-
Barack Obama - Source: Reuters -
Related
What a pleasure to have an intelligent President, or so the narrative ran in the early months of the Obama administration.
Barack Obama didn't mangle the language as George Bush had. He could speak in paragraphs, whereas the Texan (by way of Yale) Bush seemed to be defeated by sentences. Obama did nuance, Bush did morals. Obama loved consensus; Bush loved unilateralism. Bush spoke; Obama listened. Bush wanted answers; Obama sought questions.
This kind of stuff writes itself, right?
But this mode, so beloved of editorial writers and television presenters, has lately become somewhat shop soiled. Why?
As I write, the soundbite being eagerly repeated is Obama's claim that he intends to finish the job in Afghanistan . More interesting is an earlier headline: "Obama poised to announce decision on Afghanistan."
Translation? "President about to make decision."
The clever, compromise-manufacturing, articulate President has proved to be something of a bust at coming to conclusions. Here is a counter narrative to the one offered in the first paragraph. He bailed out Wall Street, rather than rap its knuckles. He let his Democratic Party pals in Congress tarry over health legislation, and allowed the dialogue to be hijacked by the right. And on Wednesday (NZT), finally, after stalling and umming and ahhing, he appears to be on the verge of producing a policy on Afghanistan.
In fact, it's taken him just under three months. And while he dithered, American troops have been dying there in record numbers.
Let's set aside whether the 34,000 soldiers Obama intends to send will "finish the job", as per the president's soundbite, or whether they are merely a generous supersized sacrifice to that benighted country's reputation as the graveyard of empire.
Concern is growing that Obama would rather make a speech extolling the difficulties before us, and the necessity of a courageous choice, than actually making said choice. He's great at articulating anxiety, but seems unable to palliate it.
It's not merely Obama's political enemies who are attacking the President for his slowness to decide.
Ex-Obama supporters are now openly grizzling about the administration whose ticket to the White House was hope, and audacity. I was at a literary reading the other day for n+1, probably the leading publication in the US for young smarties who like literature but are politically-inclined. Most of them would lean to the left. They were worrying about the technocratic nature of Obama's administration, the proliferation of clever people offering clever views that leave a mire of complexity. They were not happy.
The great German aesthetician and philosopher Walter Benjamin once wrote of "crude thinking". By this I understand he meant the simplifications that are necessary for decisions to be made, rather than evolve. The latter approach makes you a hostage to historical forces. The former allows you to master them.
Put it another way: Leaders lead.
And bloggers mislead. I'm not actually begging for stupidity, as the headline suggests. Ignorance is not bliss. But some of the elan, the haste, and rush to judge that are stupidity's companions, yes, more please, Mr President.
Click here to read more of Tim Wilson's blogs.
