President Barack Obama and the Republicans continue to wrestle over the nation’s debt and everything else under the sun — tax rates, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (and, by extension, Obamacare), education and R&D funding, the national parks and the space program, and in fact everything packed into the monstrosity known as the federal budget.
And as they do so, the two sides dig deep into their bag of metaphors. Desperate for the eyeblink’s worth of the attention of the American public, they are looking for the image that elevates their own standing and discredits the other side.
Of course, this is how life works. We think in metaphors. In fact, human cognition would be unthinkable without metaphors, those dandy little tropes that say X equals Y. Everything we do gets tied up in metaphors.
The more desperate we are for understanding — or rhetorical advantage — the more we reach for metaphors.
Which is what makes Barack Obama such an interesting president. We’ve never had one like him before: A black man (actually, mixed race, but O says he black), born in the nation’s most exotic state (actually, if you listen to the birthers, in Indonesia or Kenya or Transylvania or some other place that sounds freaky), a product of the nation’s most corrupt city and state (actually, a lot of us claim that mantle), a reformer (actually, he’s just an ordinary post-1960s liberal) and a spellbinding speaker (actually, he stammers without a teleprompter) …
You get the idea.
Which gave me this idea: The way most of us judge people and events is to compare them to people and events in the same category. So we ask how much Derek Jeter is like the Iron Horse or Joe D or the Mick. Or we wonder whether 9/11 belongs in the same class as Pearl Harbor or JFK’s assassination or the Challenger disaster.
So we endlessly compare presidents to other presidents. By my reckoning, politicos and pundits have compared Barack Obama, who we might understand as sui generis, to more than a dozen other presidents. Interesting, eh? The more singular a person is, the more we compare him to others.
In the first couple years of the Age of O, we have compared him to James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and even George W. Bush.
And so I reached out to some presidential scholars to see if we could compare Barack Obama to every other single president. Now, if O is like everyone, he’s really like no one. That make sense?
Anyway, ask yourself: Which president does Barack Obama most resemble? Finish this sentence: Obama is ______.
Ready? Let’s play.
George Washington: Aloof. That all you got for a parallel?
The Adamses: Stubborn and proud, to a fault. Late in life, J.Q. achieved nobility with his role in the Amistad case. So can O find redemption after the White House?
Thomas Jefferson: Oh, he talks a good game about grassroots politics, but he’ll expand government power without hesitating. If only someone would sell O a massive territory.
James Madison: Gets involved in messy and unnecessary wars. Yeah, W started war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But look who has kept us there … and brought us to Libya.
James Monroe: Era of Good Feelings? Hah! Modesty in foreign affairs? Hardly. Ever hear of the Monroe Doctrine? Talk about overreaching. Hello, Libya … Hello, health care … Hello, GM …
Andrew Jackson: Man of the people? Try man of the mobs … and the machine. O drew masses to his speeches, from Berlin to Denver to Grant Park. Does that make him a populist?
Martin Van Buren: A machine pol, more concerned about payola and patronage than the people. And where did O come from? Daley’s Chicago! Case closed.
William Henry Harrison: Full of ideas about unifying the country and following the lead of Congress, he died of pneumonia before he had a chance to do much. O’s still with us of course, but how’s that we’re-not-red-or-blue-we’re-American thing going?
John Tyler: Despite long struggles with Congress, he still managed to compile an impressive legislative record (e.g., the Log Cabin bill, tariff, treaty with canada, annexation of Texas). Hey, you check O’s actual record lately? Like it or not, he’s done a lot.
James Knox Polk: One termer who wanted to avoid war but got drawn into a historic conflict with Mexico. Hmm … One-termer … controversial conflict …
Zachary Taylor: A media creation, soon undone by his own incompetence. From O the Omnipotent to ah, uh, er, um, ah …
Millard Fillmore: Buffeted by regional conflicts, he oversaw conflicts that only delayed the inevitable. Shades of today’s economic apocalypse?
Franklin Pierce: A conciliator, he also couldn’t bring warring factions from the North, South, and territories together. Who can O bring together these days? He’s even got MoveOn griping.
James Buchanan: Ineffectual because he could not make hard decisions about fundamental matters of national security. He’d rather coddle the law-breakers than confront them. And just what is our rationale in Libya?
Abraham Lincoln: Who better than a black intellectual to finish the work of the Great Emancipator? Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose book Team of Rivals celebrates Lincoln’s willingness to bring political adversaries into his Cabinet, hoped that Obama would do the same to heal a fractured nation. O got a total of one Republican in his cabinet (quick, can you name him?). So much for postpartisanship.
Andrew Johnson: Sanctimonious and stubborn, he got into trouble because he was unwilling to do the bidding of radical Republicans in Congress. Key question: Will O be willing to do the bidding of radical Republicans in Congress?
Ulysses Grant: Corrupt, but a damn good writer in the end. The Personal Memoirsof Ulysses S. Grant = Dreams From My Father?
Rutherford Hayes: Fatally compromised when he became president, he was unable to bring North and South together. Heck, Hayes reinforced the divisions of the blue and gray states. Now, how’s O doing on his whole we-are-one-nation pitch?
