Obama the Unattached
Ubiquitous
Barack Obama," a documentary that premieres on HBO Nov. 3, and comes away with
some interesting thoughts on the president's character:
What's striking about this inside look at Obama is how being
inside gets you nowhere. It is virtually the same as being
outside. What's also striking about this movie is its lack
of arc. Obama is always golden, always going to win and always
does. His issue, if it can be called that, is himself. He is
something new, something young, something biracial and something
black, but he is not something from a political or ideological
constituency. He is adored by his fans--the directors, Amy Rice
and Alicia Sams, included--not for something he's done, but rather
for something he is. So far, that has been a weakness in Obama's
presidency.
Obama's lack of a bonded--as opposed to an associative--constituency
is costing him. . . .
If Obama ends the deepest recession since the Great Depression,
if he enacts health care reform, if he succeeds in Afghanistan,
then his presidency will have been remarkable, maybe even great--the
triumph of intellect. The man will be his own movement.
But if he fails in all or most of that, it will be because it is
not enough to be the smartest person in the room. Warmth and
commitment matter, too--a driving sense of conviction, the fulsome
embrace of causes and not just issues. That is not something Obama
has yet shown.
Obama's air of detachment has been a recurring theme in this column's coverage
of him, and although we agree with Cohen that it has been mostly a liability
during his presidency, as a counterpoint we would like to remind readers of
something we wrote on Nov. 6, two days after Obama was elected:
Obama seems to have a genuine detachment from matters of race.
That is because his unusual background, along with his relative
youth (he had not reached his third birthday when Congress passed
the Civil Rights Act), makes him something of an outsider. Obama's
own experiences, and those of his elders, did not instill in
him the expectation that he would be rejected or thought inferior
because of the color of his skin. As a result, he is at ease in
postracial America in a way that someone with more direct experience
of racism's legacy may not be.
Many blacks, and a lot of smug white liberals, thought Obama's
candidacy was doomed because America would never elect a black
man. Those doubts were themselves a legacy of racism. Obama's
success was possible because he never had reason to doubt.
Obama's detachment not only was an asset to him as a candidate; in this way,
at least, it also proved to be beneficial for the country.
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It's now time for healing, and for fixing the damage the Democrats did
to America.