In praise of Barack Obama

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

OCEANSIDE, California — One of those mannequin-style political advisers to a particular Republican candidate made a televised statement on the morning of the New Hampshire primary:  “We have to find a new leader who can salvage these seven wasted years under President Obama.”

This vacuous statement—in the midst of the creeping septicity of national politics; the raging, unchecked spread and medieval horror of ISIS, the inadequacy of airstrikes and alliances; the startling resurrection of racial conflict in America—some refer to this post-9/11, unwelcome, even nightmarish situation as “the great unraveling.”

But to brand the presidency of Barack Obama as “seven wasted years?”  Perhaps we should start by going back eight years and taking a close look at the then-state of our economy, the libelous war in Iraq, the implosion of Afghanistan, and the general disgrace of the Bush-Cheney business cabal.

Yet so many systemically dump all of it at the feet of the nation’s first black president.   Never mind history, context, or racially-inflamed feelings.  Barack Obama has handled all of it—and the problems themselves—with unparalleled grace, thoughtful rhetoric, and not a trace of scandal.  As undignified and voluble as we have become, so has he maintained his poise and restraint.  And so has his unforgivably vulnerable family.

This is still a democracy and I don’t agree with everything the president has advocated or done.  Yet I am a spiritual leader passionately committed to the overall arc of his presidency.  The national campaign we now endure is long contaminated with enough negativity and mistruths on both sides.  The candidates are desperate to strike pay dirt in our attention-depleted, gossip culture, and have resorted to made-up factoids and character distortions to both shock and appeal to voters.

President Obama is a refreshingly serious statesman who speaks fluently and deliberates extensively about policy and people and it does not appear that he has to “re-invent himself” in order to represent himself.

I like him exactly because he did not seem to relish campaigning and glad-handing and precisely because he was not attempting to invite me for a beer in order to garner my vote.  He has been inviting me to think—about very hard and pressing issues that have always defined the ethos of this nation: social justice, health care, a judicious 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 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 that.

“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.

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 was much more committed to hurting him than helping us.  Remember John Boehner?  God bless Barack Obama.

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Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer.  He may be contacted via ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com.  Comments intended for publication in the space below must be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the U.S.)