One more for Rushmore?

Every self- respecting man with a sartorial sense should subscribe to GQ Magazine. He should do it  not only for the fashion tips; the magazine features some excellent writing as well. The editor, Jim Nelson, is one of the best writers in America.

With that in mind, I would to leave you with the following article he penned recently about our soon to be departed president, Barack Obama.

"Something is dawning on us—it’s almost too soon for us to admit, but it’s there, a half-considered thought only now blooming in our brains. Maybe we dismiss it with one of those quick cognitive fly swats. Nah, too early to say or I hate that guy. But the truth is coming, and it sounds like this: Barack Obama will be inducted into the league of Great Presidents.

Wait. One of the Greatest? you ask, your thumb emoticon poised to turn up or down on me. The guy haters love to hate with their very best hate game? Like 20-Dollar Bill great? Like Mount Rushmore great?

Yep. (We just won’t build Mount Rushmores anymore.) In so many ways, Obama was better than we imagined, better than the body politic deserved, and far, far better than his enemies will ever concede, but the great thing about being great is that the verdict of enemies doesn’t matter.

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In fact, and I say this as a Bill Clinton fan, I now feel certain that, in the coming decades, Obama’s star will rise higher than Clinton’s, and he’ll replace Bill in the public mind as the Greatest Democrat since FDR.

This has to do with the nature of Obama’s leadership, which is to play to legacy (and Clinton’s impulse, which is to play to the room). Bill Clinton will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama will long be revered because he’s charismatic, presided over an economic revival, and changed and elevated the view of the presidency. He’s simply bigger than Bill.

More to the point, Obama’s legacy is the sort that gets canonized. Because the first rule of Hall of Fame-dom: The times have to suck for the president not to. Civil wars, World Wars, depressions and recessions. You got to have ’em if you wanna be great. That’s why we rate the Washingtons, Lincolns, and Roosevelts over That Fat Guy with the Walrus Mustache. Like Obama, these Great Men were dealt sucky hands, won big, and left the country better off than it was before.

But it’s also why we downgrade the Jimmy Carters and Herbert Hoovers. Were they as bad in real time as we remember them in history? Probably not. But they were dealt sucky hands, only played one round, and left the country feeling worse off. Legacy Game over. (Hoover reminds me more and more of Donald Trump! Elected with little political experience, Hoover was a rich bastard whose central theme was that government was wasteful. His answer to the Great Depression was to start a trade war and build a massive project called the Hoover Dam. The dam turned out to be a giant wall that did not stop or solve larger problems. Déjà vu, thy name is Trump Wall!)

Obama has a few other edges in the long haul of history, beyond specific hurrah moments like Obamacare, rescuing the economy, and making America way more bi-curious. Being the first black president of course secures a certain legacy. But what now feels distinctly possible is that, just as Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed, over time he may be judged less for the color of his skin than for the content of his character. That character came across every time haters or Trumpers or birthers tried to pull him down into the mud or question his American-ness. He just flew above it all. And, luckily, he took most of us with him. He was the Leader not only of our country but of our mood and disposition, which is harder to rule. At a time when we became more polarized, our discourse pettier and more poisoned, Obama always came across as the Adult in the Room, the one we wanted to be and follow.

Ironically, one of the lock-ins to his Hall of Fame Greatness was originally supposed to be his Achilles’ heel, the shallow thing critics loved to smear him with: his eloquence, his “reliance” on speeches and teleprompters (Sarah Palin once famously screeched, “Mr. President…step away from the teleprompter and do your job!” while herself reading from a teleprompter), as if addressing the country as a whole, trying to unify or inspire people, were a superficial thing. But pivotal words at pivotal moments are not only how we come to admire great leaders, it’s the primary way we remember them. The first thing most people can recall about Lincoln? The Gettysburg Address. FDR? Fireside chats. George Washington? His amazing Snapchats. (George was first with everything.)

With Obama, each thoughtful step of the way, from his soaring acceptance speech (“The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep…”) to his epic speeches on race and religion, his responses to the shootings in Tucson and Newtown, the killing of Osama bin Laden, the opening of Cuba (“Todos somos Americanos!”), and countless other momentous occasions, he knew how to speak to our better angels at a time when it was hard to locate any angels.

