Barack Obama has succeeded in becoming the anti-Reagan in much
the way Bill Clinton became the anti-Truman.
The late President Harry S. Truman was famous for keeping a
small plaque on his desk reading “The Buck Stops Here.” Rush
Limbaugh cleverly encapsulated the Clinton style of
administration by jesting that Bill’s motto was “The Buck Never
Got Here.”
The “buck” refers to a practice used in card games in the
Wild West in the 1800s. Scoundrels were prevalent, adept at
prestidigitation, so players were reluctant to let any one of
their number deal all the cards. The buck was a designated object
placed in front of a player, then moved to the next player in a
few minutes or a few hands. The player with the buck was
responsible for dealing over that little while. If one cared to
forfeit his turn, he could pass the buck forward. Thus, passing
the buck came to signify sloughing off responsibility, while
letting the buck stop here means accepting the burden of
management.
Truman generally lived up to his credo, taking on both the
yoke and the heat. Clinton, by contrast, was adept at alibiing
himself by claiming that various thorny calls were actually the
province of underlings.
Ronald Reagan, self-consciously playing off Truman, put a
conspicuous plaque on his desk as well. It said: “There is no
limit to what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the
credit.” Judging by Barack Obama’s press conference remarks about
the Louisiana oil spill, he has fashioned the obverse slogan:
“There is no limit to the credit you can get if you don’t care
who did the accomplishing.”
More than a month into the Gulf gush, folks were getting
antsy over the seeming insouciance of Obama. They were not
looking for him to gush oily salesmanship, but to speak sincerely
from the heart and to demonstrate a command of the situation.
There was a sense that BP has been earnestly floundering while
the administration could offer nothing more substantive than the
blame-corporations-first boilerplate so beloved of Democrat
boiler rooms and thousand-a-plate dinners.
The White House responded to the Conventional Wisdom by
putting the President out front to conduct his first press
conference in nearly a year. Although I could not attend in
person, I forced myself to endure it electronically. The gist of
his message was simple enough. If the BP strategy of putting mud
down the well succeeds in stopping the spill, the administration
gets the credit. Why? Because BP was operating at the direction
of a cast of government geniuses led by Secretary Chu who won the
Nobel Prize in physics (and we all know Nobel Prizes are only
awarded the deserving). But if the mud-plug backfires, it is the
fault of BP, an irresponsible bunch of profiteers who corrupted
inspectors with excessive chumminess.
Heads I win, tails you lose, as Jackie Gleason told Art
Carney in a classic episode of The Honeymooners. No less
than BP itself, Obama manages to poison the well and muddy the
water at the same time.
The deeper meaning of Ronald Reagan’s emblem was that
forfeiting credit is more than a strategy, it is a virtue. The
grab for credit turns the act into an operation of, by and for
the self, smothering the altruism needed for devotion to the
needs of the other. Once the doer commits to serve the nation, he
only projects his personality to the extent it does not cast a
shadow on the broader landscape of the communal project. Try to
get a World War II medal wearer to tell you what he did to earn
the accolade and most of his energy will be invested in shrinking
his contribution.
Indeed I recall a Reagan address in which he said
(preparatory to violating this injunction a tad): “My mother told
me it is not nice to crow.” Perhaps only those with the grace to
refrain from blaming others can restrain their own boasting. If
every second sentence is “Bush stinks” then inevitably the first
sentence must be “I am great.” This certitude is a distortion of
rectitude, in life no less than in Scrabble.
My friends argue we should judge Presidents by policies,
not by character, but I think otherwise. On Memorial Day I need a
President I would die for, and there decency counts far more than
accuracy.
