Why this rabbi admires President Obama

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

ENCINITAS, California — Some of us grew up in an era (now vacuum-sealed by the vitriolic American political culture) when you could disagree with a president on this or that issue but still honor his character and disposition.

I like President Obama. His articulate and reflective persona, his intelligence and wryness, and his personal fidelity are tethered to the impossibly racial narrative of his presidency. Restrained and dignified, he has courageously chosen just to be our current president more than being our first black president.

I admire Obama because he is a refreshingly serious person who speaks fluently and deliberates extensively about policy and people and it does not appear that he had to “re-invent himself” in order to be elected twice.

I like him exactly because he does not seem to relish campaigning and glad-handing and precisely because he is not attempting to invite me for a beer in order to garner my vote.  He is inviting me to think—about very hard and pressing issues that have always defined the ethos of this nation: social justice, health care, a cautious foreign policy, and the very ability of our chief executive to mingle with intellectual alacrity among the presidents and prime ministers of other nations.

President Obama has never played the race card (although it is used cravenly against him regularly) because he doesn’t think of himself as our black president.  He just thinks of himself as our president.  (Ironically, a good number of my friends and colleagues in the African American community are critical of him because of this; they are misguided).   Nor does President Obama spoon-feed nostalgia into the national debate; he doesn’t vacuously rant about “restoring America” or “making us the envy of the nations” and all those platitudes.

“Make America Great Again” (one of Donald Trump’s recurring rants) is not just a gratuitous baseball cap.  It means rebuilding our dilapidated national freeway system, our dangerously deteriorating bridges, our shamelessly inept educational system, and our penchant for starting wars and having our kids die for what are disingenuously corporate interests.   It means taking every gun away from every person who shouldn’t have one.

I honestly believe that a good degree of the visceral opposition to President Obama has to do with the fact that his post-racial, global persona threatens some kind of oligarchic psychological syndrome that still cleaves to the Anglo-Saxon marrow of American history.

Here is a guy who works hard, never complains out loud that the job is difficult, has never been associated with any kind of scandal, sexual or financial, and whom I can understand when he talks.  And he remains gracious about a notoriously obstructionist Congress that is much more committed to hurting him than helping us.

Finally: President Obama is hardly an enemy of Israel!  History will judge his Iran pact—and one prays that this will not be in the embers of Israel.  There is actually much more strenuous debate about the deal in the Israeli press than in our generally either/or media circus.

The president is routinely exalted by Ehud Barak, the former Defense and Prime Minister, and the most decorated general in Israel’s history as “the finest friend Israel has ever had.”  The most extensive military compacts ever signed between the two nations have been consummated under this administration even as the Jewish state has enjoyed a robust economy, record-level tourism, and a significant period of immigration during all the years that Obama has been president.

I don’t need our president to be in love with Israel; I just want him to understand and value it.  To flippantly label him an anti-Semite because of his nuanced approached to the Middle East is as repugnant as cynically branding him a Muslim.  There is racism in both libels.

Looking at the sorry, self-absorbed, and tiresome candidates we’re enduring now to succeed President Obama, I miss him already.

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Rabbi Ben Kamin is an Encinitas-based author and scholar of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and its leader, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.  His columns also appear at www.spiritbehindthenews.com.

3 thoughts on “Why this rabbi admires President Obama”

  1. For a slightly different take on this decidedly rose-colored perception of Obama, this rabbi may want to read the following article: http://tinyurl.com/p7asxcn . Hint: the Rosenbergs gave the nuclear bomb to the Soviets, ushering in the Cold War, a treason for which they were tried and executed. Obama (whom the rabbi admires so much) gave it to the Mullahs, the consequences of which remain unknown but are ominous. Will he be tried for treason, too, or would that suggestion be an expression of some “oligarchic psychological syndrome”. Talk of being blind…

    J.J. Surbeck
    San Diego, CA

  2. Obama has never played the race card? Really? You could have fooled me. While I do not think he is Muslim, he actually displays all the signs of being an atheist, he definitely plays the Muslim card as well. He repeatedly favors Muslims over Christians and Jews.
    Jerome C Liner, Cincinnati, Ohio

  3. Galit Stam, San Diego

    Shalom, Rabbi. I’d like to get more details on which military compacts were negotiated between the two nations during this administration. Do you have sources/ citations? Thanks a bunch!
    –Galit Stam, San Diego

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