Happy anniversary, Mr. President
Next week marks the first anniversary of Barack Obama’s accession to the presidency.
In reflecting on the president’s initial year, however, I keep returning to two texts. The first is Gov. Mario Cuomo’s famous distinction between the poetry of campaigning and the prose of governing.
The president himself has handled this transition well, though a few of his supporters have found it more jarring. Their expressions of disappointment reflect a failure to comprehend the implications of Cuomo’s critical distinction.
Campaigning, like poetry, is about evocative symbolism, while governing is about nitty-gritty details that can never be as rich or as resonant as the symbols that permeate campaigns. People die for symbols, but rarely for public options or excise taxes. Legislative deal-making necessarily constitutes a letdown from the heady days of battling for truth and justice.
Poetry, like campaigns, is about creating peak emotions, but peak emotions cannot be sustained indefinitely. Have you ever read a poem as long as a novel? Those peak emotions impel us to action, infuse our campaign battles with meaning and even energize us, despite too little sleep and too little healthy food. When those peak emotions fade, as they inevitably do, we naturally feel a bit let down.
Campaigns, like poetry, are about ultimate commitments, while governing is ultimately about compromise. Having spent a year in fierce combat to further those ultimate commitments, compromise cannot help but feel like betrayal. Something important about those commitments is inevitably sacrificed on the altar of accomplishment.
Anyone who expected government to look and feel like the campaign failed to heed Cuomo’s insight.
My second text comes from the semi-sacrilegious rock opera of my youth, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which Yvonne Elliman, playing Mary Magdalene, sings about Jesus, belting out the words, “He’s a man, he’s just a man … ”
While President Obama never displayed the messianic pretensions Republicans ascribed to him, some of the president’s fans seemed to manifest this GOP critique.
No president can magically end deep-seated partisan divisions or halt rancor that has been building over decades.
Moreover, as a mere mortal, President Obama is subject to fundamental realities that affect other officeholders. Most important among those realities is the economy, which affects every president and which has rarely been worse.
That’s why I was on the record last January predicting (accurately, or you wouldn’t be hearing about it again) that the president, who enjoyed approval ratings in the mid-60s then, would be under 50 percent by this January.
An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
Comments:
...WELL SAID!