1-20-09

When you get down to it, President Obama's inaugural address was more about a national attitude check then a real declaration of a universal change in US policy. What he seemed to make clear is that he understands what his job is and that there are certain things that must be done, despite (or possibly even because of) the fact that he has been left with a huge mess to clean up.

This is in complete contradisitinction to his predecessor, who was bequeathed with a country that was far better off after eight years of the Clinton Administration, yet took advnatage of some of the starkest challenges face by this nation in order to further a political agenda: creating a "permanent Republican majority."

Ironically, Obama may have been implicitly channeling W.'s "exit interview", where he felt compelled to explicitly state "You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."

(This was almost comically echoed by Ed Gillespie, the White House historian: "I think he would like to be remembered as someone who stuck by his principles, understanding that in making tough decisions not everyone is going to agree with the tough decisions that he's made." As if he had to translate W. Now they tell him.)

It is questionable whether the propensity to characterize W. as the "Worst President Ever" in some circles is more politically transparent or historically fallacious; there are much starker examples of failure of policy and leadership (Buchanan, Hoover, and Van Buren, for example). Additionally, my original assessment that W. didn't care about his legacy may have been slightly premature. Yet it seems that W. woke up to what his job was on the its last day, never mind that there was a legacy attached.

To more clearly illustrate the analog, it is highly plausible that history will be a much kinder judge of Bush and his administration than its current poll number, as it has been to Truman and his administration. One may even draw an analog between "elitist" criticism of both Truman ("hick") and W. ("dumb"). Yet the strongest distinction bewteen the two is the almost naked partisanship of W.'s tenure and the bipartisanship of Truman's (to a fault--it allowed HUAC and McCarthyism. But it was hardly going to score political points).

To the degree that the Presidency is about personality, W. had a distinct advantage coming in: his "everyman" persona, which, combined with his ostensible "anti-intellectualism", made him politically palatable. When he had to look more like a man in charge and everything fell to pieces around him, that asset immediately turned into a liability. The enduring image of W. will be one of beleaguerment.

In contrasts, Obama's intellectual and personality gifts are both without question. The historical import of both his election and the its timing with the country's current difficulties is obviuosly not lost on him. What remains to be seen--aside from the salient question of whether he will govern from the center or the left--is whether his personality and charisma are among a set of skills embodying effective leadership, or whether they will end up being his primary engine of administration and potentially as much a liability as an asset, as they did in W.'s case.

This was the entire point of the inaugural address.