Is That All There Is?
You heard it first from Byron York on the pages of the Washington Examiner all the way back in January 2010:
This is about the time Barack Obama becomes bored with his job.
He's in his second year as president, and he's discovered that even with all the powers of office, he can't do everything he wants to do, like remake America. Doing stuff is hard. In the past, prosaic work has held little appeal for Obama, and it's prompted him to think about moving on.
... Throughout his life, his reaction to frustration has been to look for a bigger job. What does he do now?
It was a critique primarily cabined to conservative critics at the time, but in the wake of last week's debate, it's suddenly become fashionable even with Obama's cloak-touchers in the media.
Here's Melinda Henneberger in the Washington Post:
Seeing our president hanging out at podiums in Charlotte and now Denver, his famous competitiveness nowhere to be seen, has left me with a question I wish I didn’t have: Does Barack Obama really want to be president?
His campaign team wants it, yes, and his party, and his wife. But if meeting donors and lawmakers is such a drag, and campaigning such a chore, maybe he’d rather be home in Chicago, spending time with his family and small circle of close friends.
Then there's Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast, who -- in keeping with his gift for pathological cluelessness -- presents the question of the hour as if it's a novelty:
Someone needs to ask the cut-to-the-chase question: is he enthusiastic about keeping this job, or he is just maybe tired of being president?
To which the answer is: yes.
Here's the thing: every president gets tired of the presidency (except, perhaps, for Bill Clinton, a man who seems to believe that he'll disappear if nobody's looking at him). But the options aren't mutually exclusive: one can be fatigued by the job and still want to retain it.
American history is replete with presidents bemoaning the job. And understandably so. It's a gig where you're held directly responsible for every last national need, want, and desire, regardless of the limitations of your power. If you want to understand how untethered the public's expectations of the office are from reality, watch the next town hall gathering where a solicitous voter wants to know what the president is going to do about the fact that the cafeteria at her son's school isn't meeting his need for gluten-free meals. On top of that, it also happens to be a line of work guaranteed to accentuate the aging process more than a Lindsay Lohan time-lapse.
Still, it's a job with immeasurable benefits. On top of the plane, the mansion, the entourage, and the abiding knowledge that you can incinerate humanity on a few moments' notice (yes, I too am surprised that Nixon didn't use the power recreationally), there's also the fact that you're constantly occupying the epicenter of American life. Dangle that in front of someone with a tumorous ego (hint: no one else runs for the job) and you'll generate a Gollum-like obsession.
All that to say I don't think Obama wants out. And even if he'd be happy to bid goodbye to the more irksome responsibilities of the job, he still wouldn't consider taking a pass on reelection for a very simple reason: it'd be near impossible to frame walking away now -- with a record that even the most generous observers could only describe as 'mixed' -- as anything other than an admission of failure. This guy came into office cultivating comparisons to Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan. Do you think he would want to leave with parallels to Lyndon Johnson, circa 1968? 'Suffering' through another four years inside the gilded cage of the presidency, with all of its attendant annoyances -- the adversarial legislative branch, the constant media churn, the need to fake enthusiasm when greeting last year's WNBA champions -- is a considerably lighter burden than spending the rest of your life knowing that you were President Pet Rock -- intriguing until the novelty wore out.
A more acute read on what ails the president is likely found in Matt Bai's recent post on the New York Times' Caucus blog:
Watching the president grimace his way through the restrained back-and-forth reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend in Democratic politics, who posited that Mr. Obama simply doesn’t love being president. Not that he doesn’t want the job or believe he should have it, or that its challenges don’t give him plenty of cause for stress or solemnity — just that he doesn’t appear to actually enjoy the daily business of running the country.
Mostly, what Mr. Obama seems to get no joy from, and what debates really demand of you, is the opportunity to persuade people that you’re right, by making complex arguments sound simple and self-evident.
OK, it's not perfect. One big qualifier: The 'complex arguments' thing (which may be the characterization of Bai or the anonymous conversationalist) is caterwauling, pure and simple. Take it from a guy who used to write presidential speeches for a living -- if you can't put the argument into terms readily understood by an educated layperson, it's your fault, not theirs. Thomas Sowell has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and his columns are intelligible to the average high school graduate. It takes a pseudo-intellectual to believe that there's an inverse correlation between clarity and intellectual rigor (paging Mr. Heidegger). And if you really think the problem is public stupidity, it really ought to make you rethink that electoral mandate that those same mouth-breathers gave you a few years ago.
But, beyond that, Bai has hit on what strikes me as the key point: Obama considers it an affront when people fail to accept his brilliance as a given. The man has simply never had to win on the merits. Like most professionals who manage to trade exclusively on personality, he has rocketed to the level of his incompetence. And now, when people actually question him, the sense of righteousness that has calcified around an unchallenged ideology has left him at a loss to construct a rejoinder: how, after all, do you debate someone trapped in false consciousness? Barack is still trying to figure out how to tell us that we're only staring at shadows on the cave wall.
I don't think it an overstatement to say that this trait ought to disqualify him for the presidency. Were he the Lincoln acolyte he claims to be, he might have kept this quotation closer to heart:
... [P]ublic sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
In short, Obama seeks to know whether it's asking too much for us to just take his word for it. And in short, we reply, in growing numbers: Yes. Yes it is.
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Comments:
May '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
he wants the trappings and the title, but doesn't want to do any of the work associated with the job
Apr '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
Great thoughts, I never thought media would start to let on the truths about the President. It has always amazed me that he does not try to get people on his side, just pretends to work with others and nobody calls him on it
Jun '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
Troy Senik, Ed.
if you can't put the argument into terms readily understood by an educated layperson, it's your fault, not theirs. Thomas Sowell has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and his columns are intelligible to the average high school graduate. It takes a pseudo-intellectual to believe that there's an inverse correlation between clarity and intellectual rigor (paging Mr. Heidegger). · · 32 minutes ago
And the ability to make the difficult seem easy is the mark of the true master... which is why I have so much respect for Dr. Sowell.
