March 2, 2011
Barack Obama: The Man & His Presidency
Fred Greenstein
Professor of Politics Emeritus, Princeton University
Minutes of the 20th Meeting of the 69th Year
The meeting was called to order at 10:15 by President Bob Varrin. Tom Fulmer led the invocation. Four guests were introduced: Dennis Minely by Art Morgan, Dick Bergman by Herb Abelson, Eugene McCray by Ben Colbert and Aiden Doyle by Lanny Jones. Tony Glockler read the minutes of the previous meeting. The speaker and program for next week’s meeting were announced. Attendance at the meeting was 114.
Charles Plohn introduced the speaker, Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of Politics at Princeton University, recognized in academia and beyond for his appraisals of the performance and style of U.S. presidents especially his classic study of the Eisenhower presidency The Hidden Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (1982). His topic today was “Barack Obama: The Man and his Presidency.”
Being of the Old Guard generation Greenstein provided instead of Power-Point a one page handout that summarized Obama’s life and accomplishments from birth in Hawaii in 1961 through the first two years of his presidency. This handout then listed six “political qualities” that Greenstein has used in his appraisals of presidents, and in applying them to President Obama in his talk he compared and contrasted this president with many of his predecessors.
Thus in “public communication” Obama was more like FDR than Jimmy Carter who “seemed to talk without opening his mouth”. Obama, however, seems to have toned down his lofty oratory of late.
Greenstein noted that Obama like other presidents coming to the White House from the Senate had a less developed “organizational capacity” than governors or generals. Moreover, Obama also seemed set on having a “team of rivals” as with Lincoln’s cabinet or someone within the presidential inner circle to challenge “received wisdom” just as Kennedy had set up follow the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
As for “political skill” Greenstein cited Obama’s learning to play poker and golf when he saw that these skills would be useful politically.
In the “political vision” category Greenstein placed Obama in between the first President Bush who was not into “the vision thing” and George W. Bush whose grandiose vision of remaking the Middle East came to grief in Iraq. On balance, Greenstein depicts Obama as more pragmatic than visionary.
The last two political qualities in the Greenstein listing – cognitive style and emotional intelligence – add up to a portrait of Obama as just the opposite of Justice Holmes’s characterization of FDR as a having a first-rate temperament and a second rate mind. And in doing so Greenstein evoked the enigma of whether Obama has a warm personality.
Throughout the talk and in responding to questions Greenstein betrayed a penchant for likening presidential politics to Shakespeare’s plays with Nixon as Richard III and Vice-President Chaney as Iago in Othello. The image of the theatre comes through as well in Greenstein’s suggesting that Obama seems to have trained himself to give a good speech a la Lawrence Olivier.
In responding to a question about the role of race Greenstein made the telling comparison of Obama being the first Afro-American to be elected president with Kennedy the first Catholic, suggesting that in both cases the barrier once being breached one’s religion or one’s race will be less an issue.
A lively discussion following a question about Princeton alumna Michelle Obama caused our speaker to reach back in time to highlight the important role played by Dolley Madison. Clearly our speaker knows his presidents, past and present. His stated goal, as in his scholarly work, to neither praise nor blame presidents but simply to better understand their personality and modus operandi was well achieved in this talk on Barack Obama.
Respectfully submitted,
L. Carl Brown
Charles Plohn introduced the speaker, Fred I. Greenstein, emeritus professor of Politics at Princeton University, recognized in academia and beyond for his appraisals of the performance and style of U.S. presidents especially his classic study of the Eisenhower presidency The Hidden Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (1982). His topic today was “Barack Obama: The Man and his Presidency.”
Being of the Old Guard generation Greenstein provided instead of Power-Point a one page handout that summarized Obama’s life and accomplishments from birth in Hawaii in 1961 through the first two years of his presidency. This handout then listed six “political qualities” that Greenstein has used in his appraisals of presidents, and in applying them to President Obama in his talk he compared and contrasted this president with many of his predecessors.
Thus in “public communication” Obama was more like FDR than Jimmy Carter who “seemed to talk without opening his mouth”. Obama, however, seems to have toned down his lofty oratory of late.
Greenstein noted that Obama like other presidents coming to the White House from the Senate had a less developed “organizational capacity” than governors or generals. Moreover, Obama also seemed set on having a “team of rivals” as with Lincoln’s cabinet or someone within the presidential inner circle to challenge “received wisdom” just as Kennedy had set up follow the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
As for “political skill” Greenstein cited Obama’s learning to play poker and golf when he saw that these skills would be useful politically.
In the “political vision” category Greenstein placed Obama in between the first President Bush who was not into “the vision thing” and George W. Bush whose grandiose vision of remaking the Middle East came to grief in Iraq. On balance, Greenstein depicts Obama as more pragmatic than visionary.
The last two political qualities in the Greenstein listing – cognitive style and emotional intelligence – add up to a portrait of Obama as just the opposite of Justice Holmes’s characterization of FDR as a having a first-rate temperament and a second rate mind. And in doing so Greenstein evoked the enigma of whether Obama has a warm personality.
Throughout the talk and in responding to questions Greenstein betrayed a penchant for likening presidential politics to Shakespeare’s plays with Nixon as Richard III and Vice-President Chaney as Iago in Othello. The image of the theatre comes through as well in Greenstein’s suggesting that Obama seems to have trained himself to give a good speech a la Lawrence Olivier.
In responding to a question about the role of race Greenstein made the telling comparison of Obama being the first Afro-American to be elected president with Kennedy the first Catholic, suggesting that in both cases the barrier once being breached one’s religion or one’s race will be less an issue.
A lively discussion following a question about Princeton alumna Michelle Obama caused our speaker to reach back in time to highlight the important role played by Dolley Madison. Clearly our speaker knows his presidents, past and present. His stated goal, as in his scholarly work, to neither praise nor blame presidents but simply to better understand their personality and modus operandi was well achieved in this talk on Barack Obama.
Respectfully submitted,
L. Carl Brown