Obama's Empty Pulpit

-- by Tom Phillips

One of my retirement hobbies is drafting speeches for President Obama.  I lie awake composing responses to national crises, and then imagine myself begging and pleading with him to speak up, to rouse the nation, to say and do what needs to be done. 

Surely there are those in Washington who feel the same way, and may even have access to the President, and the skill to compose an effective response to something like Hurricane Sandy, or the slaughter of kindergarten children in Connecticut.  But the President is clearly hesitant to lead his forces into battle, even when he knows he’s right and the nation is behind him.  He did manage to mention climate change in his election night victory speech, and has now solemnly promised to use his power to try to prevent more massacres.  But on both fronts, he has left it to others to talk specifics.  The President has a Bully Pulpit, but it stands empty, week after traumatic week.  At best he is a ghostly presence,  raising hope and offering consolation, but without leading or pointing the way ahead.  

 

Full disclosure:  I voted for Obama, twice, though I supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries.  But my original reservation about him stands:  that he doesn’t have enough experience, that he doesn’t know enough about politics or life to be the “transformational leader” that his admirers expected him to be.   

It took him four years to learn the most basic principle of bargaining, that you don’t negotiate against yourself.  Finally he has stiffened his back against Republicans who want to preserve tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.  But he seems so mesmerized by the job of not budging on the “fiscal cliff” that he has so far failed to step up to huge, sudden opportunities to lead, on gun control and climate change.   

The president reportedly hopes to go down in history as one of America’s greatest Presidents, and he has even called in presidential historians to advise him on how greatness is achieved.  I don’t know what the scholars have told him, but I hope it would include something about seizing the moment.  Rather than wasting his time ruminating about how to be great, a President needs to take advantage of events, and the emotions they set off, to force a change in the underlying political dynamics, to make politically unpalatable actions seem unavoidable.  The worst possible thing Obama could do is to follow his anti-dramatic instincts, and the advice of nay-saying conservatives, and “let emotions cool off” before acting.   Psychological research shows that emotion is necessary for making decisions, and this is as true of nations as it is of individuals.    

Obama has a couple of opportunities left: a second inaugural, and a State of The Union address in January.   Hurricane Sandy and the slaughter in Newtown will still be open wounds, and Congress could yet be shamed into action, if the president could move the nation to demand it.   If I were writing the speech, he would call for action across the board:  let’s go over the cliff, raise taxes and immediately plough the added revenue back into the economy.  We could create jobs laying the groundwork for a new infrastructure, built to both reduce and withstand global warming.  We could buy back guns from the public, and beat them into plowshares.  Add universal health care and immigration reform, and you have a vision of a new American century.   We’d give it a name, in the tradition of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier.   

But I'm not writing the speech, and I’m not going to frustrate myself with imaginary pleadings.  It’s up to the president to seize this moment, and make of it what he can.   

 

Copyright 2012 by Tom Phillips 

 

 

Border Pong: A Trip to the DMZ



"In Front of Them All"  -- guards at the DMZ

There's something ridiculous about ping-pong, even when it’s played by Olympic athletes; all that skill and training employed in paddling a weightless, worthless plastic ball across a toy tennis court.  At this year’s Gwangju Biennale, visitors were invited to play ping-pong on stainless steel tables in the courtyard, with double dividers for nets, installed by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija.   The table tops were polished to a mirror-like sheen, so that players could see themselves and their surroundings as they jumped around, whacking the ball at friends, relatives or strangers across the divide.    


It felt ridiculous, in a fun way.  But it was also a symbol of Korea today – where armies face off across a barrier that divides a homogeneous nation into two hostile camps, trading shots and threats in a game that has no meaning or raison d’etre outside of politics.   Inspired by the exhibit, a few days later we took a bus from Seoul 50 miles to the border, for a guided tour of the DMZ.  

