In today’s column David Brooks reflects on the complicated and complex nature of the Obama presidency. Obama, he argues, has drawn from the idealism of John F. Kennedy and the prudence of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Brooks writes:
On Jan. 20, 1961, John Kennedy delivered his rousing Inaugural Address. But this speech was preceded, as William Galston of the Brookings Institution has reminded us, by an equally important speech: Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address.
Kennedy’s speech was an idealistic call to action. Eisenhower’s speech was a calm warning against hubris. Kennedy celebrated courage; Eisenhower celebrated prudence. Kennedy asked the country to venture forth. Eisenhower asked the country to maintain its basic sense of balance.
While Kennedy gloried in the current moment, Eisenhower warned the country to “avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow.” We cannot, he said, “mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.”
Furthermore, Ike warned, the country should never believe that “some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties.” He reminded the country that government is about finding the right balance — between public and private, civic duties and individual freedom, small communities and big industrial complexes.
I suspect that most of us can, in different moods, sympathize with both the Kennedy and the Eisenhower speeches, with both the rousing idealistic call and the prudent words of caution.
The Obama administration has tried to emulate both impulses. During the first two years, it hewed to Kennedy’s seize-the-moment style. Now it seems to be copying the Eisenhower mood.
The campaign of 2008 was marked by soaring calls for transformation. Now the administration spends much of its time reacting to events and counseling restraint.
Read the rest here.
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