The President Who Won’t Grow Up

The President Who Won’t Grow Up–Everything I need to know about Barack Obama I learned as a Cub Scout den leader.

Everything I need to know about Barack Obama I learned as a Cub Scout den leader.

Last week I watched an American president and a Russian leader sign a START treaty. I almost checked the calendar, wondering if I’d been transported back to 1980. In news stories of the summit I found a link to an article Barack Obama had written in 1983 while at Columbia University titled “Breaking the War Mentality.” Back then, Obama was firmly in the nuclear freeze camp. It’s true that many of us held views as college students that seem quaint and naïve after two or three decades. But compare the (nearly incomprehensible) writing of the 22-year-old Obama to the news reports last week. Incredibly, Obama’s worldview has not changed. The Soviet Union is kaput, he is the leader of the free world, and he’s still thinking the same way. He’s the president who won’t grow up.

Years ago, R. Emmett Tyrell characterized Bill Clinton as the “Boy President.” In Barack Obama, I believe we are seeing the return of the little boy as president. As a former Cub Scout den leader, I spent a lot of time around boys. It struck me that the president exhibits classic little boy behavior. Here are a few examples: Boys are bored by day-to-day work. Almost immediately after his inauguration, Obama started complaining. At a photo op at a school in February, 2009 he said, “We were just tired of being in the White House.” The First Couple constantly leave the White House, putting the “frequent” into frequent flier.

Anyone who has been a Scout leader, coach, or teacher knows how quickly boys get bored. I used to plan extra activities, just in case the Cubs got fidgety. But an amazing thing happens as boys grow up: They are able to stay put for an hour. They stop whining, “This is boring!” and put in the necessary work to earn a merit badge or progress to the next rank. President Obama, however, reminds me of the Scout who would goof off and refuse to work during the meetings but return the next week with all the requirements for the merit badge signed off by his parents. Everyone, even his fellow Scouts, knew he didn’t do the work. Which brings us to: Boys don’t respect things they haven’t earned. Every parent I know has a story of a child given an expensive toy who treats it carelessly. But the toy that he has saved his allowance for months to purchase is treated with respect and reverence.

Barack Obama doesn’t respect the presidency because he didn’t earn it. He had a wafer-thin résumé, no paper trail, and a suspect autobiography. It took massive lifting from the media, Hollywood, and his PR team to put him over the top. He is like the college student whose mom is writing his papers. He doesn’t value the education he’s receiving because he isn’t earning it, and he certainly isn’t paying for it. He also doesn’t respect the professors who are letting him get away with it.

Note how President Obama treats the media. Boys love snack and game time. It didn’t matter how much I lectured or how formal the occasion — as soon as grace was over, my Cubs shot to the front of the buffet line like a horse heading back to the barn. The best way to get them to pay attention to me during meetings was by threatening withholding of the cupcakes. I’ve been fascinated by what foodies the First Couple are. Last year, we were treated to breathless reports on the gourmet food being served at the White House and the hot restaurants the Obamas were jetting off to. Even pizza became a “big f-ing deal” (as the Vice President would say). Perhaps the Republicans could coax Obama into listening to them by threatening to withhold the Wagyu beef.

As far as games are concerned, boys are always ready to play. Red Light Green Light, marbles, even paper football across the dining room table brought joy to den meetings. The president also loves game time, whether he’s playing or watching. When an unexpected day opened up last weekend, he hit the links. I’ll never forget an interview I saw when Obama was President-Elect. He was answering questions in that serious, dull manner, when the interviewer asked him about college sports. The change in Obama’s demeanor was startling. He sat up straight, his voice became animated, and for the first time, he seemed interested in the conversation.

Boys have difficulty grasping the importance of tradition and protocol. We had a strict rule for our Cub Scouts: When we were in public as a den, they had to wear their uniforms. We discovered that the simple act of wearing the traditional uniform encouraged the boys to behave and to be proud of being a Scout. As the boys got older, we would rejoice to see them teach the Tiger Cubs to take their hats off during prayer, or stand and salute when the flag passed by. The boys learned these traditions were part of what made them Scouts.

It breaks my heart to see our president making a serious statement without a tie, or giving the British Prime Minister a cheap, thoughtless gift. By belittling tradition, he diminishes the magnificence of the office of which he’s been given temporary stewardship. This past weekend, the president was unable to attend the funeral of the Polish president. Instead of visiting the Polish embassy to sign the condolence book, or even staying quietly out of sight, President Obama decided to play golf.

