Issue #19, Winter 2011

The Philosopher President

Two years into Barack Obama’s presidency, we can’t doubt his intelligence, but we can wonder whether there are more important qualities.

Alan Brinkley

The best argument for Obama as a pragmatist is his well-known preference for “deliberative democracy,” which he describes as a politics “in which all citizens are required to engage in a process of testing their ideas against an external reality, persuading others of their point of view, and building shifting alliances of consent.” Kloppenberg sees Obama as a person who is prone to “building support slowly, gradually, through compromise and painstaking consensus building…. It is a gamble he may lose. But it is not a sign of weakness.” Perhaps not. But the last two years suggest that the kind of slow, deliberate consensus-building that Obama seems to prefer is not consistent with the character and needs of national politics and is certainly not consistent with the political world he has inherited–as exhibited by the obdurate and virtually unanimous opposition of the Republican caucus to almost everything he proposes. It may be that no president could be more effective than Obama has been in this political climate. The climate of crisis that he inherited would make it difficult for any leader. But that is all the more reason for him to rebut energetically the powerful opposition that is attempting to derail him. His quasi-pragmatic coolness has not so far been helpful to him or to the nation.

Obama is perhaps only a halfway pragmatist–he still has at least one foot in the soil of moral conviction. In The Audacity of Hope, he writes of Lincoln:

We remember him for the firmness and depth of his convictions.…But his presidency was guided by a practicality that would distress us today, a practicality that led him to test various bargains with the South in order to maintain the Union.…I like to believe that for Lincoln, it was never a matter of abandoning conviction for the sake of expediency. Rather, it was a matter of maintaining within himself the balance between two contradictory ideas–that we must talk and reach for common understandings.

Obama draws his ideas as much from the fervent idealism of the abolitionists, the legacy of the civil-rights movement, and the influence of his (now mostly hidden) religious life as he does from the pragmatic tradition.

Obama shares many of the qualities of our greatest modern presidents but seems to lack many others. He shares Woodrow Wilson’s scholarly temperament but does not project Wilson’s shining idealism. He shares Franklin Roosevelt’s ability to create soaring oratory, but not his joyous (and devious) love of politics. He shares Lyndon Johnson’s ambition, but not often his powers of heavy-handed persuasion. And he shares some of John Kennedy’s cool, pragmatic temperament, but not (publicly at least) his wit and his sense of humor. Unfortunately, although the traits he does reveal are admirable, it is the ones he is missing that our politics demand.

His stewardship of his controversial health-care bill reveals both sides–pragmatism and idealism–of his political and philosophical beliefs. He spent many weeks and months encouraging “deliberative democracy,” attempting to recruit Republican support and urging Congress itself to make the compromises necessary for a bipartisan bill. The result of this effort was that Obama won only a single Republican House member, Joseph Cao, who represents an overwhelmingly Democratic Louisiana district. In the end, he ignored deliberative democracy and rammed the bill through Congress with an almost Machiavellian determination, sidestepping the filibuster through a parliamentary loophole.

So Obama can certainly be tough and determined. But he is also prone at times to waffling and allowing public opinion to push him around, an unhappy aspect of the pragmatic side of his temperament. Unlike his Republican predecessors, Obama is sometimes quick to jettison colleagues and supporters when they come under attack, such as Tom Daschle and former White House Counsel Greg Craig. He occasionally backtracks on his own statements when they attract criticism, as in his quick repudiation of much of his eloquent support for the Islamic center near Ground Zero and his defense of religious tolerance. He has failed to fulfill his bold promise to close down the prison camp in Guantánamo, and he has continued some of the offensive violations of civil liberties that were so widespread in the Bush years. In the end, Obama, who has probably been the most famous person in the world for more than two years, remains something of an enigma. And that leaves some of Kloppenberg’s argument floating elegantly through a series of philosophical speculations that may or may not have had much influence on Obama’s ability to lead the nation.

Kloppenberg is best when he analyzes Obama’s own writing–Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope, and some of his memorable speeches. He gives an excellent analysis of Obama’s views of Lincoln and of the ways in which he has come to terms with race. But perhaps Obama’s writing was not enough to support a book. Kloppenberg spends considerable time describing the ideas and theories of others. He discusses at some length John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, the great 1971 work that dominated American philosophy for more than a decade and that linked the pragmatic tradition to a vision of idealized social justice. Rawls’s great contribution to philosophy was the idea that real justice would provide the kind of society a person would choose if that person had no knowledge of the condition in which he or she would live. Rawls argued that should a person find himself in such circumstances, that person would likely support a society that would provide justice (if not necessarily equality) to everyone. Kloppenberg correctly notes that Rawlsian liberalism was visible throughout the scholarly and intellectual world for many years. But Obama’s proximity to Rawls’s theory does not mean that he embraced it (or even read it).

