A Nation at War with Itself, Crying out for Leadership

Six years ago, Americans elected Barack Obama the first black President of the United States. It was a sign–not that racism had disappeared from our country, but that race was no longer an impediment to the highest possible achievement. Obama had a chance to use his presidency to affirm that progress–to show that the values and institutions that Americans embraced were indeed universal, to show that our national motto, E pluribus unum (“From many, one”), was a living foundation.

It was America’s great misfortune that Obama was a liberal–no, radical–Democrat, one steeped in the deep resentments of radical politics, who had embraced the conviction that the Constitution itself was fatally flawed by race and property rights. Though his own mixed-race, immigrant origins and privileged upbringing militated against the hackneyed notion that “the system” was inherently unfair, Obama chose a life as a community organizer devoted to bringing down society’s institutions.

Underneath it all, perhaps, Obama remained something of an elitist, prep-school sensibility: the incessant golf games with rich bankers; the endless socializing with Hollywood celebrities; the basic inattention to a humdrum daily work routine. His inability to take responsibility for his own policies was part a deft strategy to deflect criticism, and part a severe character flaw. Yet the Obama in office was no different, ideologically, than the Obama who had agitated in Chicago’s housing projects.

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