BARACK OBAMA, THE HUMAN BEING
October 1, 2014
Notwithstanding the dismay I
expressed in. yesterday’s blog post on “the emperor president,” at President
Obama’s proclamation that “America leads,” I recognize the gifts that got him
elected, and very much respect the integrity and dedication with he performs
his duties of office. He is in many ways
extraordinary.
Barack Obama is an extraordinary
communicator. He demonstrates skills at
taking in, in law school terms, “briefing” or boiling down information to its
logical essentials, to reach a reasoned conclusion, that earned him the
editorship of the Harvard Law Review, and that well qualified him to teach
constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He is articulate and forthright, and he
processes and boils down complex information with skill.
He is also a consummate
grassroots organizer, and is obviously deeply, pragmatically and spiritually committed,
to performing his duties of office. I
have no question of his sincerity. In
his heart, he wants to leave office with honor, leaving the country he loves as
safe as he can.
I vaguely remember that around
the time we got married, Jill and I had a little debate over whether the
president should do something. We agreed
that “it” was something that should be done.
But, I argued, in reality, no person would qualify to be president and
be able to do “it.” Every president has
human weaknesses. Barack has two that
stand out to me.
Obama has no demonstrable experience in
international relations or world history, or domestic penal history.
He has no demonstrable in managing
bureaucracies from the top down, rather than from the grassroots.
Hence, he must depend on information
briefed to him on topics with which he has no independent background. Living in Indonesia and having a Kenyan
father may make him globally empathic at heart, but it says nothing about his
knowledge of military and diplomatic history, nor of how “justice” operates at
home.
I know of no president since JFK
who came into office with a deep sense of his country’s history, who presided
over a much smaller, simpler government.
My point with Jill was, as it remains, that blaming gets in the way of
peacemaking. In my country, our violence
is only represented at the highest level.
Over the years, time and again, I have found the punitive trajectory of
the US to permeate in our culture, notably in our militaristic approach to
parenting and teaching our children. And
so, as with Jill some time in the early seventies, I conclude that in some
generation to come, the US president will be among the latter folks in my
country to begin substantially lowering that sword and shield. When the time comes, I wish this president a
blessed rest. Love and peace, hal
No comments:
Post a Comment