Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is a troubled soul these days. Having seen the triumph of the “narrative” so dear to so many liberal columnists and editors’ hearts, he and they are now forced to witness the disintegration of presidential authority even as the aggrandizement of presidential power continues apace — unchecked either by any decent Democrats or the hapless idiots who pass for the leadership of the Republican party.
His column today is another in Cohen’s occasional series of reflections along his asymptotic way to the truth: “President Obama’s Enigmatic Intellectualism.” That’s one way of looking at it:
It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges — of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama’s approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.
For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.
This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs? The president himself is no help on this score. When it comes to his own image, he has a tin ear…
Or maybe not…It never seems to occur to Cohen or any of his fellow-travelers in the media that his premise is all wrong: that there actually is some substance to the hollow man occupying the White House, and that it’s all simply an image problem that can be corrected. It obviously has not occurred to them that there’s no there there:
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The consequences are unfortunate. Obama’s opaqueness has enabled his enemies — they are not mere critics — to define him as they choose. He becomes a socialist, which he is not, or a Muslim, which he also is not. Even his allies are confused. The left thought he was a leftie. He’s not. The right, too, thought he was a leftie. He is, above all, a pragmatist. This makes it a lot easier to say what he is not than what he is.
Fortune has not smiled on Obama’s presidency. His one uncontested attribute — a shimmering intellect — has become suspect. A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi (” ‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun”)…
Pragmatism is fine — as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn’t show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven’t a clue.
Well, how would anybody know? Obama is a man whose fantasy autobiography has largely set the terms of discussion: who’s Cohen or anyone else to say for certain whether he’s a socialist, a Muslim, or a lefty? As for his allegedly brilliant intellect, it would nice if he would let us all in on the secret of how he got in to Punahou, Columbia and Harvard, and what his grades there were. Certainly it’s telling that he does not appear to have many, if any, friends from those days, men and women willing to speak up and tell the world what a genius Barack Obama always was.
If Fortune has not smiled upon Obama’s presidency, perhaps it is because he is fortune’s fool, not her master.
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