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Issue #19, Winter 2011
 
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Harry Flashman:

American voters of all political persuasions can recall the Obama 2008 campaign repeatedly promising that their administration would uphold the highest ethical standards with a particular emphasis on transparency.

A vast majority of these voters believe that the process of running for the office of President of the United States should be the toughest public job interview on the planet.

The sad fact remains that, according to longstanding government clearance protocols, the current president could not be hired as a janitor in a federal building with the amount of verifiable background information that he has provided.

Barack Obama's original typewritten long form birth certificate, school records, SAT and LSAT scores, college and law school admission records and grade transcripts and thesis papers, medical records, passport history, Illinois state senate tenure records, presidential campaign foreign donor lists, complete White House visitor logs and other relevant records and documents have all never been released or allowed to be subjected to any sort of scrutiny, despite several years of repeated requests for disclosure by numerous individuals and non-traditional media organizations.

The Obama 2008 campaign and subsequent administration have to date spent a considerable sum on legal fees, estimated in the millions of dollars, to fight Freedom of Information Act filings and other requests to examine this material. The powerful international law firm Perkins Coie has been their primary provider of these services.

Barack Obama's true origins, past associations, ideological convictions, behavioral influences and ongoing relationships are matters of great concern to a fast growing number of people who just want to know the truth about this man.

This is the sort of information about their presidential candidates that postwar modern era American voters had become accustomed to having the mainstream media provide for them, until 2008 when Obama was given an astonishing special exception from the traditional expectation that such candidates should allow for the release and scrutiny of the substantive body of their personal records and credentials.

In their eagerness to "make history" by covering the campaign of the man whom they were clearly very interested in helping to become the first black president, the mainstream media failed in their essential national responsibility, namely to report on significant events with thoroughness and impartial objectivity. They ignored their duty to search for the truth and should be regarded with disdain by all people who value information in a free society.

Virtually the entire paper trail of the current president's existence, from birth to the White House, continues to remain deeply hidden away in a tight shroud of secrecy.

Barack Obama and his handlers were able to successfully hide his past and explain away and minimize his association with controversial individuals and groups during their 2008 campaign.

Will they be able to effectively repeat this deception between now and 6 November 2012?

Only if you let them.

Jan 30, 2011, 11:30 PM
Lauren:

ALL of THAT TO SAY, "OBAMA'S NOT A REAL AMERKIN"?

After a thoughtful review of a philosophically deep exposition of the President's intellectual dispositions, all you can do is spout 'birther's' paranoia, and PRETEND it has something to do with real policy.

My guess is that you cut and pasted this remark, and you've left the same one all over the internet. Because, after all, your comment had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ARTICLE.
It's like a page of conspiratorial graffiti.

Feb 5, 2011, 11:29 PM
Harry Flashman:

Barack Obama was presented in 2008 as a brilliant intellectual with stellar Ivy League credentials whose cool low key style would transform the culture of Washington and lead the United States into a new harmonious postracial era while achieving miracles of bipartisan cooperation.

It has become quite apparent how this ridiculously wishful fantasy has really played out.

There is no wonder why the Obama 2008 campaign found it necessary to conceal virtually the entire paper trail of their candidate's existence in a deep shroud of secrecy, and why their subsequent administration continues to do so.

There exists a widespread and fast growing international speculation that an objective examination of Barack Obama's hidden paper trail would clearly reveal that his meteoric rise up the educational and career ladders was largely the result of multiple affirmative action decisions and that his vaunted intellectual reputation was greatly exaggerated.

In short, just another leftist ideologue big city machine politician with more than a touch of narcissism and a proven track record of self-serving dealmaking who has cleverly used his race to get ahead and get over.

In fact, astute observers in corridors of power around the world and other quarters consider that the infamous original typewritten long form birth certificate, the most widely discussed item from Obama's hidden paper trail, is actually the least relevant of all of his concealed records and documents.

They believe that the truth about Obama's place of birth and the identity of both of his parents is far less important to the future of the United States than the truth about what makes him tick and who is pulling his strings, so to speak.

Whether the current president's biological father was the late Kenyan Barack Obama "Sr." or the late CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis or the late "grandfather" Stanley Armour Dunham (arguably the likeliest candidate - see cashill.com among many other sources) or some other man pales in significance to the truth about his past associations and ideological convictions and behavioral influences and ongoing relationships.

This is the sort of information about their presidential candidates that postwar modern era American voters had become accustomed to having the mainstream media provide for them, until 2008 when Barack Obama received an astonishing special exception from the traditional expectation that such candidates should allow for the release and scrutiny of the substantive body of their personal records and credentials.

Thus, it is difficult to conduct any sort of thoughtful review of a philosophically deep exposition of the current president's intellectual dispositions.

Once again, virtually the entire paper trail of Barack Obama's existence, from birth to the White House, continues to remain deeply hidden away.

What is being hidden and why are they hiding it?

That is the real policy question that should be considered.

Feb 6, 2011, 4:41 AM

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