The Only Good President is an Ex

A couple of things have happened in the last few months that’ve made me rethink the ideal of an effective leader, specifically when it comes to a powerful and respected political office like, say, the President of the United States.

In October, President Obama was awarded an honor usually reserved only for thoroughly proven paragons of humanity and charity. With the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegians swiftly whisked our President into an upper echelon of secular saints including Elie Weisel, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and Aung San Suu Kyi. Or at least that’s what they thought they were doing.

Soon everyone and their pundit cousin started debating whether or not Mr. Obama actually deserved the prize after less than a year in office. Some doubts were reasonable, and some were downright inexplicable.  SNL even chimed in.  “No doubt he is a charming and ambitious man, but has he really done anything yet?” was the question on the mind of even Mr. Obama’s most loyal supporters. The President himself realized the mitigating circumstances behind the award and responded with a “thanks, but we’ll see what happens” sort of thing.

Did the Norwegians know something we don’t? Can they see the future? Maybe if Mr. Obama lived and died protecting the property rights of, say, low-income Chicagoans for years and years, someone would have eventually taken notice. But clearly wasn’t the case. The prize went to the figurehead of a political movement. So what gives?

More recently, the State of the Union speech/excuse-to-invent-new-drinking-games gave the talking heads more to talk about and the rest of us commoners more to think about. In the days running up to the speech, Wolf Blitzer’s beard became very animated with the possibility that the President could somehow vindicate his recent political failures in an hour and a half. I half believed it myself. Maybe this time he’ll give us a good reason why he hasn’t got much done, why health care reform has stalled, why Massachusetts is suddenly located in the Bible Belt, why Gitmo hasn’t closed, why my Uncle Pete still doesn’t have a job, and dammit, why can’t we stop nutjobs from trying to blow up our airplanes. Maybe it isn’t his fault. Maybe it’s those pesky Republicans, or the “if I only had courage” Democrats. In the end, though, nothing really changed. Because really, it’s all of those things that are keeping progress in check, and more. It all becomes vague rhetoric in the end.

So what’s a poor disillusioned young man to do? Look backward, of course. Maybe history has something to tell us. I started with Bill Clinton. He was on Letterman the day after Dave had Barack Obama on, and I thought that was quite a coup for the ol’ Late Show.  Clinton talked about how, now that he was no longer the leader of the free world, he was beginning to realize what was really important in life. He talked about the Clinton Global Initiative, which sounds really self-indulgent (and to name something after yourself probably is a bit grandiose), but in reality sounded like a pretty effective NGO that works to pull people out of poverty. Whether or not they’ll realize their goal of “creating a unique opportunity to channel the capacities of individuals and organizations to realize change” (embed: Clintonglobalinitiave.org) is still to be seen. But at least it is not solely based on politics. At least it is a shot in the right direction.

Bill Clinton didn’t have the smoothest run as president. He ended with pretty good poll numbers, but that’s probably mostly a write-off to his Arkansas charm and a decent economy. I mean, he can’t have slept very easy at night thinking about Ken Starr and Kosovo and a Republican Congress.

Same thing happened to Jimmy Carter. After one of the most miserable presidencies in recent memory, he started working with Habitat for Humanity and advocating on behalf of the Palestinian people. Now everyone loves the guy (ok, most people do). He got the Nobel Peace prize, for heaven’s sake (and he actually earned his). He certainly didn’t garner the honor for anything he did while in office.

There’s more where that came from. Most of the major players in ethical progress were not politicians, and if they were somehow enticed by politics, bad things started to happen. Think of Thabo Mbeki’s troubled presidency in South Africa. The Orange Revolution in the Ukraine. The list goes on. Responsibility blurs our vision. Politics is a magnet too close to our moral compass. Only the best and bravest of humanity can find the courage to do something noble when entrusted with great gobs of power. I can’t. You probably can’t either.

Probably works the same way with money. And social status. Even Bono gets on my nerves from time to time. And he doesn’t even have any real power. He’s just a charismatic, short, ugly Irishman with a save-the-world complex. I wonder what would happen if U2 broke up, and he took off the vanity glasses. Then maybe things would start to happen. (Although if you’re reading this Bono, don’t quit the band just yet. The last album was pretty decent.)

Maybe humans aren’t equipped to handle money and power.  Maybe we were meant to operate from the bottom up.  Maybe that’s why Jesus was always talking about making yourself the least among your peers, and giving away most of your income.

While we can’t entirely escape money and responsibility (although I do my best to shirk responsibility and lose money), there’s got to be a way to make it less of an influence in our lives. It’s like a contact lens that’s got shit all over it. It hurts like hell, but we’d rather keep it in our eye to keep our blurry vision intact, rather than taking it out and losing focus on what we think is important. It’s annoying to go home, find the cleaning solution, take the contact out and clean it, but after all that trouble we can finally see again.

So back to the beginning proposition, that maybe the Nobel Prize Committee might have known what they were doing. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe Mr. Obama will get little-to-nothing done in only a single term, or maybe he will bring world peace in 8 years and no one will question the far-seeing powers of the Nobel Committee.

But what happens if he fails? He’s already begun the slippery slope into defeat for many domestic and international problems he promised he’d solve, and there are more to come. What then?

Well, then, as I see it, the Nobel Committee was right on schedule. So are the pundits who damn his presidency to failure. Give him another 10 years, and with the character of altruism that so many people see in Mr. Obama, he might just do great things. Just not as President of the United States.

Mark is a graduate student in English at the University of Kansas, where he writes short fiction and poetry. He occasionally contributes social justice essays to Burnside.