Barack Obama

[Vanillas]

I voted for Obama and have no regrets. He is, excuse the cliche', the man for the times. He is one of the few - though certainly not the first - US President who could be described as such. American politics are dialectical and the history of the country is largely the history of the tensions and counter-tensions that comprise this process. While the majority of presidents have been centrists (Bill Clinton is a good example) there have been a small number who have pushed the country and the body politic too far from center. This has also happened as the result of the collective policies of a series of presidents (Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, for example). But whether one or several, the necessary corrective is always the same: A presidential successor who creates a counter-tension that begins re-establishing the center (although not QUITE the same center as before but, ideally, a more democratic one).

The above could be described in Hegelian terms as Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. A historical example may help to illustrate this. John Adams (thesis) served the last four years of the Federal period, a time of centralized power in the Executive Branch. The exceedingly close election of 1800 (recall that it was decided in the House of Representatives and by a single vote) went to Republican (aka Anti-Federalist) Thomas Jefferson (antithesis). His election ushered in a period of States' Rights and a decidedly weaker national government. This in turn resulted in many years of centrist presidents and relatively calm politics (synthesis). Another such president was Andrew Jackson who successfully defeated Nicholas Biddle and vetoed the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, a bank that, had it gone on unchecked, could have conceivably owned the country. Other examples include Abraham Lincoln following the feckless presidencies of Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan; The rigorously honest Rutherford B. Hayes following the corruption and cronyism of Ulysses S. Grant; Theodore Roosevelt fighting the entrenched second generation robber barons; And, in the memory of many people alive today, FDR following the ideologically bound Herbert Hoover. Thus each of these presidents served when policies or conditions had shifted so far from center as to make them untenable. The times called for a president who was sufficiently courageous and visionary to take the country in a decidedly different direction, toward real progress that can only come from synthesis.

Finally, it is my contention that Barak Obama is, or certainly has the potential to be, such a president. Following the economic excesses of deregulation and the cowboy xenophobia of George W. Bush, he is certainly off to a good start.