Within the next few days, Barack Obama will celebrate his first year in the office of the presidency of the United States.  I suppose the media will make this anniversary something to remember.  If I may be excused, I would like to add the words of an old essayist to the batch of communications that will be occasioned by the initial anniversary of Barack Obama’s ascension to the presidency.
I am not good at grading the performance of politicians in office but if I were asked to do so, in this case my mark would be “incomplete.”  Obviously there are many things left to be accomplished by Barack Obama, including the health care bill for example.  But beyond that, Mr. Obama has given liberals or progressives, as we now call them, reason to pause.  If I thought that he had knocked the ball out of the park on several occasions, I would not hesitate to give him an A for his first year efforts.  But he has not knocked the ball out of the park.  Indeed, there have been occasions when he has bunted or tried to take the pitcher for a walk.  It is those failures, or better, those near failures that cause me to grade his performance in office thus far as “incomplete.”
My apprehension about Barack’s performance is probably shared by many other liberals of my stripe.  Two weeks ago, Frank Rich, the editorial writer for The New York Times, had an essay on Sunday which contained a few lines of major significance.  Those lines are: “.. the American left and right don’t agree on much.  They are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger (Wood’s) public image, a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism, as the right sees it, or spineless timidity, as the left sees it.  The truth may well be neither.  But after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything.”
The key words in Frank Rich’s article are “spineless timidity.”  Frank Rich is an educated easterner who works for The New York Times. I am an uneducated mid-westerner and instead of spineless timidity, I would suggest that the President may well lack ball power.
At this point I find it necessary, as an uneducated mid-westerner, to explain things about the male anatomy.  In accordance with God’s plans, male members of the human race are born with a scrotum, which houses two testicles.  Whether it is true or not, the courage of males is often attributed to the testicles.  In street talk, the testicles, of course, are called “balls.”  They have lent their name to the title of this essay as cojones, which is the Spanish word for balls.  To say that a man is without balls is to say that he is essentially lacking in courage.  It is for that reason that I have given Barack Obama an “incomplete” mark for his first year in office.  There are no two ways about it, Barack Obama makes beautiful speeches and he is a gifted writer.  But when it comes to holding the opposition’s feet to the fire or a little arm-twisting. Mr. Obama demurs.
The most obvious example that comes to mind is the health care bill.  The thing that is lacking in the health care bill is the public option, which would tend to make the insurance companies perform adequately.  After a year of debate, it is unclear where Barack Obama stands on the public option.  Quite to the contrary, although specifying a public option, Mr. Obama has made it clear through his spokesman that he can live without such a device.  Essentially the health care bill, which is the hallmark of the Barack Obama administration in the first year in office, was left to the devices of Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Senate, and of Nancy Pelosi in the House.  Intense questioning failed to elicit a clear response from the President on where he stood on this important measure.  The House and Senate have produced a mish mash that will now have to be straightened out in conference. From all appearances, what they will produce will not pass the United States Senate.
Now if I may state an important point here, it is that Nancy Pelosi has in my opinion more balls than Harry Reid, the leader in the Senate.  Nancy Pelosi understands the politics of the situation and is not afraid to push her thoughts forward.  But the diffidence of Barack Obama about this most important piece of legislation, the health care bill, has left the troops confused about where he stands.  The primary reason for the diffidence falls upon the President who either is for the public option or against it.  It is more or less a guessing game where Obama stands on his most important piece of legislation.
There are other examples.  Obama came into office promising that the prison at Guantanamo Bay would be closed.  According to Obama, closing Guantanamo Bay was an integral part of his agenda in his first year in office.  Now comes a fly in the ointment.  There is an unused federal prison in the state of Illinois which is now standing vacant.  He proposed that the prisoners from Guantanamo would be moved to this secure facility.  But the Congress made noises to the effect that they would not appropriate the funds to activate the prison in Illinois.  Instead of fighting to make the lawmakers change their minds, even in his home state of Illinois, it now appears that Obama wants to withdraw, and as a result the prisoners at Guantanamo will remain there.    As long as the prisoners stay at Guantanamo it will be a stain upon our reputation throughout the world.  It will also be a recruiting device for all of those Islamic terrorists who trouble us so terribly in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.  But there is no evidence that Obama twisted arms among the Illinois delegation to have them change their minds.  Quite to the contrary, it appears that housing the prisoners in that facility in Illinois may not come to pass at all.  Will this man fight for anything?
