Discriminations

Barack Obama is an opposite of George Bush in many ways (one or two of them good), and so it should be no surprise that Obama Derangement Syndrome is an opposite of Bush Derangement Syndrome. People afflicted with BDS (mainly intellectuals, academics, journalists, etc.) hate Bush so much they have lost the ability to discuss or write about him rationally. BDS obscures their vision so completely that they become analytical cripples, totally incapable of seeing or saying anything good about the object of their scorn.

ODS is the same, but different — the other side of the same coin. Those suffering from the heartbreak of ODS (many of the same intellectuals, academics, journalists, etc.) love Obama so much that they, too, are analytically incapacitated. They see him as more saint than man, turn a blind eye to what non-ODS sufferers regard as the Obamessiah’s human flaws, and show little tolerance for those who point out that the Emperor’s clothes may be lacking a thread or two and need patching here and there.

Like BDS, ODS is democratic. It strikes the high and the mighty — those who have demonstrated impressive intellect, scholarship, or talent in non-ODS infected areas — along with the humble. A case in point is the eminent Harvard Constitutional scholar, Laurence Tribe. Way back in July of 2007, after appearing in a campaign ad for Obama, Tribe swooned:

“Unlike a number of other candidates for both the Republicans and the Democrats, what you see with Barack is what you get,” Tribe explained. “He is not a person who is carefully tacking to one side and then the other to attract the party base for the primary and then the center for the general election.”

Well, maybe Obama didn’t “carefully” tack back and forth during the campaign, but tack he did. Remember his refusal to abandon Rev. Wright, his opposition to national security wire-tapping, etc., etc.? As no less an authority on tacking (or not), Karl Rove, wrote a few weeks before the election,

[Obama] seems to recognize that the U.S. is still a center-right country. His TV ads promise tax cuts and his radio ads savage Mr. McCain's health-care plan as a tax increase. It's a startling campaign conversion for the most liberal member of the Senate.

Rove made the same point several times in his analysis on Fox News last night:

“Look, he’s a very smart politician,” Rove said of Obama, “and he clearly understands that the country is centre-right. He went there very smart and very hard.”
....
... [He’s] a very smart politician who has clearly moved to the center over the course of this campaign.

And yesterday, “in his morning prayers in Memorial Church’s Appleton Chapel,” Tribe was even more worshipful:

“There are those in whom challenge stirs greatness, those who rise to challenge rather than letting it break their stride or spin their compass,” said Tribe about Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, whom he called “the most impressive and talented of the thousands of students I have been privileged to teach in nearly 40 years on the Harvard faculty.”

I don’t doubt that Obama, who was elected editor of the Harvard Law Review, was an impressive and talented student, but — call me a churlish skeptic (or worse, if you want) — I can’t help doubting that he was the best student Tribe ever taught, a doubt I suspect is widely if silently shared by many of those who occupy the upper reaches of legal academia.

Perhaps “what you see ... is what you get” — if what you see is what you want to see.

Another case in point is the justifiably eminent historian, John Patrick Diggins, a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In two recent articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education — this one by him and this one about him — he argued, as the subtitle to his article states, that “America needs integrity and humility in the Oval Office.” Let me say first that coming from Diggins this statement is not pure pablum. Diggins, a deep thinking follower of the theologian Reinhold Nieburhr, has thought long and hard, and written wisely, about such matters as humility, as this article demonstrates. Far from a politically correct fellow traveler of today’s fashionable academic left, he has been critical of critics of America’s cold war policies and even published an admiring study of Ronald Reagan.

But even Diggins seems to have been blinded by the light reflected off the Obamessiah’s halo, blown away by what The One said was “the righteous wind” at his back. Diggins likes the fact Obama can see the “moral imperfections” of our own society — any follower of Reinhold Niebuhr would like that. “At this moment of crisis,” Diggins tells his Chronicle interviewer,

we need “a leader who can acknowledge our own moral imperfections,” pointing to the extraordinary example set by the subject of his 2000 book, On Hallowed Ground: Abraham Lincoln and the Foundations of American History (Yale University Press). “Lincoln reminded war-torn Americans that the Civil War may be God’s judgment upon America for the sin of slavery,” he says, noting how that sentiment makes for a sharp contrast with the theological certitude that has characterized the George W. Bush era.

A fair point, although Diggins, like most of those who make it, usually fail to recognize any Niebuhrian insight in, say, the judgment of a Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson that AIDS may be God’s judgment on American society for what they regard as the sin of tolerating homosexuality.

But now listen to how Diggins believes McCain and Obama measure up (or don’t) to his “humility” standard:

But now that the Bush years are coming to a close, is either John McCain or Barack Obama capable of injecting the presidency with a dose of humility, doubt, and honesty?

“McCain regards his moral history as impeccable,” Diggins responds curtly. The Arizona senator’s apparently open-ended commitment in Iraq suggests that the candidate is dangerously enthralled with the idea that “America can prevail on the basis of sheer military power because that is what happened with the Soviet Union.” That attitude betrays a disconcerting “cockiness about our military capacity,” the historian argues. Furthermore, it is contradicted by history: “Ronald Reagan was talking about the ‘evil empire,’ but all along he wanted to negotiate with the Soviet Union, and that is how the cold war came to an end. We talked our way out of it because of Reagan’s confidence and sense of empathy toward Gorbachev. The idea that we should not talk to Syria, Iran, or North Korea is just nonsense.”

Though Diggins has misgivings about Obama — “he speaks again and again of change, but not once has he asked the American people to change their views” — he is encouraged by Obama’s character. “If ethics is a sense of humility, and the ability not to succumb to the temptations of boastful pride, Obama seems to have those qualities,” he says. “In that respect, Obama reminds me of Lincoln.”

The cold war came to an end because of talk, because of Reagan’s “empathy with Gorbachev”? Obama, like Lincoln, lacks “boastful pride”? Where was the skeptical Diggins when Obama predicted that his election would “change the world”? When he announced that “we are the ones we have been waiting for”? When he intoned after winning the nomination that

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves. [Emphasis added]

Can Diggins really believe these comments, and others, were uttered by someone with a Lincolnian “sense of humility, and the ability not to succumb to the temptations of boastful pride”?

As I stated at the beginning, even those of demonstrated wisdom and accomplishment are not immune from the ravages of Obama Derangement Syndrome.