Commander-in-Failure?!

Commander-in-Failure?!

When Maureen Dowd and Charles Krauthammer agree, you must be doing something right, even if you're doing something wrong. Still, what President Obama has done right goes, I think, beyond the plaudits of Pitts.

Dowd and Krauthammer both focused on two failures, flubs, fiascos, faux pas - well, I'll leave the alliterations to Obama, and the satirization thereof to Stewart. Within the first two weeks Obama a) appointed, and defended, "tax evaders," and b) allowed the House to overload the stimulus with pork - not kosher!

Of course Dowd and Krauthammer have different motives for pointing out the obvious. Krauthammer has been rather blunt in his criticism of, almost contempt for, Obama. The President's mistakes merely confirm his opinion. Two sentences can serve as representatives: "And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package." This assumes not that some appointments shouldn't have been made, that Obama, through naivete or obligation, goofed, but that the entire appointment process was hypocritical - that Obama, while descrying old-style payback and payoff politics knowingly practiced it himself. That would explain, I suppose, Obama's retention of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Right.

It also assumes that the stimulus package has permanently damaged Obama's reputation, as if we already know what it will achieve, or not. Not that Krauthammer really cares about Obama's reputation; he cares that the stimulus package is a "fraud": "The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington." This despite the fact that, as Obama told Brian Williams, only about 1% falls into the Republican's "told-you-so"" category. Krauthammer sniffs at the lobbying that the big companies engaged in, trying to amend the bill. Well, he has a point. If you're from Krypton, you should be able to handle a few unscrupulous corporatists. After all, Haliburton's not part of Luthorcorps. (Oh, about that "greatest frenzy" - he might want to check with Dick Cheney.)

Something about Obama irritates Krauthammer, irritates him beyond the usual annoyance a conservative feels for a liberal, a pragmatist might feel for an idealist. Why conclude with such cynical references to the Beatles, LSD, and fantasy (think Lord of the Rings meets 2001: A Space Odyssey - now there's an irony)?

Krauthammer reveals his problem, and claim, in his last sentence: "The great ethical transformation ... would be seen as a fairy tale." He does not believe that there can an "ethical transformation," or, at least, that Obama can achieve anything ethical or transformative.

Maureen Dowd is more sympathetic, but no less remonstrative. She begins with a favorable comparison - Bush and Obama both read to children, but Bush/Cheney never admitted making a mistake and Obama just did. True, the rhetorically parallel "learned of disaster/escaped disaster" sounds good. (Composition students take note!) And true, a comparison between "My Pet Goat" and "The Moon over Star" favors Obama in all kinds of ironic ways (sorry, Mr. Krauthammer, hope's a stubborn thing) - although Ms. Dowd was wise to refrain from a full literary analysis of the two children's books.

(But we really have to get this superhero thing straightened out. At the Al Smith dinner Obama admitted he was from Krypton. That explains why his two favorites are former partners, and lesser mortals.)

While Dowd at least acknowledges Obama's apology, she doesn't think much of it: "It took Daschles resignation to shake the president out of his arrogant attitude that his charmed circle doesn't have to abide by the lofty standards he lectured the rest of us about for two years."

See, there we go again. Obama is arrogant, a master storyteller (orator), great with words. But when it comes to action, where's his record? (We've been here before; we'll be here again. Those who do not know rhetoric are doomed to repeat their fallacies. Or something like that.)

Dowd agrees that the stimulus packages had its own substance abuse problem (paging Rush Limbaugh?), but she sees Krauthammer's fraud of rushing and raises him a Beatles reference, calling it a "helter-skelter stimulus package."

According to Dowd, though, the fault lies not with our stars (despite the moon's location), i.e., Obama's "miraculous campaign," but with his neglect of details: "Mr. Obama should have taken a red pencil ... and slashed all the ... Democratic drunken-sailor spending." That's because he's arrogant, you see. (Pet Goat 1, Moon over Stars 0?)

Indeed, might not Obama's attempt at bipartisanship be seen as just so much hubris? How else can we explain perhaps his greatest failure, his failure to win over Republicans, a failure that somehow blinded him to the "disillusionment in his own ranks."

It may be just me, but I find two perspectives missing from the Obama's dismissal by Dowd and Krauthammer. One is that of Leonard Pitts: He notes that neither Clinton nor Bush ever admitted "screwing up." "Oh, my stars and garters. Dylan was right. The times, they are a'changin'." (By the way, for a former music critic, Mr. Pitts, you should know the Beatles trump Dylan.)

Now, Pitts is also worried about Obama's moral compass: "Taken together, it adds up to a worrisome pattern for an administration that campaigned on a vow to reform Washington's ethics."

Still, he takes a different metaphoric term. For him, it's all about a swamp, and that's what Washington was - and is. Soap bubbles and macadam. A bit more concrete (ahem) than fairy tales and children's books.

But whereas Krauthammer sees Obama as just another president - or less than just another president - and Dowd sees him as someone who has no one to blame but himself for trying to do politics different, Pitts declares that, "like it or not, the rules are different for this president." Despite his mistakes.

Of course, when it comes to Obama, even Pitts can't refrain from the superhero thing: That Obama is so "beloved" is "the source of Obama's great political power. It is also his political kryptonite." But who can relate to Superman? So we get: "Not to mix superhero metaphors [he will], but as Obama's friend Spider-Man could tell him, with great power comes great responsibility."

So according to Pitts, the mistakes, failures, etc., aren't speed at any price, just speed bumps: a reminder for him, and us, that he's supposed to be different.

Great Expectations and the dickens. Make your own pun.

