Posted on May\u00a026,\u00a02013<\/h4>\n\n<\/p>\nBy E.J. Dionne, Jr.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON\u2013You wonder if President Obama sometimes finds himself singing a variant on Kermit the Frog\u2019s anthem about the burdens of being green: It\u2019s not easy being Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
This is not simply or even primarily a matter of color, although the president\u2019s racial background has been a source of both opportunity and trial. As the first African-American in the White House, he has won an unprecedented level of support in the black community and the good will of enough white Americans to build a national majority.<\/p>\n
Yet it\u2019s undeniable that racism lurks beneath so many of the preposterously false charges against him\u2013that this son of Hawaii wasn\u2019t really born in the United States, that he is a secret Muslim who \u201chates America,\u201d that he\u2019s animated by a \u201cKenyan, anti-colonial\u201d worldview. Within the African-American community, his persistent emphasis on responsible fatherhood, a key theme of his recent commencement address at Morehouse College, is sometimes cast as a way of pandering to white prejudice by hectoring a community to which he owes a large and still unpaid political debt.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just the start of it. Even more peculiar is an ongoing confusion over how he thinks and what he stands for.<\/p>\n
Some of this is Obama\u2019s own doing. He has been a master, as good politicians are, at presenting different sides of himself to different constituencies. In 2008, he was the man who would bring us together by overcoming the deep mistrust between red and blue America and<\/i> the champion of progressive change, the liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n
Also like most successful politicians, Obama probably saw no contradiction between his two politically useful selves. Since so many of the red\/blue divides are based on misunderstandings\u2013as he said in 2004, blue state folks worship \u201can awesome God\u201d while red staters care about their gay friends\u2013getting past them would be easy enough. This, in turn, would open the way to a forward-looking approach to government. In 2012, he thought his re-election would \u201cbreak the fever\u201d on the right.<\/p>\n
No such luck. For Obama\u2019s rise was accompanied by a hardening of opinion in the Republican Party fostered by a long-term defection of moderates from the GOP primary electorate, the growing influence of right-wing media in shaping the conservative conversation, and the rise of the tea party and its allies as the most dynamic forces on the right end of politics. This has the effect of tugging the political center, as perceived and presented by the media, to the right, further distorting how Obama is viewed.<\/p>\n
In fact, Obama is a tempered sort of progressive who repeatedly annoys his party\u2019s left with an incessant pursuit of Republican support for \u201cgrand bargains\u201d\u2013one reason why his health care plan is so state-oriented and gives Republican governors and legislatures so much opportunity to undermine it.<\/p>\n
But none of this has helped Obama with his adversaries on the right. They take any news that comes along, notably the IRS\u2019 special scrutiny of tea party applications for 501(c)(4) status, and weave it into a pre-existing tale of a power-hungry, ultra-leftist centralizer of authority.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the clearest look we\u2019ve had at the real Obama was his national security speech last Thursday, an honestly agonized and intellectually serious appraisal of the difficulty of striking \u201cthe appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He left room for all his critics, left and right, to express dissatisfaction: He will pick up the pace of closing Guantanamo, but it will not close immediately; he\u2019ll put restrictions on the use of drones, but won\u2019t stop using them; he declared an end to the \u201cglobal war on terror,\u201d but pledged to \u201ca series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n
This last bit\u2013an attempt to displace a sweeping and terribly flawed definition of the anti-terror struggle with a careful, practical but also less stirring depiction of the task ahead\u2013is a window on the Obama conundrum.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s an anti-ideological leader in an ideological age, a middle-of-the-road liberal skeptical of the demands placed on a movement leader, a politician often disdainful of the tasks that politics asks him to perform. He wants to invite the nation to reason together with him when nearly half the country thinks his premises and theirs are utterly at odds. Doing so is unlikely to get any easier. But being Barack Obama, he\u2019ll keep trying. <\/p>\n
E.J. Dionne\u2019s e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a9 2013, Washington Post Writers Group<\/small>\n<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/images\/eartothegrounduploads\/4999400658_8b4ba7cc10-300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
White House \/ Pete Souza<\/p>\n
