(Photo by Pete Souza)
by
Helen Beach
Cannon
I feel sad that few come forward to defend and praise
this President, and too many who fail to treat him with the
respect and honoring he deserves. In fact, even if he
were less than deserving, is this the way we want to teach our
children and grandchildren to disrespect the high office of
President of The United States of America? Do we want them to
believe that malice and rudeness befit their behavior toward
the leader of our land?
I grew up believing that the office and the man (or woman)
holding it call for a certain deference and respect,
regardless of whether I believed in the policies of that
President. Instead our children are learning that basic
civility and courtesy are not required behaviors. Are our children to
learn that in politics, anything goes, especially if you're
wealthy? Should they be given examples of acceptable behavior
such as when a President of the United States addressing the
nation, is interrupted by a congressional heckler (Joe Wilson)
shouting "You lie!"? Is such an unprecedented and scurrilous
example just how it goes in our political arena? I've wept
over such savage and lying attacks directed at the man who
leads our nation.
On the other hand, I've marveled over the openmindness of our President under such vile attacks -- over his gentility and calmness in the face of such terrible rudeness, and his civility in the face of awful incivility. Can anyone point to anything other than his courtesy and willingness to forgive? And, for that matter, in this world rife with infidelities and venality, can anyone point to anything other than exemplary behavior from this husband and father? (Not many who have held the office could boast a clean moral slate--not FDR, nor Eisenhower, nor Truman, nor Kennedy, nor Clinton.)
I wish that every critic of our President would read
his two books--DREAMS OF MY FATHER, and THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. These two books are
honest and straight- forward and are not ghost-written, but
are written in Barack Obama's own impeccably fine style, and
they convey the philosophy of an informed, bright, and honest
man. The books
make clear that the then Senator Obama did not seek the
Presidency for glory, but rather because he believed that he
could help a troubled nation and troubled world. Nor did he seek the
office naively; he in fact foresaw some of the nasty
opposition a Democratic president would meet, as well as the
sure inheritance of an unprecedented national debt. And in his
book THE AUDACITY of HOPE, he makes clear how he knew that, to
a great extent, Republican
policy would embrace, above all, the protection of the wealthy
at the expense of the middle class and even the poor.
Furthermore and early-on, Senator Obama was fully aware of and
well-informed about international conflicts already in place.
(No other current candidate has such sure knowledge of the law
nor of international affairs. I fear that in their hands
America would be in danger of becoming hopelessly isolationist
-- no way to be in today's world made small by communication
and the need to recognize that, if we are to survive, we must
all be brothers and sisters.)
Our President came to office hoping to work with a
cooperative, reasonable group of legislators and believing
that bipartisan consideration of difficult issues might yield
good and needful things.
That hoped-for bipartisanship has not appeared, and as
a result, bills that should have been quickly addressed have
been made laboriously slow by way of the calculated Republican
strategy of unrelenting obstruction. The President has
been subjected to ridicule and calumny by a lunatic fringe of
cable news reporters, and by bad-mannered, uninformed Tea
Partiers. It
seems to me that we, as citizens, have an obligation toward
civility. As the
President wisely observed, "When we can no longer even engage
in a conversation with each other over things that really
matter, we lose something about ourselves and the democratic
process in which we believe."
(Above right) As the cartoonist, Jim
Morin of the Miami Herald, put it ~~
Any reader of DREAMS OF MY FATHER would quickly dismiss questions of the author's authentic American citizenship, and the charge of his "elitism" would fall, as author Obama chronicles the difficulties and yet blessings of his middle class beginnings. We see how he admires his mother's single parent determination to better herself in order to give this son chances for a good education and a relatively untroubled childhood. He tells of witnessing his mother's efforts to get financial assistance for the cancer treatment she needed. (This witnessing may contribute to his conviction that we all need health care support. How unfortunate, that the legislation to secure this necessary medical protection has been so unfairly and erroneously portrayed; how sad that its critics, for the most part, simply don't understand the plan nor that its origins were actually with Republican legislators, nor do they admit to its benign necessity in a world where health care is financially out of reach for all of us but the most fabulously wealthy.)
I am haunted by Dostoevsky's parable of "The Grand Inquisitor." It appears in his book THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Dostoevsky's story seems made for our times, though it is set in 16th century Seville during the terrible times of the Spanish Inquisition when so-called heretics were being burned at the stake, and the people, in need of a savior, yearned and prayed for a Second Coming. And, as Dostoevsky's parable has it, the Savior does indeed come. "The people are irresistibly drawn to Him, they flock about Him and follow Him." But then the appearance of The Grand Inquisitor changes everything. The Savior is condemned as the worst of heretics, thrown into prison, threatened with being burned at the stake, and castigated as the One who would impose freedom and enlightenment on people unable to handle freedom and light, and finally banished from the earth. "Dost Thou forget," the Inquisitor queries the Savior, "that man prefers...even death to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering."
Can we accept the responsibilities of being kind and
civil to each other as we try to make our precarious way
toward informed and truthful understanding Can we support our
Chief of State as he tries to lead us, with all good intent,
toward the light?
~~ Helen
(OFA - 2012)