Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, Jackson, TN
President Obama is discovering what every other president has discovered. The job is different from the way it appears on the outside. Moreover, anyone who interpreted "change" to mean "revolution" is discovering that they read more into the word than they should have read.
The president has been criticized by some for relying on veterans of the Clinton administration. Basically, however, he had only two options - selecting people with no experience in government and starting from scratch or selecting people with experience who are willing to work in harmony with him and with each other.
The first option would have risked four years of trial and error. Like it or not, government is not merely the sum of all the individuals who work in it or of all the parts that make it up, but is an institution with an identity and personality all its own. It does not change overnight in accord with the intentions of any individual or any group.
The second option, the one the president has chosen, will be effective only if those selected work in harmony with each other and use their knowledge and understanding to help the president.
There are, however, some bothersome aspects to the Obama presidency. For one thing, the power exercised by presidents since Lyndon Johnson has led to the expression "the imperial presidency." The Constitutional Convention debated at length the role and even the number of the executive branch, wanting to be certain that the executive office or offices would not be simply another form of kingship. Most presidents for almost half a century, however, have strong-armed Congress, while Congress frequently has simply handed the president its own responsibilities.
The recent political campaigns seemed at times to assume that the president is the heart of government, and the expectations of some as to what President Obama can do to change the government reflect the same view. Moreover, as long as Congress concentrates on party power and prestige rather than on the well-being of the nation, the office of president will continue to assume royal garb.
For another thing, in his testimony before a Senate committee, Leon Panetta, nominated to head the CIA, said that "in extreme cases," if interrogators were unable to extract critical information from a prisoner, he would not hesitate to request from the president authority to employ methods not permitted under the new rules of the Obama administration. In other words, humane methods of questioning will be used only as long as they "work," and President Obama frequently is said to be a pragmatist. Moreover, the Bush administration could not have said it better.
Also, although Panetta said that the CIA will refuse to hand suspects over to a country known for torture or for other actions that violate human values, he also said that the agency will continue the practice of "rendition," the code name for sending prisoners to other countries for interrogation. What possible purpose for "rendition" could there be other than keeping the agency's (and, by implication, the nation's) hands technically clean? You will recall that President Bush avowed, "We do not torture!"
The question is whether security and survival are to be purchased at the cost of our humanity. Is survival the highest value? Conduct tends to become habitual. When habitually repeated, actions that were abnormal become, normal. A person not accustomed to acting cruelly but who begins to act cruelly for a period of time will either suffer emotional crises on the basis of guilt or become a habitually cruel person. The psychological studies of war veterans can teach us much on this point.
It is commonly said that the nation's honor is worth dying for. Honor was a major value in the early church as well as in the Roman Empire. But is survival purchased by cruelty really an honorable survival?
Dr. Gene Davenport is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Lambuth University and Theologian in Residence at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. Readers can send e-mail to him at genedavenport@yahoo.com.
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