Washington has changed the President’s hair color, as it did his predecessors’. But the changes it has made in him run deeper. [Credit: Post Chronicle]
![Washington has changed the President's hair color, as it has with his predecessors. But the changes run deeper. [Credit: Post Chronicle]](https://i0.wp.com/www.dougsbriefcase.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/credit-post-chronicle.jpg)
“So eight years ago, I came here to deliver the commencement address for the class of 2005. Things were a little different back then. For example, I had no gray hair. Or a motorcade. Didn’t even have a prompter.”
President Obama, Knox College, Galesburg (IL), July 24, 2013
Many things have changed in the eight years that elapsed between President Obama’s two Galesburg addresses. But perhaps none of those things has changed as profoundly as he.
In 2005, he was a newly-elected Senator, 99th in seniority, one of Washington’s rising stars, but without retinue, teleprompter or fleet of 747s. Today he is the nation’s most powerful person. You wouldn’t know that to listen to him.
“Washington,” he said during the speech, “has made things worse.”
The line drew applause from his supportive audience, but it is hard to understand why. President Obama is Washington. Little happens except on his initiative; virtually nothing happens without his approval. If Washington is indeed making things worse, then he must surely share in the blame.
The President sees things differently. He used the word “Washington” 11 times in last week’s speech, most often as a pejorative, as though it were some alien, malevolent force to which he had no attachment and over which he had no control.
Rather than the seat of the federal government whose power he has enlarged, the President intends the word as a synonym for his political opponents. And there is nothing good about his opponents.
They engage in an “endless parade of distractions and political posturings and phony scandals.” He doesn’t “always understand exactly what their logic is here, why they think giving insurance to folks who don’t have it and making folks with insurance a little more secure, why they think that’s a bad thing,” though most Americans don’t get the logic of the President’s health care law and think it’s a bad thing. Those same opponents, with whom the President refuses to negotiate, can’t bring themselves to “set aside short-term politics and work with me to find common ground.” They “manufacture” crises. They “dismiss every idea I put forward either because they’re playing to their most strident supporters, or in some cases because, sincerely, [they believe that] inequality is both inevitable and just.” So they’re either political grandstanders or they “sincerely” want to shred the Declaration of Independence and reinstate monarchy. Take your pick.
The 2013 version of Barack Obama seems obsessed with his opponents, convinced that only he has the answers and that those who disagree are bringing the nation to ruin. There is little uplifting in this long (it runs to nearly 8,000 words and took more than an hour to deliver) and forgettable speech. But for the coda in which he quotes Carl Sandberg describing America’s future as an “ocean of tomorrows, a sky of tomorrows,” there is almost nothing to cheer the spirit.
How different the 2005 version. That speech, though not nearly half as long, was meant to inspire. Challenging Knox College graduates to find their place in history, the freshman Senator described America as “a place where destiny was not a destination, but a journey to be shared and shaped.” The attraction of that journey, that destiny lured people from “across the oceans and the ages, [who] settled in Boston and Charleston, Chicago and St. Louis, Kalamazoo and Galesburg, to try and build their own American Dream.” Together they made America “a land where the question of our place in history is not answered for us, but by us.”
To be sure, it also included one jab at Washington – a scathing reference to then President Bush’s concept of an “ownership society.” It also reflected Obama’s most enduring habit of mind: the unshakable belief that those who disagree with what he wants to do must prefer to “do nothing.” Or, more precisely, those who disagree with what he wants government to do must prefer to “do nothing.” His inability to distinguish between principled disagreement and mindless obstruction is coded in his DNA.
But it was otherwise a speech long on ideals and short on rancor, a speech that painted America as a diverse nation of shared interests, rather than one riven by factions. It was, in short, the sort of speech that the President lately seems incapable of delivering.
What happened?
Washington happened. It is no place for fragile egos. President Bush endured not only criticism of his policies and assaults on his character; he became an object of scorn. Celebrities whose IQs don’t crack triple digits snickered at his alleged stupidity. President Obama has escaped such ridicule. His most strident critics are more likely to think him a socialist than a fool. But the attacks on his policies have wounded him. He no longer even tries to conceal his contempt for those with whom he disagrees.
Then there is the larger world – the world beyond domestic politics. The President entered that stage as a star. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize just weeks after taking office and unanimously awarded it barely 8 months into his term. Since then, the world has proven an unkind and disagreeable place. Europe ignores him, Egypt rebuffs him, Russia taunts him, Syria defies him, North Korea scorns him, Iran detests him. A 2011 Zogby poll found him less popular in the Arab world than President Bush. And Bush is none too popular there. The Los Angeles Times led its story on the recent turmoil in Egypt that led to a military coup:
“As rival camps of Egyptians protest for and against the toppling of President Mohamed Morsi, there is a rare point of agreement: America is to blame.”
They hate us even more than they hate each other.
For President Obama, who thought that he would change the world’s perception of America, especially among its 1.6 billion Muslims, this must be deeply disillusioning. He set out to remake the world. It appears to have remade him.
Finally, there is us. Americans are notoriously hard on our public figures, whether they acquire fame through sports, entertainment or politics. We invest them with our hope and adulation, then delight in their downfall (see Rodriguez, Alex). We are especially hard on the people we elect. Presidential approval ratings have become more volatile than stock market indexes; Congressional approval ratings have sunk to bathyspheric levels. We are increasingly fractious. The right spends as much time attacking Republican leaders it does the President, fearing that the two sides might one day find agreement on something of consequence. On the left, earnest efforts to craft a tax reform bill by the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and the Republican Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee are knee-capped by Senate Democratic leaders, who fear the wrath of a restive base that abhors compromise.
Washington too often brings out our worst traits and those of our leaders. But it remains an enduring symbol of American unity and ideals, the seat of a popularly-elected government that works best when it respects its limits as it strives to fulfill its purpose. That Washington has been little in evidence in recent times. It will recover soon enough. It always has.