Boys are always in a hurry. Watch any boy at a computer. It doesn’t matter how fast the connection speed is, he’ll soon be tapping his foot and sighing in frustration as he waits for a page to load. By the time they start crawling, boys are hardwired to hurry up.

A President who hasn’t grown up says “We don’t have a moment to spare” concerning his nearly trillion-dollar stimulus bill. He tells a pro-health care reform rally: My question to them is, ‘When’s the right time? If not now, when? If not us, who? Is it a year from now or two years from now or five years from now or ten years from now?’ I think it’s right now … Hurry up! Do it now! There’s no time — to read, to discuss, to compromise, to think. Cub Scouts have den leaders to slow them down, to teach them about tradition, to reinforce the rewards of work. But there are no den leaders surrounding our president. That could change in November, however. If Republicans win the Congress, Representative Boehner and Senator McConnell will be leaders. Hopefully they can encourage our Cub Scout president that it’s time to grow up.

Obama and the case of the missing 'thesis'
By Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer
July 24, 2008

excerpt:

The hunt for Obama’s senior “thesis” began with a throwaway line in a newspaper article last October. The New York Times story, on Obama’s early New York years, mentioned in passing that the presidential contender had majored in political science at Columbia and had spent his time “writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament.”

Journalists began hounding Columbia University for copies of the musty document. Conservative bloggers began wondering if the young Obama had written a no-nukes screed that he might come to regret. And David Bossie, the former congressional investigator and “right-wing hit man,” as one newspaper described him, took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University’s newspaper and the Chicago Tribune in March searching for the term paper.

Bossie came up dry, but said the effort was well worth it:

“A thesis entitled Soviet Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations),” he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News.

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/24/1219454.aspx
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Here is the passage from the New York Times that the above article refers to:

"He barely mentions Columbia, training ground for the elite, where he transferred in his junior year, majoring in political science and international relations and writing his thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament. He dismisses in one sentence his first community organizing job — work he went on to do in Chicago — though a former supervisor remembers him as 'a star performer.'"

[snip]

"he [Obama] declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.

'He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life,' said Ben LaBolt, a campaign spokesman."

Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say
By JANNY SCOTT, October 30, 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?ex=1351396800&en=631bf83f428647f9&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss
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From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS)

IPS’s [Institute For Policy Studies] Washington, DC headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize. Cora Weiss headed one of the IPS's most successful forays -- into Riverside Church in Manhattan. She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of "peace." In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations. During her decade-long tenure at Riverside, which became home to the National Council of Churches, Weiss regularly received Russian KGB agents, Sandinista friends, and Cuban intelligence agents. Weiss became infamous for her role in the psychological warfare conducted against U.S. prisoners of war held in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War.

The Liberation News Service, which is a news source for hundreds of "alternative" publications nationwide (with antiwar, Marxist-oriented perspectives), was founded in 1967 with IPS assistance."

[lots more at link...]

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991
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From the website of Riverside Church...

The Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive
New York, New York 10027
212-870-6700

The Riverside Church is located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side near Columbia University.

http://www.theriversidechurchny.org/about/?directions
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"She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of 'peace.'

In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991
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From the Columbia University website...

"Obama attended Columbia College from 1981 to 1983"
Source:
http://news.columbia.edu/home/1260

Barack Obama: "Breaking the War Mentality"
March 10, 1983, Sundial

Most students at Columbia do not have first hand knowledge of war. Military violence has been a vicarious experience, channeled into our minds through television, film, and print.

The more sensitive among us struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves to our parents' wartime memories, or incorporating into our framework of reality as depicted by a Mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war -- the sounds and chill, the dead bodies -- are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experience down into our hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task.

Two groups on campus, Arms Race Alternatives (ARA) and Students Against Militarism (SAM) work within these mental limits to foster awareness and practical action necessary to counter the growing threat of war. Though the emphasis of the two groups differ, they share an aversion to current government policy. These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are throwing their weight into shifting America off the dead-end track.

"Most people my age remember well the air-raid drills in school, under the desk with our heads tucked between our legs. Older people, they remember the Cuban Missile Crisis. I think these kinds of things left an indelible mark on our souls, so we're more apt to be concerned," says Don Kent, assistant director of programs and student activities at Earl Hall Center. Along with the community Volunteer Service Center, ARA has been Don's primary concern, coordinating various working groups of faculty, students, and staff members, while simultaneously seeking the ever elusive funding for programs.

