Obama and the end of greatness

It is both easy and fashionable to ridicule such comments (“Stop whining, Mr. President. And stop whiffing,” Maureen Dowd snarked last spring), but they are laudable in important respects. In our system of self-government, you’ve got your checks and you’ve got your balances, but there is no limit more powerful than a President’s sense of restraint. Even as they expanded the power and reach of their office, our greatest Presidents have made compromises, taken half-steps, and stayed within the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. One of the most significant and under-acknowledged accomplishments of F.D.R. was his refusal to assume dictatorial powers in 1933, despite calls for him to do so. (“A mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead,” a Barron’s columnist wrote.) Americans often issue a mandate for “change,” but seldom for revolution.

So, for all our disappointment over the fact that Obama’s Presidency has been—in the parlance of the political scientists—more transactional than transformational, we should probably stop knocking him for not being Lincoln (even if it was Obama himself who encouraged the comparison). Or for not being Roosevelt, or Lyndon Baines Johnson. At the same time, Obama should stop downplaying the power of the office he holds. Every time he tamps down our expectations, it sounds like an excuse, whether for inaction or ineffectiveness or both. Obama is a realist, a grownup; in his first inaugural address, he implored the American people, “in the words of the Scripture … to set aside childish things.” Yet our persistent hope for a strong and good and even a great President is not altogether a childish thing. We might not need all of our Presidents to be great, but we can’t afford to have them stop trying.