The White Peril 白禍

Connie writes about something that gets on my nerves something fierce:

You see, I don't want a leader in a president. I don't want someone to shore up my resolve or reduce my fears and anxiety. I don't want someone to remind me that patriotism (not nationalism) is a good thing, regardless of what country you're proud to be part of. I know that Capitalism is better than Communism or Socialism. I know that more freedom is better than no freedom. A president is not a civics teacher.

I don't want a great communicator. I want an efficient, quiet, and capable representative who leaves me (and everyone else) alone to be captains of our own industry and champions of our own causes, and responsible for our own resolve shoring up. I don't believe that government should intrude in the psycho-babble of message-sending that we're all good and capable, or engage in a never-ending marketing campaign of which program is better than that program. I know that and what really scares me, frightens me, and gives me nothing but anxiety is when people want a person to act as a kind of spiritual leader and mentor...in our government.

That's OUR job!

I'm slightly less nettled than Connie is, I think, at the president's explaining his reasoning behind a given policy in order to help get the people to back it. He may be basing his decisions on previously unreleased intelligence reports, or he may be pursuing a policy I support but would have justified differently. But she's right that things get way out of hand when the president makes like one of the guest experts on Oprah--twinkling with telegenic goodwill, explaining things in very easy words and memorable little turns of phrase, and using plenty of pauses so we can keep up--all to ensure we'll be comfy with what he thinks is best for the nationwide family.

Connie is writing about Reagan, and I think the point is fair to apply to him. I have to say, though, that I'm not sure he himself wanted to stoke people's idolatrous fervor. Obama, who's the obvious politician to view through this lens in our current context, does strike me as getting off on being idolized; but even if he didn't, it would behove his more intemperate fans to get a grip on themselves.

Politics is a business that involves deal-making, prioritizing, and compromise on principles that affect millions of people. It's possible to distinguish more principled from less principled politicians, of course; but lionizing someone who will have to start getting his hands dirty the moment he actually assumes the job you want to elect him to is a set-up for guaranteed heartache. If you feel spiritually empty, go to church--or if you'd then be embarrassed to tell your Sunday brunch companions where you'd spent your morning, become a Buddhist. Or delve into ancient literature. Or move to a farm and busy yourself as a faux-earthy faux-peasant extolling the faux-simple life. Or satisfy your impulse toward worship by falling promiscuously in love with movie or rock stars. Do anything except project your spiritual yearnings onto politicians, who are exactly the wrong people to give performance assessments based on vague, emotion-based criteria.

Added on 6 August: How could I have missed an excuse to post the video?

See? These are the things you're supposed to swoon over: bubble baths, satin against the skin, and champagne. Politicians, not so much.

My friend Maria asked me a few weeks ago--all right, maybe it's a few months ago by this point--to explain why I was against electing Obama president. Since she just posted a comment to a post I made the other day and raised several points I think need to be considered, I'll respond here. Maria wrote the following:

As an Obama supporter, I don't take it as a "given" that Obama can change Washington. I like his tagline. I like it because it's true, and those of us who have had enough of Cheney and Bush with their arrogant blatant disregard for the rule of law--trampling on the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions--do need to be reminded of the power we have every four years. Four years ago when Bush was "re"-elected, if I would have had the nest egg necessary, I would have been "outta here." (Canada, Costa Rica...) I had serious doubts about our country lasting another four years. I thought I would get out before the flames of Rome engulfed me... And, now we have the chance to take our back our country, reinstate the Constitution, restore our reputation, etc., etc. I know you don't share my thoughts, Sean. I'm just sharing a little bit of why it's good that Obama is calling us to a larger service rather than just saying he is the answer to everything. He is just one man. But, look out, Sean, there's a whole lot more of us... ;-)

A lot more of whom? This is what I don't get. I don't really mean to single out Maria--since what she's saying is no different from what I've been hearing in New York since returning home--but what political principles are we using to justify the idea that Obama would make a good president? If people like his policies, fine. Expecting "change," though? This is a man who decided to decamp from law school to a city that has possibly the most famously corrupt political machine in America; he's clearly flourished there. And we believe he's going to change things in Washington?

The Obama supporters I encounter are full of enthusiasm for the ends he'll supposedly accomplish. They're a bit less clear on how he'll do it--and no wonder.

The "restore our reputation" line really tends to set me off, so I'll tackle it first. Most people dithering about our rep "abroad" are really worried about Western Europe. Yeah, occasionally, the head of state of Brazil or Malaysia will get off a zinger about Bush or "consumerism" and be quoted a lot for a few days; but the countries people consistently express anxiety about by name tend to be the U.K., Germany, France, and sometimes the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. (Everyone else in the "global community" usually gets dumped into some broader category such as "the Arab street" or "Latin America.")

The states of Western Europe are our allies and trading partners, and it's reasonable for them to ask us to consider their interests when we're hammering out our geopolitical strategies. Fine. But sitting still while European officials sermonize at us about harmony among peoples? Give me a break. The idea that we should be humoring them, much less yielding to them, is preposterous. Europeans have been waging war on one another for centuries; World Wars I and II were egregious in their scope and bloodiness, but they were hardly out of character. During World War II, most of Western Europe that wasn't run by the Nazis themselves was run by fascist buddies of the Nazis, Vichy collaborators with the Nazis, or enthusiastic fillers of orders for the Nazis. After being liberated by the Allies, then being put under our defense umbrella when the Soviet Union started getting expansionist, Western Europe soothed its stinging humiliation by repackaging itself as a champion, jointly and singly, of non-violent conflict resolution.

So how's that working out? Not too badly, in many ways. The European Union makes us Yanks snigger with its bureaucratic antics, but it has, in fact, helped to cement the sorts of economic ties that make aggression less likely. Modern nations such as Germany and even Belgium seem unlikely to splinter, depsite comprising multiple states with individual histories and cultural identities. Fine. But European societies are having much less integrating the Turks, North Africans, and South Asians who've poured in over the last few decades. Violence against Jews has increased.

American internal and external race relations are not perfect, certainly, but that doesn't mean we have anything helpful to learn from Europe about how to improve them. About engineering, art and architecture, and making good coffee, yes, but not about ethic harmony. And if that weren't enough of a reason not to suck up to Europe, there's also the fact that it won't work. Anti-Americanism did not start with the Bush administration, regardless of what those with selective amnesia may maintain, and the election of Obama would put paid to only its most superficial manifestations.

The rest gets me exercised less than it makes me shrug. I'm aware that a lot of people think the Bush administration is populated by nasty, nasty, NASTY people--but we've had a Democratic majority in both houses of congress since last midterm election, so talk about the need to "take back our country" seems just a bit excessive. The need to "reinstate the Constitution" sounds rousing, but it means different things to, say, anti-war leftists thinking about the Patriot Act and strict-constructionist conservatives thinking about the U.S. Supreme Court. Besides which, all this is assuming that Obama never has to make hard choices after another terrorist attack or other major crisis. Obama is very like Clinton: he's good at winning people over with his feel-good domestic policy bromides, but many suspect he's not man enough to be the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and he knows it. The Clinton administration overcompensated time and again. Would Obama? It's impossible to predict. But he has no military or foreign policy background, and while he's adjusting shrewdly as he goes, I'm not sure I want to see what happens when he gives it the old college try during an emergency while simultaneously laboring to prove he can get tough.