"When I first came here two years ago, Earl Hall had been a holding tank for five years. Paul Martin (director of Earl Hall) and I discussed our interests, and decided that ARA would be one of the programs we pushed." Initially, most of the work was done by non-student volunteers and staff. "Hot issues, particularly El Salvador, were occupying students at the time. Consequently, we cosponsored a lot of activities with community organizations like SANE (Students Against Nuclear Energy)."

With the flowering of the nuclear freeze movement, and particularly the June 12 rally in Central Park, however student participation has expanded. One wonders whether this upsurge stems from young people's penchant for the latest 'happenings' or from growing awareness of the consequences of nuclear holocaust. ARA maintains a mailing list of 500 persons and Don Kent estimates that approximately half of the active members are students. Although he feels that continuity is provided by the faculty and staff members, student attendance at ARA sponsored events -- in particular a November 11 convocation on the nuclear threat -- reveals a deep reservoir of concern. "I think students on this campus like to think of themselves a sophisticated, and don't appreciate small vision. So they tend to come out more for the events; they do not want to just fold leaflets."

Mark Bigelow, a graduate intern from Union Theological Seminary who works with Don to keep ARA running smoothly, agrees. "It seems that students here are fairly aware of the nuclear problem, and it makes for an underlying frustration. We try to talk to that frustration." Consequently, the thrust of ARA is towards generating dialogue which will give people a rational handle on this controversial subject. This includes bringing speakers like Daniel Ellsberg to campus, publishing fact sheets compiled by interested faculty, and investigating the possible development of an interdisciplinary program in the Columbia curriculum dealing with peace, disarmament, and world order.

Tied in with such a thrust is the absence of what Don calls "a party line." By taking an almost apolitical approach to the problem, ARA hopes to get the university to take nuclear arms issues seriously. "People don't like having their intelligence insulted," says Don. "so we try to disseminate information and allow the individual to make his or her own decision."

Generally, the narrow focus of the Freeze movement as well as academic discussions of first versus second strike capabilities, suit the military-industrial interests, as they continue adding to their billion dollar erector sets. When Peter Tosh sings that "everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice," one is forced to wonder whether disarmament or arms control issues, severed from economic and political issues, might be another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself. Mark Bigelow does not think so. "We do focus primarily on catastrophic weapons. Look, we say, here's the worst part . Let's work on that. You're not going to get rid of the military in the near future, so let's at least work on this."

Mark Bigelow does feel that the links are there, and points to fruitful work being done by other organizations involved with disarmament. "The Freeze is one part of a whole disarmament movement. The lowest common denominator, so to speak. For instance, April 10-16 is Jobs For Peace week, with a bunch of things going on around the city. Also, the New York City Council may pass a resolution in April calling for greater social as opposed to military spending. Things like this may dispel the idea that disarmament is a white issue, because how the government spends its revenue affects everyone."

The very real advantages of concentrating on a single issue is leading the National Freeze movement to challenge individual missile systems, while continuing the broader campaign. This year, Mark Bigelow sees the checking of Pershing II and Cruise missile deployment as crucial. "Because of their small size and mobility, their deployment will make possible arms control verification far more difficult, and will cut down warning time for the Soviets to less than ten minutes. That can only be a destabilizing factor." Additionally, he sees the initiation by the U.S. of the Test Ban Treaty as a powerful first step towards a nuclear free world.

ARA encourages members to join buses to Washington and participate in a March 7-8 rally intended to push through the Freeze resolution which is making its second trip through the House. ARA also will ask United Campuses to Prevent Nuclear War (UCAM), an information and lobbying network based in universities, nationwide, to serve as its advisory board in the near future. Because of its autonomy from Columbia (which does not fund political organizations), UCAM could conceivably become a more active arm of disarmament campaigns on campus, thought the ARA will continue to function solely as a vehicle for information and discussion.

Also operating out of Earl Hall Center, Students Against Militarism was formed in response to the passage of registration laws in 1980. An entirely student-run organization, SAM casts a wider net than ARA, though for the purposes of effectiveness, they have tried to lock in on one issue at a time.

"At the heart of our organization is an anti-war focus," says junior Robert Kahn, one of SAM's fifteen or so active members. "From there, a lot of issues shoot forth -- nukes, racism, the draft, and South Africa. We have been better organized when taking one issue at a time, but we are always cognizant of other things going on, and collaborate frequently with other campus organizations like CISPES [CISPES link added by myself -ETL] and REELPOLITIK"

At this time, the current major issue is the Solomon Bill, the latest legislation from Congress to obtain compliance to registration. The law requires that all male students applying for federal financial aid submit proof of registration, or else the government coffers will close. Yale, Wesleyan, and Swathmore have refused to comply, and plan to offer non-registrants other forms of financial aid. SAM hopes to press Columbia into following suit, though so far President Sovern and company seem prepared to acquiesce to the bill.

Robert believes students tacitly support non-registrants, though the majority did not comply. "Several students have come up to our tables and said that had they known of the ineffectiveness of the prosecution, they would not have registered." A measure of such underlying support is the 400 signatures on a petition protesting the Solomon Bill, which SAM collected the first four hours it appeared. Robert also points out that prior to registration, there were four separate bills circulating in the House proposing a return to the draft, but none ever got out of committees, and there have not been renewed efforts. An estimated half-million non-registrants can definitely be a powerful signal.

Prodding students into participating beyond name signing and attending events is tricky, but SAM members seem undaunted. "A lot of the problem comes not from people's ignorance of the facts, but because the news and statistics are lifeless. That's why we search for campus issues like the Solomon bill that have direct impact on the student body, and effectively link the campus to broader issues." By organizing and educating the Columbia community, such activities lay the foundation for future mobilization against the relentless, often silent spread of militarism in the country. "The time is right to tie together social and military issues," Robert continues, "and the more strident the Administration becomes, the more aware people are of their real interests."

The belief that moribund institutions, rather than the individuals, are at the root of the problem, keep SAM's energies alive. "A prerequisite for members of an organization like ours is the faith that people are fundamentally good, but you need to show them, and when you look at the work people are doing across the country, it makes you optimistic."

Perhaps the essential goodness of humanity is an arguable proposition, but by observing the SAM meeting last Thursday night, with its solid turnout and enthusiasm, one might be persuaded that the manifestations of our better instincts can at least match the bad ones. Regarding Columbia's possible compliance, one comment in particular hit upon an important point with the Solomon bill, "The thing we need to do is expose how Columbia is talking out of two sides of its mouth."

Indeed, the most pervasive malady of the collegiate system specifically, and the American experience generally, is that elaborate patterns of knowledge and theory have been disembodied from individual choices and government policy. What members of ARA and SAM try to do is infuse what they have learned about the current situation, bring the words of that formidable roster on the face of Butler Library, names like Thoreau, Jefferson, and Whitman, to bear on the twisted logic of which we are today a part. By adding their energy and effort in order to enhance the possibility of a decent world, they may help deprive us of a spectacular experience--that of war. But then, there are some things we shouldn't have to live through in order to want to avoid the experience.
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Side note: Obama mentions in this '83 article the org, CISPES (Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador). They apparently are still around, and are as red as ever.

From their website...

Image and video hosting by TinyPic

"CISPES joins the Alliance for Global Justice, SOA Watch, and other members of the Latin America Solidarity Coalition in denouncing today's coup in Honduras. CISPES committees are joining rallies at consulates around the country to demand the reinstatement of the democratically elected Honduran president."

The CISPES Mission Statement:

"We are a grassroots organization dedicated to supporting the Salvadoran people’s struggle forself-determination and social and economic justice. The alternative that they are building --an alternative based upon democratic and socialist ideals--is an example to all people who seek a world free of domination and exploitation. We support that alternative because we believe that capitalism is a fundamentally unjust, oppressive and ecologically unsustainable economic system. We join with poor and working people, immigrants and refugees in the struggle against neoliberalism-- the current manifestation of capitalism imposed by the United States government and its state, institutional and corporate allies. Neoliberal policies continue to produce enormous suffering and destabilization around the world. We focus our work on El Salvador because of the U.S. government’s continuing military, economic, and political intervention on behalf of U.S. corporate interests, and because the Salvadoran people’s tenacious and inspiring struggle to build social justice."

http://www.cispes.org/
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From the New York Times...

Obama's 1983 College Magazine Article
["Breaking the War Mentality"]

Original Document (PDF)

"In 1983, at the height of the cold war, Barack Obama, then a senior at Columbia University, wrote in a campus newsmagazine about the vision of "a nuclear free world." The article in the Sundial profiled two campus groups: Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism."

http://documents.nytimes.com/obama-s-1983-college-magazine-article#p=1

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