Christie and the KTX

-- by Tom Phillips

Traveling in Korea last week we took a ride on the KTX, the new high-speed rail service that carries more than 100 thousand passengers a day all over South Korea.   We rode from Mokpo at the southern tip of the country to Seoul, nearly 200 miles, in just over three hours.  There were no hitches, no delays, barely a rattle at speeds up to 175 miles an hour.  Best of all it was eminently affordable – less than 40 dollars one-way.  And the service is reliable:  KTX actually offers full refunds for any train that’s more than one hour late.   Naturally, I found myself wondering why we can’t do this in America. 

Gangnam Style and Gwangju Biennale: Subversive Art in Korea

By Tom Phillips

Art and protest are inseparable at the Gwangju Biennale, a unique and celebrated arts festival in South Korea.  It commemorates the Gwangju  Uprising of 1980, when students here led a revolt against a military coup.  The uprising ended with a military crackdown and the massacre of hundreds of civilians.  But it did not end the movement for democracy, which culminated in 1997 with the election of the once-imprisoned opposition leader, Kim Dae-Jung. 

The Ninth Biennale now underway in Gwangju is a playful, audience-friendly show that sprawls through five huge galleries and spills out into the courtyard, where passersby are invited to play ping-pong on 14 stainless steel tables with mirror-like surfaces.  The exhibition has many themes, but running through all of them is the subversion of power.  The purpose of art here is to undermine all forms of oppression, and it does this best through the subtle, irresistible force of entertainment. 

Occupy Wall Street One Year Later

-- by Tom Phillips

The anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement has come and gone, and I didn’t take part in any of the commemorative protests.  Why not? 

 

That was last year, and this is this.  The middle-class moderates who were mad enough to take to the streets in 2011, made our points and moved on.   The broad participation in last year’s protests made for a new political dialogue.  No longer is it dangerous for candidates to talk about raising taxes on the rich, or to campaign against the abuses of the financial industry.   

Today’s middle-class protesters are where they ought to be in a democracy:  interested and involved in an election year.  Thanks to Mitt Romney’s “inelegant” remarks and his choice of an Ayn Rand acolyte as a running mate, the campaign has driven home the main point of OWS.   It has exposed the present-day conservative movement for what it’s been from the start – an attempt to roll back 100 years of reform and turn this country into an “ownership society,” where power is equated with wealth.   

We have a long way to go, to claim back the wealth, power and privilege that the "owners" have seized for themselves in the last 30 years.  But I believe the worm has turned.   And it started a year ago with Occupy Wall Street. 

 

Maybe he saw my sign

 

                                          Rev. Debra Given at Zuccotti Park, October 2011

 

Copyright 2012 by Tom Phillips

 

 

 

The Road to Dotage 2: or What I Did on my Summer Vacation

Down the Shore

By Tom Phillips

The road to dotage turns out to be strewn with rocks and boulders.  Why should it be different from any other phase of life?   In June, I was in a “continuum of wonder, free from anxiety or regret” to quote my last blog.  But after a month of summer vacation, I returned to find my house infested with a widely dreaded type of bug, and my mind infected with anxiety, regret, anger, bitterness and despair.  After weeks of nearly constant interaction with children, grandchildren, friends and strangers, almost all of them younger, I perceived myself as decrepit, discounted, rejected, ignored, used, used up, useless.   Don’t get me wrong.  I had fun, I relaxed (see photo) it was good to see everyone.  Still, I couldn’t help but feel the erosion of my place in the world. 

The Road to Dotage

-- By Tom Phillips

What a pleasure it is to run into one’s self in an unlikely place.  A few days ago I was browsing in the Northshire bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, filling time while my wife looked for a gift. In the psychology section of the second-hand book nook, a title jumped out at me: “The Delights of Growing Old,”[1] with a cover drawing of a rakish, unmistakably Parisian gentleman, nattily attired and puffing a cigarette. His name was Maurice Goudeket;  I’d never heard of him, but within a day he became something like an alter ego.    

Like Goudeket, I am in my early 70s, a writer and journalist, finally released from the need to seek gainful employment; comfortably retired, healthy, and happily married. He was a Parisian and I’m a New Yorker, but we live the same way: