Funerals Teach Us Much About Our Presidents
You learn a lot about a president at a funeral. Funerals and memorial services, at least those that are worthy of a presidential appearance, are major events for the nation, demanding a level of eloquence and public stature that tests a president’s communication skills. But they are also intensely human endeavors, revealing something of our chief executive’s character and soul.
We certainly learned something about Barack Obama at Ted Kennedy’s funeral — just as we did about Bill Clinton (both good and bad) at funerals during his term and George W. Bush during his.
Peggy Noonan gives an apt description of Obama’s appearance:
The president walked into the funeral and moved toward the front pews nodding, shaking hands. He hugged Mrs. Kennedy, nodded some more, shook more hands. He was dignified and contained, he was utterly appropriate, and he was cold.
He is cold, like someone who is contained not because he’s disciplined and successfully restrains his emotions, but because there’s not that much to restrain. This is the dark side of cool. One wonders if this will play well with the American people. Long-term it is hard to get people to trust your policies if they think you’re coolly operating on some intellectual or ideological abstractions.
His eulogy was unmemorable, “intentionally understated” a helpful media spinner offered. And this was for a giant figure in Obama’s party who was critical to his career and whose endorsement was described by Obama as the greatest moment of his life. He could not muster any sign of true emotion or any original word.
This is the plight of Obama now — unconnected and ineffective, out of things to say. His eloquence and his talent it seems are entirely campaign-based. Without imaginary villains or a real election opponent he lacks material. And let’s face it: he’s a bit of a bore.
Bill Clinton was never boring, of course. Three funerals highlighted the best and the worst of Clinton. His oration at the Oklahoma bombing memorial was a high point.
Emotion-filled and replete with biblical references, Clinton stepped into the role of healer-in-chief with an address in Oklahoma City. It was credited at the time as helping to restore his political standing, which had taken a beating in the congressional elections the prior fall. Unlike Obama, Clinton made a special effort to identify with us, not stand above the fray. (“I am honored to be here today to represent the American people. But I have to tell you that Hillary and I also come as parents, as husband and wife, as people who were your neighbors for some of the best years of our lives.”) And like a skillful preacher, he spoke of good and evil, sin and righteousness.
His eulogy at the funeral of slain Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin later that fall was similarly moving. Once again, he avoided cookie-cutter formulations in favor of intensely personal and personalized comments. He spoke directly to those in mourning, in this case an entire country. (“So, let me say to the people of Israel, even in your hour of darkness, his spirit lives on and so you must not lose your spirit. Look at what you have accomplished, making a once barren desert bloom, building a thriving democracy in a hostile terrain, winning battles and wars and now winning the peace, which is the only enduring victory.”) And his concluding words were among the more heartfelt of his presidency:
This week, Jews all around the world are studying the Torah portion in which God tests the faith of Abraham, patriarch of the Jews and the Arabs. He commands Abraham to sacrifice Yitzhak. “Take your son, the one you love, Yitzhak.” As we all know, as Abraham, in loyalty to God, was about to kill his son, God spared Yitzhak. Now God tests our faith even more terribly, for he has taken our Yitzhak. But Israel’s covenant with God for freedom, for tolerance, for security, for peace — that covenant must hold. That covenant was Prime Minister Rabin’s life’s work. Now we must make it his lasting legacy. His spirit must live on in us.
The Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for mourning, never speaks of death, but often speaks of peace. In its closing words, may our hearts find a measure of comfort and our souls, the eternal touch of hope. Ne she Shalom, bemrumov, huya asay Shalom Elihenu, be al Kol Israel, Vi emruv, Amen, and Shalom, Haver.
His final words — “Goodbye, friend” — become an iconic phrase for Israelis.
This was the “good” Clinton. But there was also the bad, insincere, and undisciplined Clinton which also revealed itself at the funeral of his cabinet secretary, political ally, and friend Ron Brown. Clinton was caught in a moment of inappropriate jocularity, yucking it up as he left the proceedings. Then, quickly realizing he was on camera, his laughs turned to affected tears, with a dramatic rub of his eyes. Well, that was Clinton too.
Bush’s funeral highpoint came at the National Cathedral just three days after 9/11. With the buildings in New York and Virginia still in fumes and the rescue efforts still going on, Bush stepped to the fore, seizing his moment as both a healer and commander-in-chief. He captured the raw pain of the nation:
On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel.
Now come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning to read:
They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with life.
They are the names of people who faced death and in their last moments called home to say, be brave and I love you.
They are the names of passengers who defied their murderers and prevented the murder of others on the ground.
They are the names of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States and died at their posts.
They are the names of rescuers — the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others.
We will read all these names. We will linger over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.
And he also set the course for the nation: “War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder. This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.” And, as was his style, one could sense Bush’s emotions just below the surface and the tears just short of flowing. This was quintessential Bush: a firm grasp on good and evil, a tender affection for his fellow citizens, and an endearing inability to mask his true feelings.
Funerals and memorials are highly staged events of course. But they often don’t give much time to prepare and invariably reveal who and what our leaders are made of, which talents they posses, and which they lack. Obama’s recent outing suggests there is less to the man than meets the eye. He will, if he is to regain the trust and affection of the American people, have to do better — as his predecessors did. And not just at funerals.
As always, O’s legend isn’t matched by his reality.
Obama gave a properly respectful and dignified farewell to Ted. Complaints about appearing “cold” are nothing more than projection. There is plenty to complain about without needlessly displaying such a crass attitude toward our President. It is another indication of how out of touch the GOP is growing.
Peace.
DS
Barack Obama probably felt uncomfortable at Ted Kennedy’s funeral. He was not the center of attention! The spotlight was instead on the deceased Massachusetts U.S. senator. I really think it’s that simple. Obama is a narcissist of the worst kind. I expect him to experience a mental breakdown before the end of the year. Obama doesn’t know what it is to endure difficult times. His presidency is effectively over regarding domestic issues. Obama will unlikely ever again get serious legislation through Congress. He is already a lame duck president after less than eight months in office. We literally also need to be concerned that Obama has the red phone at his disposal. He’s rapidly coming unglued.
I’ve always had the feeling about Obama that if you scratched the surface there was “no there …. there” nothing a centimeter below the surface. I find him incapable of displaying emotion because I believe the depth of his true emotions are all on the surface, and usually displayed when he’s reading somebody else’s words on a teleprompter. We have four empty-suits, Obama and Biden, Pelosi and Reid, supposedly in charge of the world’s only superpower, and not one of them has any more executive skills than the night-shift
“2nd window” person at the local Taco Bell. So sad.
Malignant narcissist is the proper diagnosis.
To go insane, though, you must first be sane.
Little hope for a breakdown there.
Barack Obama is a psychopath/sociopath–pick whichever word you like, same thing–and therefore has no feelings toward other human beings other than a desire to control and use them. He surrounded himself with those just like him. We are in deep trouble.
Obama is a tool, but whose? America sentimentally elected him president in part because he was black but more because Bush had all but destroyed the Republican brand with his years of tongue-tied buffoonery; and the second-rate campaign by the third-rate McCain didn’t help matters. People have awakened to the radical-packed nature of Obama’s administration and heels are digging in. But we’ve got years of holding action ahead of us.
Obama is a charlatan of the highest order, and he is arrogant, angry, an apologist for America and an elitist. I’ve been saying these same words since last year’s campaigns. Nothing has changed, except that he has become worse — more arrogant, more elitist, more self-absorbed, much more angrier.
Even those who voted for him are now seeing him the way that we, average mainstream Americans, saw him and saw right through him last year. He fooled millions the world over, but the world is finally starting to see his true colors — focused, comprehensive power grab; disdain for Judeo-Christian, good old American traditional, family values; brown nosing to those who wish ill and spew hatred and violence towards America; and, payback to the ultra-liberal, socialist, America-hating, Bush-bashing (still?), arrogant, elitist, special interest movement of his tortured party.
His presidency is doomed.
Obama may be cold. I think he’s also scared these days. Scared people don’t look outgoing and warm.
Sociopaths can only feign emotions. They can only pretend to show emotions. They are often convincing and persuasive. But when they are not acting—their cold, unfeeling, dangerous, detached, deliberation comes to the surface. We briefly wonder if ice runs in their veins.
Could it be that we elected a sociopath as president? Will “we the people” be able to emasculate him in the 2010 elections, and oust him in 2012? Will we be able to repair the damage done by him and his policies?
Or will we, rather like the battered spouse of a sociopath, take him back into our arms and forgive him, saying to ourselves, “Oh, Barry is just that way because he had such a terrible childhood. His father abandoned him, you know. He acts cool and detached because, underneath it all, he is just a little boy who needs our loving and understanding.”
A little boy, a teen-aged boy, with a straight razor, who would just as easily cut your throat, as look at you.
I think David Thomson has it right. Obama is a pathological narcissist -that’s the untreatable kind – and he can’t deal with situations where he is not the focus of attention.
In such situations, he ‘disappears’, i.e., he’ll just vote ‘present’ as he did during his time in the Senate. Obama only exists when he feels he controls you; if he feels he can’t, either you, or he, simply don’t exist.
As for Thomson’s suggestion of an emotional breakdown – I’m not so sure. I think that Obama is just the upfront Salesman of a radical BackRoom Gang (BRG) that has taken over the Democratic Party with the intention of moving a socialist framework into America. Obama is not an idealogue; his focus is only on Himself, not on ideas or policies or programs.
BUT – if maintaining his narcissistic needs for adulation and constant public acclaim, while dealing with his constant unscripted gaffes and repudiation of the BRG’s socialist agenda..becomes too risky, I’ll bet that the BRG will themselves throw Obama out.
And, the genuine liberals in the Democratic Party might start to become worried about this radical socialist gang in control of their party, and start to fight back.
Admittedly, in support of David Thomson’s suggestion that Obama might suffer a breakdown – Obama has managed to keep himself cocooned from criticism and dissent all his adult life; a narcissist as pathological as he has become can’t handle feeling any loss of power and control over people and can’t handle criticism.So..it’s possible
Well, Thanks for small favors. Aren’t we glad he didn’t rise to the level of Clinton commemorating Oklahoma City? A few cool words for Kennedy were more than enough.
Obama wasn’t able to use a teleprompter like he can on the campaign trail or at a press conference. That may have affected his supposed eloquence.
As despicable as I consider our Pantload-in-Chief and his coterie of clowns, I am growing incredibly wearly of Peggy Noonan’s bleatings. Like Pat Buchanan and all of those who had the opportunity to assist in — if you will excuse a tortured metaphor — derailing the trainwreck that is the Obama administration and Democrat Charlie Foxtrot that plays daily in D.C., she chose to back this t*rd.
No amount of recrimination on her part can or should restore her to our good graces. I hope she twists slowly, slowly in the wind.
This was very good, JR.
I hadn’t forgotten President Bush’s words, but I had forgotten Clinton’s. Whatever you want to say about WJC, he was an American Child with all the promise and freedom for infamy that holds.
Obama’s ‘coolness’ was always apparent. It prompted the affection of some of his more sycophantic fans. I’m thinking of Brooks and Buckley here. That this is just now dawning on Peggy seems a bit odd to me.
It also strikes me that Kennedy’s endorsement could not really have been the most important moment in his life. More important than the day he married his wife? The day his eldest daughter was born? I doubt it.
Reagan was an actor who acted to make a living. He was something much greater when he moved past that. He was a man who knew scarcity and hard economic times. He was another American Child. An American Child dedicated to telling the whole world what a true original his mother was; beautiful, intelligent, precious and irreplaceable.
“Obama’s recent outing suggests there is less to the man than meets the eye.”
Are you sure that’s possible?
All that ever meets my eye when he is on TV (about 50X a day) is arrogance and cluelessness.
The clothes have no emperor.
And furthermore, I think there’s a specific reason why the clothes have no emperor.