James Garfield: Not in office long enough to make a difference. I’m thinking, I’m thinking …
Chester Arthur: The ultimate technocrat, he instituted the civil service system after Garfield’s assassination. Is there a greater embodiment of civil service values than O?
Grover Cleveland: A DINO — Democrat in name only — who fell under the sway of financiers and left ordinary people to struggle for themselves. And just who followed George W. Bush’s policies of bailing out corporate criminals? And who re-upped W’s tax breaks?
Benjamin Harrison: Activist in world affairs and legalistic to a T, he also wanted to make Hawaii part of the union. Besides that Hawaii connection, think about Professor O’s wanton globalism.
William McKinley: A creature of the political strategist Mark Hanna and his ability to rake in massive bucks to overwhelm the opposition. So how will Axelrod, Plouffe & Co. move O’s story forward?
Theodore Roosevelt: He said “speak softly but carry a big stick,” but you could not shut the guy up. Even on his endless vacations, O won’t keep quiet either.
William Howard Taft: Better suited to the Supreme Court than the White House. The ultimate journey from failure to success at the top. Justice O?
Woodrow Wilson: With limited political experience — two years as governor of New Jersey — Wilson spoke in lofty terms about remaking the world. Like Obama, Wilson believed in guiding human progress. Despite his aloof and elitist ways, Wilson compiled an impressive legislative record. But at the end, the love dissolved into contempt and dismissal. Sound familiar?
Warren Harding: Corrupt, detached from ordinary people, lucky to die before people discovered the extent of his corruption. The GOP can’t make the corruption tag stick to O, but not for lack of effort.
Calvin Coolidge: Thin and humorless. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Herbert Hoover: A technocrat’s view of the world, unsuited to dealing with the flesh-and-blood realities of his people. O also seems to have a technocrat’s mindset, detached from the flesh-and-blood realities of his people.
Franklin Roosevelt: Soon after his election, people called Obama a new Franklin Roosevelt. After all, he was a charismatic man taking office in the midst of the Great Recession. People wanted him to rescue the nation the way we sometimes imagine that FDR did. Obama stoked the comparisons by carrying around Jon Alter’s book The Defining Moment, about FDR’s first 100 days. For good or ill, O did get a lot of what he wanted from the Democratic Congress.
Harry Truman: Everyone down in the polls wants to be Harry. Reviled in his own time but celebrated by revisionist historians, Truman is the ultimate Comeback Kid. To make a phrase: Give ’em hell, Barry!
Dwight Eisenhower: Where’s the president? Off playing golf. Hey, Bam! Fore!
John Kennedy: This comparison is inevitable with a Democrat. Kennedy was, of course, a dashing young senator who gave great speeches but accomplished little in his time on Capitol Hill. Americans voted for Kennedy to overcome the supposed malaise of the Eisenhower years, to “get this country moving again.” And then: fumbling the Cold War and civil rights (at first, anyway). Hello, Libya! Oh, yeah, and you say you’re “evolving” on gay rights?
Lyndon Johnson: If we’re talking about pushing aggressive agendas too hard, the comparison shifted to Lyndon Johnson. LBJ used a brief mandate to push the biggest domestic program since Franklin Roosevelt. But he was, alas, crippled by a war in a far-off land started by his predecessor. Sound familiar? Too rich.
Richard Nixon: A cunning chameleon, Nixon ran on peace and bring-us-together platform. In office, he kept us in Vietnam, expanded government, ditched the gold standard, and made all kinds of hollow claims about drug wars and energy independence. He invented the whole -gate thing too. Is Obama this kind of power-hungry megalomaniac who will stop at nothing to impose his will on the nation? Depends? Do you listen to AM or FM radio?
Gerald R. Ford: The accidental president who gained his real power from the veto. That’s what happens when you don’t enjoy a real mandate. So when will O realize that he’s lost his mandate and needs to use the veto pen?
Jimmy Carter: Poor Jimmy has become the Gold Standard for inexperienced, sanctimonious, inflexible but vacillating, and smiling but mean-spirited. Oh, let’s add: hopeless in an economy crippled by oil prices and a world held hostage by fanatics in the Middle East. Now, what doesn’t apply to O?
Ronald Reagan: During the campaign, Obama discoursed about the need for a transformational figure, someone capable of changing people’s ideas about what’s possible. O channeled the Gipper’s magic worked for a while, but …
George H.W. Bush: Saddled with the greatest financial scandal in history (the S&L fiasco), the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and limited by crises like the Exxon Valdez and Tiananmen Square, Bush could only manage a mess. So how much of the following applies to O: He caught hell for making tough decisions, like raising taxes and rejecting an all-out war with Iraq.
Bill Clinton: The great triangulator, he survived by pitting his Democratic allies against his Republican enemies. Is this O’s end game?
George W. Bush: Arrogant and aloof. Cocksure and diffident when critiqued. O? Is that you too?
Philosophers since Hegel have argued that history, some day, will come to an end. Has it happened with the emergence of a man who is … everyone else?
Which led me to wonder: Are we leaving anyone out?