An Emperor's New Clothes

I guess Obama's proud of his Nobel Peace prize. But it leaves a lot of people like me puzzled. Here's a bit from a NY Times op-ed by Maureen Dowd that catches my eye:

Havel, the 73-year-old former Czech president, who didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize despite leading the Czechs and the Slovaks from communism to democracy, turned the tables and asked Smale a question about Obama, the latest winner of the peace prize.

Was it true that the president had refused to meet the Dalai Lama on his visit to Washington?

He was told that Obama had indeed tried to curry favor with China by declining to see the Dalai Lama until after the president’s visit to China next month.

Dissing the Dalai was part of a broader new Obama policy called “strategic reassurance” — softening criticism of China’s human rights record and financial policies to calm its fears that America is trying to contain it. (Not to mention our own fears that the Chinese will quit bankrolling our debt.)

The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.

Havel reached out to touch a glass dish given to him by Obama, inscribed with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “It is only a minor compromise,” he said. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”

Our president would be well advised to listen. Havel is looking at this not only as a moral champion but as a playwright. Obama (who, as Robert Draper wrote, has read and reread Shakespeare’s tragedies) does not want his fatal flaw to be that he compromises so much that his ideals get blurred out of recognition.

I always figured there would be less wars if the generals had to be out in front of the troops taking the first blows. Obama seems to favour leading from the rear while consulting with his opponents about how they fray of battle can be turned into a picnic in the shade by the stream. Grand idea, but most battlefields don't have a handy tree, shade, or stream available to fit that aspiration. So, in my eyes, a great leader is the one who can tell you 'war is hell' and promise you only 'blood, sweat, and tears' but actually has a goal that justifies the battle. I just don't get that from Obama. Instead I picture him in the tent huddled with advisors going over options for the n-th time while being interrupted by calls from the opponents to discuss 'deals'.

Don't get me wrong. Obama is infintely better than the screw-up George Bush. But the US is in a crisis. It needs a Lincoln. Instead it is getting a faux-Lincoln who is winning prizes and giving lovely speeches, but hasn't delivered anything. Enough with the poetry and grandstanding. He needs to get into the trenches and deliver the goods.

Here's how Dowd puts it:

Yet Obama’s legislative career offers cautionary tales about the toll of constant consensus building.

In Springfield, he compromised so much on a health care reform bill that in the end, it merely led to a study. In Washington, he compromised so much with Senate Republicans on a bill to require all nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities about radioactive leaks that it simply devolved into a bill offering guidance to regulators, and even that ultimately died.

Now the air is full of complaints that Obama has been too cautious on health care, Afghanistan, filling judgeships, ending “don’t ask, don’t tell,” repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and rebuilding New Orleans; that he has conceded too much to China, Iran, Russia, the Muslim world and the banks.

That's quite a long laundry lists of unfilled aspirations. I guess I've decided that Obama's "change" is a Potemkin village, an artifice of words used to motivate crowds and lift him to pre-eminence. When it comes to delivery, he chokes. So it is funny to see him handed a Nobel for Peace. Seems to me the emperor's new clothes are in fact no clothes.