Barak Obama is the first affirmative action president. Not so much in the sense that many people chose him for president because of his race, but because he was given special treatment all though his academic and political careers because of it. He learned to use it as a crutch. And because he could, the normal set of skills that one needs to develop to be successful atrophied.
They didn’t do him any favors in the long run, when at Columbia and Harvard, they heaped undeserved credentials and honors on him. They just sowed the seeds of his ultimate failure. The soft bigotry of low expectations wasn’t a gift; it was a curse.
This is what you get when you accept cheap, plastic success. People who break when they face stress. We will get better out of minorities, but only when we start expecting it. But I have a nagging suspicion that the admissions officials and professors “helped” him precisely because they didn’t expect him to be able to handle it on his own. For them, it was better to hand out plastic success than risk the embarrassment of a black student not doing well.
These social adjusters reap what they sow.
What did anyone expect? A rousing eulogy for just another dead white male? Politics aside, he’s just not black after all.
Obama’s eulogy was quite good. Thoughtful, grateful, respectful. Well-conceived, written and delivered. Here’s a challenge: Anybody here up to writing a one-paragraph eulogy? Make it inn honor of the conservative hero of your choice. Give it a go.
Calvin Ball (17,18)
“The clothes have no emperor”! Thank you. We do need some levity in the midst of all this painful disillusionment. I agree with your analysis. Trying to make the children “feel good” even when they fail is a sure way to kill their ambitions. Our president is one of these kids of whom little was asked, so they don’t have anything to give. A sorry state of the nation.
Bush ’43 had the gift of displaying the right level of emotion. His father ’41, while superior on many of the technical skills of appearing presidential or at least for a time controlling his message before a hostile press, lacked the appearance of the common touch. When GHWB was Reagan’s Vice President he once described the job as “You die. We fly.”
There appears to be something very wrong about Obama and I wish that some of the psychiatrists and therapists who offer opinions on others based on little public information could objectively study and report on the fitness of BHO.
As a psychoanalyst, I dissent from the diagnostic efforts of the commenters. It is not helpful to pathologize someone you don’t know intimately. It’s easy to characterize ANY politician as a pathological narcissist–because politicians are not normal human beings. Nevertheless, they are human and should be assessed on their policies. Obama is a liberal utopian. He is pursuing the agenda of Ivy league wordsmith intellectuals. Read his memoir and learn that he is the perfect PoMo product of our multi-culti educational system, thoroughly indoctrinated in its ritual hatred of Western civilization. He is dangerous because of his charismatic appeal to the immature who long for a perfect, aggression free utopia. We are headed for a second civil war, this time not between North and South but between utopians and realists.
The funeral was for Ted Kennedy, of all people. What could ANY President have to say about Kennedy’s legacy that would have inspired us? It breaks our hearts when acts of wickedness steal the lives of our brothers and sisters. And a President has the potential to lift our spirits in times of crisis. But this was Ted Kennedy. This was no crisis. He died of cancer. America is more heartbroken over the millions of dead pre-born children who Kennedy will finally have to face.
This is why I never understood why, during the campaign, people spoke of Obama as being such a great orator. To me, his words have always lacked emotion, warmth, or any kind of feeling.
Re: #20 . . . Not a single paragraph. Hmm.
oh please, if he showed more emotion, he’d be accused of faking it. he’ll never win with you guys.
I still remember bush, when he was told of the airplanes and the towers. he had a straight face. NO reaction. just sat there. and the speeches he made after seemed fake.
Wow, yall have an amazing ability to know the “character and soul” of the President while speaking RE Ted Kennedy. Suspect there is NOTHING Obama could have said that would be acceptable to most here. If he talked too much, or showed too much emotion, he would be politicizing this, or he would’ve been making this about himself. Most here already truly know this president’s soul already, and they don’t like it. Almost all of that has to do with his politics, for some it has to do with his race, but really nothing is truly about his character and soul.
Wow!
Shocker! Judge orders trial on eligibility issue
Arguments planned Jan. 11 for challenge to Obama
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109242
Obama was born in …. Kenya!
Lame Duck anyone?
What a pile of right wing hating garbage