<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
By E.J. Dionne, Jr.<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON\u2013You wonder if President Obama sometimes finds himself singing a variant on Kermit the Frog\u2019s anthem about the burdens of being green: It\u2019s not easy being Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
This is not simply or even primarily a matter of color, although the president\u2019s racial background has been a source of both opportunity and trial. As the first African-American in the White House, he has won an unprecedented level of support in the black community and the good will of enough white Americans to build a national majority.<\/p>\n
Yet it\u2019s undeniable that racism lurks beneath so many of the preposterously false charges against him\u2013that this son of Hawaii wasn\u2019t really born in the United States, that he is a secret Muslim who \u201chates America,\u201d that he\u2019s animated by a \u201cKenyan, anti-colonial\u201d worldview. Within the African-American community, his persistent emphasis on responsible fatherhood, a key theme of his recent commencement address at Morehouse College, is sometimes cast as a way of pandering to white prejudice by hectoring a community to which he owes a large and still unpaid political debt.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just the start of it. Even more peculiar is an ongoing confusion over how he thinks and what he stands for.<\/p>\n
Some of this is Obama\u2019s own doing. He has been a master, as good politicians are, at presenting different sides of himself to different constituencies. In 2008, he was the man who would bring us together by overcoming the deep mistrust between red and blue America and<\/i> the champion of progressive change, the liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n
Also like most successful politicians, Obama probably saw no contradiction between his two politically useful selves. Since so many of the red\/blue divides are based on misunderstandings\u2013as he said in 2004, blue state folks worship \u201can awesome God\u201d while red staters care about their gay friends\u2013getting past them would be easy enough. This, in turn, would open the way to a forward-looking approach to government. In 2012, he thought his re-election would \u201cbreak the fever\u201d on the right.<\/p>\n
No such luck. For Obama\u2019s rise was accompanied by a hardening of opinion in the Republican Party fostered by a long-term defection of moderates from the GOP primary electorate, the growing influence of right-wing media in shaping the conservative conversation, and the rise of the tea party and its allies as the most dynamic forces on the right end of politics. This has the effect of tugging the political center, as perceived and presented by the media, to the right, further distorting how Obama is viewed.<\/p>\n
In fact, Obama is a tempered sort of progressive who repeatedly annoys his party\u2019s left with an incessant pursuit of Republican support for \u201cgrand bargains\u201d\u2013one reason why his health care plan is so state-oriented and gives Republican governors and legislatures so much opportunity to undermine it.<\/p>\n
But none of this has helped Obama with his adversaries on the right. They take any news that comes along, notably the IRS\u2019 special scrutiny of tea party applications for 501(c)(4) status, and weave it into a pre-existing tale of a power-hungry, ultra-leftist centralizer of authority.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the clearest look we\u2019ve had at the real Obama was his national security speech last Thursday, an honestly agonized and intellectually serious appraisal of the difficulty of striking \u201cthe appropriate balance between our need for security and preserving those freedoms that make us who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n
He left room for all his critics, left and right, to express dissatisfaction: He will pick up the pace of closing Guantanamo, but it will not close immediately; he\u2019ll put restrictions on the use of drones, but won\u2019t stop using them; he declared an end to the \u201cglobal war on terror,\u201d but pledged to \u201ca series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n
This last bit\u2013an attempt to displace a sweeping and terribly flawed definition of the anti-terror struggle with a careful, practical but also less stirring depiction of the task ahead\u2013is a window on the Obama conundrum.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s an anti-ideological leader in an ideological age, a middle-of-the-road liberal skeptical of the demands placed on a movement leader, a politician often disdainful of the tasks that politics asks him to perform. He wants to invite the nation to reason together with him when nearly half the country thinks his premises and theirs are utterly at odds. Doing so is unlikely to get any easier. But being Barack Obama, he\u2019ll keep trying. <\/p>\n
E.J. Dionne\u2019s e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u00a9 2013, Washington Post Writers Group<\/small>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
White House \/ Pete Souza<\/p>\n
<\/span>\n<\/div>\n