Barack Obama remains the heavy favorite to become our next President on the Intrade Prediction Market. If he wins, most of us should hope that he will be a successful and wise President. He has many gifts, including Presidential stature and a stunning ability to give a scripted speech. He also hints at some significant liabilities, including poorly conceived remarks in unscripted situations and an off-hand arrogance of which he appears unaware. At the same time, and despite the length of the election cycle, it is exceedingly difficult to know exactly what he stands for and what, if any, core beliefs he holds beyond his own fitness and rightness for the Presidency.
One certainty is that he will want to have a second term and this will constrain some of his policies. For example, there is little chance he will insist on a 16 month withdrawal from Iraq once he understands the logistics and strategic interests involved. If he insists on retreat, he would be setting himself u p for blame if Iraq falls into chaos and that would severely compromise a second term.
Since it is hard to discern his policies, beyond traditional left/liberal policies, and events will determine the course of his Presidency, the primary area of concern with Obama must be his character and here we are left with some uncomfortable questions.
First off, an important caveat that must be included, is that we can never know what kind of President a man will become until he is President. Most especially, we cannot know how a President will fare under intense pressure until he has been in that situation. Like him or hate him, there was no evidence prior to 9/11 that George W. Bush had the interest or wherewithal to go all-in to change the culture of the Middle East. Whether he was successful will still take time and history to determine but his willingness to risk his Presidency doing something he thought was in the best interest of the country cannot be questioned. There is simply no way to know if John McCain will rise to the occasion in the Presidency or fall short, but we do know he has withstood incredible pressures, shown himself to be resourceful, and been willing to risk defeat for his principles. With Barack Obama, we can be confident in none of these important points.
On the surface Barack Obama seems to be a particularly attractive version of the typical Chicago machine politician. The Chicago system is inherently more corrupt than most political systems, but the fact that he succeeded in such a system suggests he is a smart and ruthless politician, traits that are not necessarily incompatible with a successful Presidency (and some would claim they are traits that are necessary for a successful Presidency.) We also know that Barack Obama has left very little in the way of a paper trail; he has written two books and both have to do with himself. We do not know if his writing reflects an unseemly preoccupation with his own inner workings or a modest awareness that he has not yet been ready to opine intelligently about other important issues.
Much has been made of Obama's arrogance,
hranging from his condescending comments to Hilary Clinton to his snubbing of European media while on a trip to Europe, or his rather annoying dress code for female reporters on his trip to the Middle East. Obama's arrogance is worrying, not only for the sense that he over-estimates his abilities but for a more insidious reason, as well.
Barack Obama does seem to evince the arrogance that only an Ivy educated intellectual can exhibit. Generally such people have excellent facility with language, a grounding in the conventional -isms of the day, and a rather disconnected grasp of the more prosaic instances that make up most people's lives. For Obama, $4.00 gasoline is useful in furthering his environmental beliefs; the pain that it causes people is an abstraction, only important in how it might effect his prospects in the election. However, such distance from the concerns of the average American is SOP for politicians, especially for Senators whose horizons rarely extend further than the sound of their own voice.
So, what is most troubling to me about Barack Obama? It is his apparent lack of humor and apparent inability to tolerate criticism. The Presidency is the most difficult job on the planet. Billions of people's lives depend on what the American President does. The weight of responsibility ages a President. Before and after pictures of Presidents are remarkable in showing the toll a Presidential term exacts. In such a setting, the need for a sense of humor, especially the ability to laugh at one's own foibles, is an absolute necessity if the "weight of the world" is not to pull one down to the abyss. Even more important than a sense of humor, however, is the ability to hear, listen to, and tolerate criticism. Obama and his supporters act as if he is fragile and incapable of tolerating criticism. Unfortunately for Obama, the threat of the racial epithet to describe anyone with the temerity to criticize him (among other reasons) has left him relatively free of criticism by the MSM. There are two dangers inherent in the protective force-field the MSM has cast around Obama.
First, when someone is consistently protected against criticism, they have no real way to determine when they are making a mistake. It is an unfortunate truth that we learn a great deal more from our failures than from our successes. Further, if we are never challenged, we never have to learn to make a convincing case for our decisions. As a candidate Barack Obama simply needs to offer a soaring rhetorical display of his desires for America; as a President he will need to fill in the details and sell the product. If he does not hear criticism or understands criticism of his ideas as simply racist or political attacks he will lose the most important asset he could have, the feedback that will determine if an idea or policy can convince and carry along enough Americans to have a decent chance of success.
[Many critiques will include, or be subsumed in, ad hominem attacks, but this should not invalidate every disagreement. Sadly, the ability to find the nuggets of valuable criticism amongst the majority of partisan attacks is a gift few people have.]
The second problem is more abstract and potential. That is, when a man is clearly idealized by an adoring fan base, including a fan base in the MSM, if he begins to believe his press he is likely to make two dangerous assumptions. The first assumption is that he does not have to worry about nurturing the adoration of the crowd; he can take the crowd for granted. It appears as if Barack Obama did just this in the recent incident with Scarlett Johansson, a young, beautiful, and naive actress:
Obama Denies Textual Relations With Scarlett Johansson
Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. "She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me," Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. "I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,' and suddenly we have this email relationship"
One day, a hot politician is happy to engage in "thoughtful... back-and-forth correspondence," and the next he's denying that it means anything at all. Johansson's heart is so breaking. Oh, sweetie, this little tactic is called "moving to the center," and all powerful men do it once they've gotten what they want from their "base."
Obama's insensitivity is troubling in its apparent disregard for how his words would affect Ms. Johansson. Actresses, whose careers depend on how they look to their fans and colleagues, rarely enjoy public humiliation.
The second and related assumption is that since the crowd adores him for who he is, their feelings are permanent. This is a very problematic assumption. Every therapist knows that when a patient idealizes you very early in treatment, they will almost certainly devalue you later on. Idealization cannot be maintained in the face of disappointment. This is being exhibited on a daily basis on left wing web sites that are furious with Obama for having dumped them and their policies. There is real fury on the left, a feeling of betrayal. Perhaps Obama can be confident that these people will not vote for McCain, though if poorly managed many of them just won't vote, but it suggests that the adoring press could also, if mistreated, suddenly (especially after they help get him elected) turn on Obama and go after him. Bill and Hilary Clinton are prime examples of politicians who were once protected by an adoring press but found themselves devalued as time went on.
A Presidential candidate who believes he is infallible and that adoration is his right, risks alienating his MSM supporters; once the MSM turns on a public figure, life can be extremely difficult for someone who is poorly able to tolerate criticism and unable to laugh at himself. Thus far there has been some question whether Obama is more likely to be Carter or Clinton. I wonder if he contains the possibility of being another Nixon, made paranoid by his opponents. The interaction of Obama's apparent hyper-sensitivity to criticism and his insensitivity to the feelings and concerns of those who adore him, is potentially dangerous. It is unlikely that the MSM will turn on him but considering popular presidents with large mandates tend to over-reach, how Obama reacts to the inevitable attacks (betrayals) on him and his policies will be instructive; his reactions so far to attacks and perceived attacks, do not instill confidence.
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