Lastly, there’s the arc of history, bound to bend downward. As our unity becomes more frayed, more tenuous, and the ability for any politician to get anything done more unlikely, the job of president will become less LBJ tactical and less FDR big-dealer. The job will largely be to preside. To unify where and however we can. In this way, too, Obama pointed the way forward.

It may be hard to imagine now, but in the face of rising chaos, we’ll crave unity all the more, and in future years whoever can speak most convincingly of unity will rise to the top. (It’s also hard to imagine many beating Obama at the game.) This year’s carnival election, with Trump as a kind of debauched circus barker, only makes the distinction clearer.

The absurdity and car-crash spectacle of it all have already lent Obama an out-of-time quality, as if he were a creature from another, loftier century. Whatever happens next, I feel this in my bones: We’ll look back at history, hopefully when we’re zooming down the Barack Obama Hyperloop Transport System, and think: That man was rare. And we were damn lucky to have him." [Source]

As president-elect trump continues to surround himself with the most conservative, male, white, and  ideologically pure group since Hoover, we will see in the coming years just how much Americans will miss Barack Obama.

I will leave you with the words of Bobby Womack:

"If you think you're lonely now, huh
Wait until tonight, girl
(If you think you're lonely now)
I'll be long gone
(Wait until tonight, girl)
And you'll find another man that'll treat you right..."

I have a feeling that Donald J. trump will not be that man.

*Pic from GQ.com

Government interrupted.

*

Remember that scene in the movie "Defiance", when the milkman brought the army back to the forest to capture the Jews? After which Liev Shrieber's character, Zeus, tells his brother, Tuvia, (Daniel Craig) "you should have killed the milkman."

That would be my advise to his O ness: he should "kill" the damn "milkman".

I see him channeling his inner FDR and trying to pass New Deal like programs. I understand that, and I support it. I love the large expansion of the federal government, because like FDR, I don't trust big business. I wasn't doing cart wheels over the stimulus package because I didn't think the government spent enough. I happen to think the government is the people, and we have more control over it--the government-- than we do a bunch of stock holders and corporate honchos who are watching the bottom line. The clowns on the right who would do away with the government would be wise to reconsider. They should try to remember what big business unchecked has done to this country and the mess that they have left us in. With all due respect to Gordon Gekko; the only time "greed is good" is when you are in a nice Jamaican or Italian restaurant.

Obama's problem is that he keeps playing nice to people who will never be nice to him. Compromise? (And please, no comments about how brilliant he is and how he is two moves ahead of everyone else on the chess board, and blah blah blah. Chess can be a long fucking game. Maybe he should be playing checkers, instead.) Reach across the aisle? (Watch that shoulder there O man, you are going to dislocate it with all that reaching.) Why? His opponents say that he is using the crises the frat boy created to push through his own agenda. Yeah, so what? I say he isn't pushing hard enough. Strike early and hard is what he should have done; don't give them time to regroup and counter with political pressure of their own. That's how you should be doing it O man, put your foot on their necks. If you have to go down to 50% approval ratings in the polls, go. You only need 51% to be reelected president.

"The bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful as to threaten the integrity of our institutions and to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants."

That was a congressman from New York standing on his soap box against social security when FDR was trying to get it passed.

"Isn't this socialism?"

That was a congressman from Oklahoma to Frances Perkins, Roosevelt's secretary of Labor.

Sounds familiar? It should; because it's the same type of rhetoric we are getting now from the right. Roosevelt had his fireside chats. That was cool in the mid 1930's, when there was no Internet, no 24 hour cable news cycle, and no conservative talk radio, 24/7, to stir up the rabid masses. The only thing his O ness should be doing by the fireside is burning republican amendments to the health care reform bill. Look how congress carried on when FDR was trying to get social security passed? And now, in retrospect, I am sure that we can all agree that social security ain't such a bad thing after all. I am guessing that 74 years from now, if things go as they should, A-merry-cans will be looking at health insurance reform in the same way: How could we have even fought this for so long? Sometimes time has a way of making idiots out of some of us who are blinded by ideology.

"A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing,".... "Sometimes they will call it 'fascism,' sometimes 'communism,' sometimes 'regimentation,' sometimes 'socialism.' But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical. ... I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing -- a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals. ... We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago, 'emphatically and truly, a government of the people.' "

Way to kill the milk man FDR. I am afraid that it might be too late for my boy to do the same. The army has already surrounded the forest.

*Pic courtesy of Wikipedia.