But the health care bill and the prisoners at Guantanamo are only two examples that come to mind at this moment.  There are a good many other matters on which the President has failed to make his position clear.  The man was elected to be a leader and not to be a mere cipher.  On too many occasions where his leadership should be shown to the rest of the world, Obama has retreated into his professorial mode and become nothing more than “spineless timidity” as Frank Rich calls this conduct.
My credentials as a liberal go a long way back.  In the election of 1928 the contestants were Herbert Hoover for the Republicans and the Governor of New York, Al Smith.  My parents were torn.  They could not bring themselves to vote for Herbert Hoover but Al Smith was a Catholic.  In those days, to a Protestant couple as were my parents, that was a formidable obstacle.  In the end, however, they screwed up their courage and voted for Smith, the Catholic.  He lost, of course, which set off the first Depression which lasted from 1929 until 1942, at the start of the Second World War.  I view liberalism in politics as a sacred endeavor and I hate to see it messed with by people who lack courage or, if you will, balls.
Obama has accomplished a good bit in his first year in office, but with a little bit of courage or ball power, he might well have accomplished a good deal more.  Our relations with the rest of the world are now on solid footing after the eight-year period when the rest of the world was treated to “cowboy diplomacy.”  But there comes a time when the President of the United States should roll up his sleeves and do the heavy lifting, and that is far from glamorous.  May I suggest to the President that the time has come for him to do some heavy lifting, particularly when it concerns bringing members of his own party into line.  The Ben Nelsons and the Mary Landrieus need to be told that the administration will look for alternatives when it comes to future elections.  At the moment, the Democratic Party acts like 50 or 60 chieftains.  They are all going their own way.  It is high time that Obama makes them go his way.
At the moment, Obama has a majority of 60 seats in the United States Senate.  From all indications, when the elections of 2010 are held, that lead will diminish.  So it is of vital importance that it be used to stop a filibuster by the Republicans.  It could well be that Obama knows something that I don’t know about the voting in the United States Senate.  But it seems to me that he is much too casual about protecting this filibuster-proof majority.
There is one more thought about voting in the United States Senate.  In all of the contests thus far, the Republicans presented a solid front of opposition.  Clearly, it is their aim to destroy his presidency.  The Senator named DeMint from South Carolina has stated that this is the aim of the Republicans to bring Obama to his “Waterloo” and thus destroy his presidency.  Under these circumstances, Obama has continued as though this were a normal democracy where the other side will listen to reason.  Clearly that is not the case.  Rather than pursuing a filibuster-proof vote on the health care bill, for example, Obama and Harry Reid can make things happen by going the other route, called reconciliation, where only 51 votes are required.  My advice to Obama and Reid is to screw up their courage while they still have a 60-seat lead in the Senate and go to the other route that requires only a 51-seat majority.  Ah, but that takes courage and some balls that I am not sure the President and Harry Reid have.  At this juncture on his first anniversary in office, given the nature of the situation with the leaders of the Senate and in the Chief Executive’s Office, we can only hope for the best.
All things considered, Barack Obama on his first anniversary still has my support.  A cynic might contend that there is no one else for that support to be given to.  But at this moment, I am not given to cynicism and I am hoping that Obama pulls a rabbit out of the hat and shows me and Frank Rich some courage that we did not know that he had.
A few years back, Obama wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope.  At the moment I live in the hope, audacity or not, that on the second anniversary of his ascension into the office of the presidency, I will be able to give him an A.  But for the moment, I believe that any honest evaluation would have to give him an “incomplete” on the first anniversary of his presidency.  No one since Franklin Roosevelt has been presented with such a full plate of problems as Barack Obama when he entered office.  He has my support and I continue to wish him well.  But I would advise Mr. Obama that if he showed a little bit more masculinity addressing his problems, those of us who call ourselves liberal would feel much more comfortable.
 
E. E. CARR
January 14, 2010
Essay 432
Note:  This essay was dictated before the results of the special senatorial election in Massachusetts were known.
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Kevin’s commentary: I actually remember having this conversation with Pop on a number of occasions. Since this essay’s publication there have been a good number of strides taken in the right direction, but of course there are still issues. Guantanamo is still open, for instance.  I remember that when we were talking to Pop, my father mentioned that he wanted Hillary in the White House instead for the precise reason that we needed someone with balls. I am not sure how okay I am with the most important office in perhaps the world being controlled for two decades by as many families. In the unlikely event that Hillary is elected twice, that decade count will increase to almost three.