It is perhaps rhetorically significant that Charles Krauthammer is a white man Maureen Dowd a white woman, both heading into their late fifties. They hit eighteen during the height of Vietnam. Leonard Pitts is a black man who just tripped over fifty. He hit eighteen after Vietnam.

It's not just the ethos of the subject under discussion. It's the ethos of those doing the discussing. We can learn as much about Krauthammer, Dowd and Pitts as we do about Obama. If Obama is arrogant, then his critics are also arrogant; if Obama needed a reminder, so did we - as Pitts acutely notes. But perhaps it'snot the same reminder.

There's a famous scene where Harpo Marx takes the place of a mirror and mimics whatever Groucho does. The responses to Obama's mistake remind me of that: since no one's arguing that there was a mistake, not even Obama, we don't have to worry about the stasis of conjecture (just the facts, ma'am) - and hence the relief of Pitts's reader - and can go straight to either values (all three), and perhaps add a whiff of policy.

So Dowd, Krauthammer and Pitts will tell us what Obama's mistake means, arguing demonstratively that it proves a certain set of values, which Obama exemplifies, positively, or negatively.

But where does this leave us, other than recognizing that Obama makes a great logos - a great place of argument - and an even better way to discover the ethos of those who argue about him? (For the record, I prefer Pitts's reading, though we don't share a demographic.)

Let me turn this around: After looking at the arguments, rhetoric and ethos of three critics, what can be said about Obama's argument, rhetoric and ethos? How did he get where he was, and did "I screwed up" work?

Another way of framing the question: What does Obama's own rhetoric say about the value not only of his mistake, but his apology? For we should not forget that the mistake has value as a mistake only because of the apology. That is, as Pitts notes, and Dowd acknowledges indirectly, the apology moves the dialogue - or argument - from an argument over fact - was there a mistake - to an argument over value - what does the mistake mean? And that can occur only because there's a consensus that Obama made a mistake. And that can occur only because Obama himself admitted he "screwed up." He didn't keep us arguing over facts, or definitions. He didn't stifle the dialogue over meaning, value, which if allowed to proceed, proceeds to policy - what we should do.

I think we need to look at two things: the superhero metaphor and the ethos of apology. I'm going to leave the superhero metaphor for another post.

I suspect Obama is acutely aware, more than his most severe critics or ardent supporters, just how different his presidency is, and must be. It's not just his mixed heritage - his self-deprecating "mutt like me" indicates just how acutely aware he is. That he sees his presidency as an era-shift -with all the Lincoln references - is clear. What seems unrecognized is that an era-shift requires an ethos-shift as well. I think Obama's reference to Washington, not Lincoln, in his inaugural was a deliberate rhetorical move, one that laid the ethos ground for his recovery from the mistakes he knew he would make - mistakes he said he would make.

To understand this, I want to refer to a comment made by Jay Heinrichs, author of Thank You For Arguing. In his book he discusses the three elements of ethos: virtue, practical wisdom and disinterest. He once told me that Republicans were great at virtue, Democrats at practical wisdom. Democrats might know what to do, but Republicans felt your pain.

Now, by all reckoning, Obama should have been another Gore-Kerry Democrat - an insufferable intellect who we should have elected, but didn't because he was just too smart for our good.

What happened? Rhetorically, what's happening?

Obama defies his opponents and critics because he keeps gaining virtue, without losing practical wisdom. He does this by employing two of the virtue tactics: the tactical flaw and changing sides.

Heinrichs defines a "tactical flaw" as revealing "some defect that shows your dedication to the audience's values.

So what are the values in question? After eight years of lies, deception, entrenchment and incompetence, I think the values are quite simple: be honest, and if you think you're a superhero (or some religious equivalent thereof), and even if you are, don't act like it. Superheroes have an alter-ego for a reason. And Superman is never arrogant.

If Obama was particularly devious, we might say he nominated Daschle and allowed the one-plus percent of pork not because of inexperience (Lincoln), a true belief in bi-partisanship, too great a reliance on "older and wiser" advisors (JFK?), but because, being a master rhetorician, he knew he'd eventually make a mistake, and wanted it to be one of his choosing. Better one he could recover from - reaching for the stars can be forgiven, even while you trip in the mud - than one he couldn't - if you're reading about a goat when there's a failure of intelligence and leadership, don't sit there looking like one.

But Obama's probably not that devious; he probably didn't plan his failure. He just knew it was bound to happen, as surely as Krauthammer and all his detractors. The difference is that instead of denying it, he admitted it. While this seems to give Krauthammer and - I must make a long pause, because they really can't be put on the same page - Limbaugh, etc. a chance to gloat and say "I told you so," it really gives Obama a chance to regain the rhetorical high ground.

Heinrichs calls it the "Eddie Haskell ploy" - when you know you're going to lose, "preempt your opponent by taking his side." But Eddie Haskell's not that far from James Madison - the reluctant conclusion, "I guess I screwed up," which comes from ethos's third element, disinterest. And the reluctant conclusion and dubitatio - doubt, self and other - are cousins, two of the three legs of disinterest. A good rhetorician can stand on only two legs.

And this might be a clue to Obama's rhetorical success. Perhaps no one possesses ethical disinterest more than a teacher - it's for your own good. And no one wants ethical virtue more than a student - is my teacher human? Can we cross the gap? Just as Obama moved the stasis from conjecture to value, setting the stage for a move to policy - watch - so I suspect he instinctively moves into ethical virtue whenever necessary, not to stay there, but to move to disinterest, and even more, practical wisdom, where he's more comfortable. For although all roads may not lead to Rome, that bit of ethos leads to logos.

And we sure could some of that, too, after eight years.