Obama trying to help Hillary
Most presidents limp to the finish line. President Obama is sprinting.
With approval ratings north of 50 percent, the president is a position not unlike President Reagan at the end of his presidency in 1988-89. And like the Gipper, who helped to shepherd George Bush senior to the finish line, Barack Obama is in shape to help deliver the presidency to his party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton.
Through the years American voters have been tough on nominees trying to extend party control of the presidency to three consecutive terms. After President Eisenhower, Republicans tried and failed with Dick Nixon in 1960.
Democrats come up short in 2000 in the wake of eight years of Bill Clinton, despite the fact that it’s likely Al Gore would have taken up residence on Pennsylvania Avenue in the absence of those hanging Florida chads and the third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader.
Vice President Gore’s refusal to deploy the Big Dog himself also hurt. By then, the Clinton-Gore partnership, once a flourishing affair, had frazzled badly, punctured by Bill’s dalliance with Monica.
To some, Bill Clinton was unaccountably popular in 2000; to others, his popularity was a given: the Clinton economy was a raging, job-creating behemoth. For the first time in decades, getting a job was a cinch, and good-paying jobs were plentiful.
Most Americans were unpersuaded that Clinton should be impeached, let alone convicted by the Senate of crimes sufficiently serious to be tossed from office.
Almost unique among recent presidents, Barack Obama has run a scandal-free administration. There’s been nary a whisper of wrong-doing, though that hasn’t stopped Republicans from trying to pin something — anything — on administration officials.
Eric Holder and the IRS, we’re looking at you.
Despite the Republican blunderbuss, the Obama administration has been as clean as your mama’s laundry.
As for family-man Obama, the president has been a model husband father. Like his predecessor, George W. Bush, in this regard the president of the United States has been someone to look up to and admire.
It’s the least presidents can and should be. At the same time, it is useful to remember Arthur Schlesinger’s dictum that a president’s personal behavior hardly guarantees public probity: no one ever accused President Nixon of bedding an intern; on the other hand, there was the champ of swimming pool hijinks, Jack Kennedy.
Be truthful, who would you rather have as president? The choice is pretty obvious. John Kennedy never kept an enemy’s list.
President Obama is diligent about the job of being president. Michael Shear recently reported in the New York Times on the president’s work habits following his day at the office.
“Almost every night that he is in the White House.” Shear wrote, “Mr. Obama has dinner at 6:30 … and then withdraws to the Treaty Room (where) he spends 4 or 5 hours largely by himself” writing studying, thinking.
Frequently, the president doesn’t turn in until 1 or 2 in the morning. He gets up most days around 7.
Those late nights are not all spent catching the latest scores on ESPN. In the spring, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, after a series of exhaustive interviews, detailed the president’s take on foreign policy.
It’s sufficient to say that few public men have thought as deeply about America’s place in the world as Barack Obama. And he hasn’t been afraid to go against the grain or change his mind.
For instance, even as some in his own administration were calling for dire punishment against Syrian president Assad for atrocities against his own people, POTUS grounded the bombers and cruise missiles he had once pledged to unleash if Assad crossed a certain red line.
Rather than commence bloodletting, the consequences of which no one could accurately measure, President Obama decided in favor of diplomacy, mindful perhaps of the Churchillian mantra that “talk, talk is better than war, war.”
On Thursday night, in her speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president, Hillary Clinton said she was proud of the fact that the Iranian nuclear program was mothballed as a result of diplomacy and not war.
So should we all be.
Presidents ideally are magnificent politicians. It’s how the system of government handed down by the Founders works best.
Twice elected president, Barack Obama has demonstrated political skills of the highest order. His pitch for Hillary on Wednesday night was another blockbuster performance.
“Tonight,” he declared, “I’m here to tell you that yes, we’ve still got more work to do. We’re not done perfecting our union, or living up to our founding creed that all of us are created equal, all of us are free in the eyes of God.
“Look,” the president added, “we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there’s nothing wrong with that. it’s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward.
“But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican and it sure wasn’t conservative.”
The president went on: “What we heard was a deeply pessimistic vision of a country where we turn against each other and turn away from the rest of the world. There were no serious solutions to pressing problems, just the fanning of resentment and blame and anger and hate. And that is not the America I know.”
Barack Obama made clear what he thinks is at stake in November. And what he thinks of Donald Trump, implicitly lumping him with those “who threaten our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues.”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books: “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.