http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg111314.php3
This president is different
[image: Paul Greenberg]
By Paul Greenberg
Published Nov. 13, 2014
It's happened to presidents of the United States before as they found
themselves (a) entering their sixth year in office, and (b) increasingly
irrelevant. The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has just been
presented with an impressive vote of confidence -- in the opposition.
Midterm elections will happen.
But strong presidents don't let the well-known six-year blues bother them.
They don't need validation; they know who they are, where they stand, and
they just keep on keeping on. They have an identity, they've earned it over
the years, and they're not about to bargain it away for a brief boost in
the always evanescent polls.
The country doesn't need a president who's popular, just one who's right.
Even if it may take the long perspective of history to prove it.
Cases in point:
Harry Truman, the man from Independence. Now that he's been promoted to one
of the greats or near-greats in those ever fickle presidential ratings by
historians, which are even less reliable than the daily polls, it may be
forgotten how unpopular he was when he left office in early 1953 -- though
unpopular would be a vast underestimate, Widely despised might be more like
it. Not that his standings in the polls ever bothered a feisty type like
Mr. Truman; he just kept giving 'em hell.
Or consider the presidency of his successor, one Dwight David Eisenhower.
By the time his two terms were open, the sophisticated had dismissed him
long before as a harmless old duffer who was just holding up progress. The
more fashionable could hardly wait till the Kennedys and their court took
over and gave the place some class, you know, made it more ... French. Out
would go stodgy old ideas like balanced budgets and paying off the national
debt. In would come Camelot!
Ike may have been snubbed by the country's *bien pensant *but he remained
Ike. Complete with that broad grin and the reservoir of good will he'd
earned as a solider and, as it turned out, statesman. Yes, he did speak a
language of his own at press conferences, a mysterious tongue of vague
origin and indeterminate meaning. He had learned before that mystification
has its uses, and ambiguity can be an effective policy Much like his
foreign policy, his vague pronouncements ("What do you think he meant
by *that?")
*may have been just another way to keep the peace. Which he did. It took
Murray Kempton, that smart liberal columnist, years to figure out that the
34th president of the United States was "inarticulate like a fox."
Decades later, the country would get a president with a real gift for gab
-- Ronald Reagan -- and he, too, would suffer reverses. "Mistakes were
made," as he would say. He, too, would be dismissed as "an amiable dunce"
by the likes of Democratic operatives like Clark Clifford, but he was smart
enough to end the Cold War -- and the Soviet Union with it. Not bad for an
amiable dunce.
Nor could George W. Bush be described as popular when he left the White
House. Bush 43 wasn't just despised in some quarters but actively hated.
His response: None. He just kept on doing what he thought was right at the
time -- and the success of the Surge in Iraq proved that on occasion he was.
Whatever their differences, all those presidents had one thing in common:
They never lost their interest for Americans. We the People never stopped
taking noticing of them, if only to hoot at their foibles. Whether you were
applauding or just being appalled, you paid attention when they spoke. No
one was neutral about them.
This president is different. When he speaks these days, it's as if he were
reporting the doings of an administration that only coincidentally happens
to be his own. He's our bystander-in-chief, and as his tenure begins to
fade, he's gone from being Mister Cool to Mister Irrelevant. Have you
noticed? The sound of his voice no longer attracts, or even repels. It's
just there. Like fading wallpaper, it has become just another part of the
unnoticed background as it goes on and on about. ... I can't remember
offhand. His press conference, the one the day after that dramatic defeat
of his party in the midterms, there was nothing dramatic about what he
said. I thought I listened to every word. I just can't remember a single
one of them. He just went on an on about ... nothing in particular. The
bully pulpit of the presidency might as well be unoccupied. Maybe it is.
What does this president say when he has nothing to say? He analyzes, he
theorizes, he extemporizes, rhapsodizes and temporizes, but he still has
nothing to say. At length.
("All of us have to give more Americans a reason to feel like the ground is
stable beneath their feet, that the future is secure, that there is a path
for young people to succeed, and that folks here in Washington are
concerned about them. So, I plan on spending every moment of the next
two-plus years doing my job the best I can to keep this country safe and to
make sure that more Americans share in its prosperity....") Yes, and The
Future Lies Ahead. Are you still awake, Gentle Reader?
Like so much of the American public, Barack Obama seems to have lost
interest in Barack Obama. So much so that not even he may have noticed. Or
he would say something, not just speak. But there doesn't seem to be any
there there, just an endless hum emanating from some appliance that's been
left on somewhere in the house, but just where or why isn't clear. Not that
anybody cares anymore. Interest fades.
Read more at
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/greenberg111314.php3#x0976FcZK4krZMQl.99
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