused and with which he so mobilized the public. Painfully, it is not at all clear that Obama is strong enough to be that kind of person, his enormous intellectual ability to the contrary notwithstanding. That is a shame.
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For the record: Unlike Zuckerman, I did not vote for Barack Obama. In fact, I did not vote for any presidential candidate.