The Middle East, an Issue That Has Plagued the Region for Centuries

There's been justified hilarity on the Intertoobz over POTUS's clumsy, clueless remarks on Israel-Palestine the other day.  (Plus, of course, predictable scrambling by The Commander-in-Chief's lackeys and apologists to make it seem that his remarks were competent and statesmanlike.)  Quoth POTUS:

So, I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one. I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two but honestly, if Bibi and if the Palestinians — if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.

Sad.  But being cursed with an undisciplined and out-of-control memory, I couldn't help thinking of remarks made in answer to a college student's question by another POTUS in January 2010.  I know, I know, it was a long time ago, another lifetime, practically another century, who could possibly remember that far back?

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries, and it's an issue that elicits a lot of passions as you have heard. Here's my view. Israel is one of our strongest allies, it has...[applause] let me play this out. It is a vibrant democracy. It shares links with us in all sorts of ways. It...it is critical...for us...and I will never waver from ensuring Israel's security, and helping them secure themselves in what is a really hostile region. So...so...so I make no apologies for that.

Note especially that first sentence: Trump couldn't have bettered it.  By 2013, Obama had his act down.  Asked a hostile but not unreasonable question (which he didn't understand, since it was in Hebrew), Obama mocked the questioner, an Arab-Israeli student from Haifa University, joking, "I have to say we actually arranged for that because it made me feel at home ... I wouldn't feel comfortable if I didn't have at least one heckler."

I hold no brief for Trump.  But isn't it nice to know that, far from the upheavals that Democrats warned we would face, we have so much continuity between POTUS Barack Obama and his POTUS successor on this and other vital issues?  The issue here isn't their lack of eloquence in response to questions, but that there's not a lot of daylight between Obama and Trump on Israel-Palestine.  Obama talked prettier, but he still let Netanyahu have more or less whatever he wanted.  The outcome for Palestinians was terrible, as it will probably be under Trump.

The Respect Deficit

Lucky him.  I haven't had a President I respected since JFK, and that was mainly because I was too young to know how bad he was.  Maybe I respected LBJ at first, for his Great Society programs and the Civil Rights Bill, but his foreign policy eventually outweighed those accomplishments.  I have some respect for Jimmy Carter, but only since he left office, so it doesn't count.

This doesn't mean I'm looking forward to the Trump regime, of course.  (Which I only mention because there are many people who assume that if you don't love Obama, you love Trump.  The Stupid has been very strong in the media, both corporate and social, these last few months.)  Trump will become President with a major respect deficit; he'll probably have to import it from China or something.

And really, shouldn't the person who posted the above lament respect Trump anyway once he becomes POTUS?  Aren't we supposed to respect the President?  Partisans always confuse respect for the office with respect for the person who occupies it.  Obama devotees were furious that Republicans drew the distinction, though the Republicans were just as incapable of doing so when a Republican was in the White House.  Some Democrats were even ready to defend George W. Bush against disrespect from Hugo Chavez, though; touching.  I was listening to Democracy Now! this morning, and some remarks by one interviewee reminded me that Dem loyalists were not only ready to overlook Benjamin Netanyahu's ongoing and explicit disrespect for Obama, they supported and agreed with it.  But it's pretty clear that we need to learn to distinguish respect for the office from respect for the office-holder, and that's not going to be easy for most people.

One symptomatic example of this confusion has been the #NotMyPresident bandwagon that some Americans are jumping onto.  This is a two-year-old's response: You're Not the Boss of Me!  More amusing in a twisted way, it's exactly what numerous Republicans said from November 2008.  Like it or not, and I don't like it either, Donald Trump is going to be the President of the United States starting tomorrow.  That makes him my president, your president, Garrison Keillor's president.  It's worth remembering Keillor went easier on George W. Bush, who was as weak as Trump in the things that matter to Keillor.  But Keillor still defended Bush's sweetheart-deal reading program for kids that mainly put federal money into the coffers of McGraw-Hill, without improving children's reading ability.

I am very happy that Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, though some Democrats were not, and even one of his subordinates went on the public record to disagree with the decision.  Does approving of certain isolated policies and actions of a president constitute respect?  I don't think so.  I've inveighed often against the cult of personality in politics, because it's anti-democratic and destructive, but it will probably always be with us.

P.S. Jon Schwarz linked to this article by William Greider from the Nation, trying to reassure us.  I think. 