Apr '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
Precisely my thoughts. He seems to want the authority but not the responsibilities of the office.
Jun '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
Barack thought that when he grabbed the brass ring, everyone would stand around for the next four years and applaud him, and bow down to his every whim, allowing him to socialize medicine, pay off his cronies, and install his sycophants at all levels of government.
Is it any wonder that, with expectations like that, he'd be "disenchanted" with the whole Presidency thing and the actual work involved?
I really think that given a chance, he'd chuck the whole thing and settle for "First Black President" and a good chance to improve his golf game.
Mar '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
Great post, Troy. A pleasure to read. Thanks.
Mar '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
Obama is the heavyweight champ who eats too many donuts and skips too little rope but is absolutely sure he can still land the knockout punch every time he needs it.
Aug '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
Welcome to the world of a narcissist. Have to figure out how to get someone else's buy-in? Oh no. Need to figure out how get others to want it to? Forget it. The narcissist wants to simply snap his fingers and say "make it so"
Mar '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
This would explain the rumors about the Obamas buying a $35M Hawaii Estate (one might wonder where they are gonna find the money, but no doubt many foreign donors will chip in).
It would be appropriate that Mr Obama returns to the place of his birth, at least until he is appointed UN Secretary General - his true calling.
Sep '10
Re: Is That All There Is?
A pleasure watching you kick the empty chair, Troy. Its too bad that the Choom with a View aspired to be Tyrannus In Chief and found out there's still life in the legislative branch.
Jun '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
President Obama wants to be great. Or at least be thought of as great. And he wants this greatness to be universally acknowledged throughout the world and throughout all of history.
Imagine, when you have that conception of yourself, how pedestrian, how horribly mundane it must be to actually do the job of president -- to grovel at fundraisers; to have to stand on a stage with a rich white guy -- a Mormon, for God's sakes -- and debate him; to have to attend to the day to day crap at the office (Crisis in Libya? Who the hell cares about Libya??)!
His entire trajectory for the last 20 years has been geared toward achieving the title of World's Greatest Human. The once respectable media has elevated him by igniting a fire under his own hot air.
I don't think he's so much bored with being president as he is annoyed that it has started to feel, like every other job he's held, like an impediment to his rightful place in the pantheon of world history.
Jun '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
Colin B Lane: President Obama wants to be great. Or at least be thought of as great. And he wants this greatness to be universally acknowledged throughout the world and throughout all of history.
Imagine, when you have that conception of yourself, how pedestrian, how horribly mundane it must be to actuallydothe job of president -- to grovel at fundraisers; to have to stand on a stage with a rich white guy -- a Mormon, for God's sakes -- and debate him; to have to attend to the day to day crap at the office (Crisis in Libya? Who the hell cares about Libya??)!
His entire trajectory for the last 20 years has been geared toward achieving the title of World's Greatest Human. The once respectable media has elevated him by igniting a fire under his own hot air.
I don't think he's so much bored with being president as he is annoyed that it has started to feel, like every other job he's held, like an impediment to his rightful place in the pantheon of world history. · 3 minutes ago
You may have the right of it there.
Jun '10
Re: Is That All There Is?
Is Barack Obama bored with the job of being president?
Oh, please, spare me. An active mind never gets bored in a dynamic environment. How many people reading this have quit a job because there was nothing left to learn, because the duties had become routine, or because the job no longer challenged? Barack Obama has mastered nothing. He isn't bored; he's indifferent and lazy. His M.O. is well known by now: the student who attended class rarely, the law professor who never published, the president who spends his time on the golf course. Hard work has never interested him. He's a slacker with a talent for self-promotion. But pundits want us to believe that Obama has lost interest because he's just too good for the job? No, such people are just trying to explain away their delusions about the president. There will be plenty of work in D.C. for therapists after the election.
Re: Is That All There Is?
He wants the job. But he wants to have it like he's had everything else: the easy way.
Jun '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
Troy's "cloak touchers in the media" and your "Choom with a View" -- two wonderful new phrases for my lexicon coming from the same post.
Mar '12
Re: Is That All There Is?
The Weekly Standard put it together just before the 2008 election here. Bottomline: they predicted that he would tire of the job by 2012.
Jan '11
Re: Is That All There Is?
Everything about Obama says that he considers the presidency "his." It's his chance to shine, it's his moment in the spotlight of history, and it's his game to play.
If you've played sports on any level, you sense it right away. Obama isn't a team player. Teammates are a necessary evil. They just distract from his glory.
It's often been said that Obama doesn't like the personal contact of politics, and it's funny - when they say that, they don't say that Obama shuns just Republicans. He also shuns fellow Democrats. He just doesn't like anyone else on stage with him. He doesn't like his own team.
Government is a team game. He can't play it.
Nov '10
Re: Is That All There Is?
I think he's torn on whether he wants the job. With his ego, I suspect he hates the idea of losing to Romney. On the other hand, having a real job is kind of a drag. You know what post-presidential job I think he's eying? Secretary General Of The UN. It's perfect. He gets to give all the flowery speeches he wants with absolutely no responsibility to actually DO anything. It's Obama's dream job.
Sep '10
Re: Is That All There Is?
Susan in Seattle
Precisely my thoughts. He seems to want the authority but not the responsibilities of the office. · 2 hours ago
He's a Juxtaposeur.
May '10
Re: Is That All There Is?
Great post Troy, but you posted it with the wrong image:
If SNL were really funny they would have Fred Armison sing this.