The fright and gloom are understandable, but I have a hunch Donald Trump has already peaked. He won’t go away, of course—he will be Mr. President—but the air is already seeping out of Trump’s balloon. The president-elect has amassed a huge inventory of dubious promises, and I expect this powerhouse of American politics to get smaller and less influential as the broken promises pile up.

Pundits all across the political spectrum have been assuring us for the past year and a half that the Trump phenomenon was already over, that he couldn't possibly win the nomination or the election.  And here we are.  Far from reassured, I'm more worried than ever.  Could you guys please just ... stop?

The (Tea?) Kettle Calling the POTUS Black

This probably isn't a new thing, but I've been noticing it more often lately: fans of President Obama referring to him online as POTUS when defending him against his critics. For example, this comment today on Facebook on Obama's current troubles with the American Catholic hierarchy:

POTUS is safe on this one.

It's easier to type the five letters than the full title, I suppose, though "Obama" also has just five letters. Maybe referring to him by his surname feels disrespectful, but calling him "Barack" is too familiar, and POTUS is like "Commander-in-Chief," suitably pompous and grandiose. What really bothers me about the practice is the tendency to make Obama, or any other person, disappear into the office he holds, so that criticism of Obama becomes an insult to the Presidency itself. (A good example of this was the National Citizens Committee for Fairness to the Presidency, founded in the depths of the Watergate Scandal by Rabbi Baruch Korff, who'd taken it into his head to defend Richard Nixon. I recall seeing Korff saying during a TV interview that he didn't believe The President had committed an impeachable offense: he hadn't committed adultery, for example. I always thought that it was Nixon and his defenders who were being unfair to the Presidency if anyone was.)

As usual, this concern is purely partisan. People who called George W. Bush "the Chimp" or worse are suddenly very punctilious about the dignity of the Office of the President. And vice versa, of course: people who think Dubya's likeness belongs on Mount Rushmore refuse to recognize the Kenyan Usurper as the country's Executive. In that sense, both sides agree about the sanctity of the presidency, and that this or that incumbent profanes the sacred seat of Washington. As Glenn Greenwald has written, this doesn't even rise to the level of ideology: it's an authoritarian cult.

After I wrote about that snapshot of the Obamas* on Sunday, I got e-mail from a reader who agreed with me about the cult of personality that surrounds the presidency and infects American politics. Not only has that cult always been with us -- it followed George Washington into office -- but I think it's intrinsic to politics, much more than a concern with issues ever is. The Leader, the Big Man and his entourage, his largesse, the justice he dispenses, have always been part of American politics. People talk about separating the man from the office, but the man was there first. Not, as some pundits would have it, that we want a President we would want to have dinner with (though we would surely want to, with much bowing and scraping and consciousness of how honored we were to have him under our roof, and of course we'd have our photo taken with him to display on the wall forever); we want a President we can look up to and adore, partly a regular guy because this is America and we're all the same here, but a guy who's more regular than others, and for whose good name we'll challenge any smart alecks to put up their dukes. This isn't limited to politics: the same mentality pervaded the popular defense of Joe Paterno, for example.

With all this symbolism attached to the President, it's not surprising that his opponents demonize him: it's as natural as idolizing him. Criticizing him rationally would be irrelevant, even anti-relevant. Instead he must be depicted with horns and tail or ridiculed, merged with Alfred E. Neuman (and it's convenient that both Bush and Obama can be assimilated to Neuman's image so easily), burned in effigy, and vilified with projection so transparent that it almost has to be deliberate. The President, like the Monarch, is the Nation, and criticizing him is spitting on America according to his devotees; to his opponents, the Dirty President spits on America by his unfitness to occupy the office. (Remember all the Democrats who were so vocally glad in January 2009 to finally have a president they weren't embarrassed by?) These feelings can be rationalized by the fact that our Presidents are more or less elected, and so do represent us in a way that an unelected monarch doesn't; but the baggage attached to our presidents, the cult of personality, looks like something a good deal more ... primitive. Certainly nothing rational.

*In connection with that photo, I saw several references to Michelle Obama as FLOTUS, which clarified the way people are using POTUS. "First Lady of the United States" is not a title, not a political office, though it is part of the baggage of monarchy that we proudly republican Americans have always tried to pin onto the President and those around him. As Gore Vidal wrote, "Martha Washington contented herself with the unofficial (thus seldom omitted) title 'Lady' Washington." But the President's wife is a private citizen (COTUS?), albeit a private citizen stuck in one of the most blinding and uncomfortable public spotlights on the planet. As Jacqueline Kennedy complained, the "operators at the White House ... just love saying 'First Lady.'"