I pay tribute to the growing list of Obama's political accomplishments. But besides the political war, there's the deeper war, which is a spiritual one against the forces of darkness that have arisen on the political right. Why does Obama remain reluctant to wage this most essential conflict? Two aspects of his character help answer it: 1) Obama is averse to conflict, and 2) he seems to lack the capacity for moral outrage.

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PAYING TRIBUTE TO PRESIDENTIAL ACCOMPLISHMENT

By the end of this summer, I expect that President Obama will have a rather impressive set of achievements to show for his first year and a half in office.

He'll have gotten the Recovery Act through, and brought the economy through its darkest time in three generations.

He'll have managed to snatch victory from defeat's proverbial jaws, in a most impressive way, in getting health care reform passed.

By then I expect that he'll have gotten a decent financial regulation reform measure enacted.

And I also expect that by then he'll have placed two justices --humane and excellent-- on the Supreme Court bench.

Maybe there will be other accomplishments too --like on energy and climate change-- but I'm not expecting much else by that time. (And I'm not going to address here any of those matters of policy where he has NOT accomplished the kind of change the country needs.)

This is a set of accomplishments worth paying tribute to. I am glad to applaud this accomplishment: Obama has been tackling important problems, he's been patient and persistent, and he seems to keep managing to squeak through to victory.

If he were to serve another two and a half years achieving things at this rate --and even more so if he were to continue to achieve things at this rate for another six and a half years-- he would have far more to show for his time in office than most other presidents have.

It's unlikely, though, that he'll be able to continue this important repair work at this pace. For one thing, at the moment it looks quite possible that he'll cease to have the strength in Congress he'd need to be able to continue moving the ball forward. And while this is the usual pattern in American history for midterms after a presidential election, I believe it was not necessary for the prospects for Obama and his allies to be so precarious at this point.

I've addressed this issue many times here over recent months, but I want now to reiterate some of that, and also to articulate some new relevant points.

THE SPIRITUAL BATTLE GOVERNS THE POLITICAL BATTLE

The essential nature of the battle in America today is --as I've often declared-- more spiritual than political. It is in the political realm that the forces of evil have lately made a bold move (unprecedented in American history in its audacity and in the depth of its threat to what's most valuable in America) to control this country. And it is the battle between good and evil that must be won.

Politics, therefore, is more the battlefield than it is the basic stake in the war being fought. Obama has directed his efforts at the political arena, and there he has racked up important political accomplishments. But he has not seemed inclined to wage the spiritual war. And this is the reason, I believe, that his and his party's position is presently so precarious.

Two caveats here.

First, it should be recognized that every political battle that Obama wins has an influence on the correlation of forces in the deeper war. Everything he does that brings him and his party credit in the eyes of the people helps weaken the forces of evil. That's true because his accomplishments have been basically for the good. But it's also true because the public rewards winners and punishes losers, often independently of the merits of what the winners and losers have been fighting for.

Second, I have not COMPLETELY let go of that idea that felt to me like an insight back at the end of February of 2008: that Obama does fight against evil, but he chooses an indirect strategy. I am now about 85 percent convinced that his indirect strategy, if that is what it is, forfeits power unwisely. (See my "If I Could Give President Obama a Message, in 800 Words, at <a href="http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=5190">http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=5190</a>.) That leaves about 15 percent (really, probably less) of a sense that Obama is operating from a sense of how things operate that will show itself --by, say, 2016-- to have been a wise LONG-TERM strategy for defeating evil.

There is an idea --for explaining Obama's reluctance to confront the evil more vigorously-- that I still pretty much wholly reject. It's what I hear from most of those who comment here on opednews whenever I post something about Obama: these people of the left believe that Obama has not been a better warrior for the good because he himself is indifferent to the good and has in fact sold out to the forces of evil himself.

As I say, I do not buy that view. I believe Obama to be pretty well committed to the same sorts of values of humanity, justice, responsibility and compassion that I am. My belief is that the explanation for Obama's unnecessarily weak response to the dark forces --forces that have been continually working to block his achievements and to make him fail-- lies elsewhere.

Let me posit two elements I believe to be important to the picture.

First, I believe that Obama, by character, is <em>averse to conflict</em>. This seems to go deep in him. (As I imagine it, besides whatever family dynamics may have shaped it, another important factor that has molded it has been his learning what it takes in America for an extremely able man who's considered black by the larger society to rise and gain trust in the power structures dominated by whites.) Even though it seem pretty clear that Obama's power has increased every time he's become more confrontive with his opponents, so great seems to be his preference for accommodation and reasonableness that as soon as he's thrown a punch he retreats back into his corner, having stunned his opponent (but not having knocked him down, let alone out), and giving the other guy a chance to recover and come back fighting at full strength.

But there is a second component that I intuit, and that, while more subtle, may be even more important: I do not believe that Obama's worldview is conducive to the experience of MORAL outrage.

THE LACK OF MORAL OUTRAGE

Have we ever seen him manifest moral outrage? I can't recall an occasion.

One of the things I appreciated about Obama as he came across in DREAMS FROM MY FATHER was that he seemed to have this expansive spirit that encompassed all human failings with compassion. Like Montaigne, with his "Nothing human is alien to me."

But there may be a problem with his way of mapping humanity's darker side. Compassion is great. But in addition to loving the sinner, there's also a call --I believe-- to hate the sin.

Obama doesn't seem to mind --he does not seem offended by the fact-- that the Republicans have become the monsters they have. Being cool with acceptance of all the human permutations, he seems to have no line, for human wrong-doing, beyond which his predominant response is moral outrage.

In America, with its dynamics in the moral drama, Obama's quiet correctives --free of the edge and fury of moral outrage-- are not enough to combat and overcome the intensity of the dark forces. In some other cultural system, with a different way of registering moral power, Obama's gentle, subtle and tactful way of addressing the lies and self-aggrandisement and greed and utter lack of principles of his right-wing opponents might dissolve and disarm the dark energies he must contend with.

But we are in America, where the film climaxes in a gun battle in the street, a direct confrontation of force against force. In this case, what the audience has been culturally shaped to require is moral outrage against outrageous immorality. The American people cannot be taught with subtlety how to regard this darkness, to recognize it for what it is and to repudiate it. They must be taught through a dramatic form of combat.

It's possible that Obama's apparent weakness here is encompassed by the famous lines of Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." But I do not believe that Obama lacks conviction.

I'm more inclined to think that there is a mismatch here along the lines of what I described ("Steps in the Dance: Chapter 9 of A RIVER AND ITS CHANNEL," at <a href="http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=457">http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=457</a>) in a discussion by the fine book by the French scholar, Francois Jullien, THE PROPENSITY OF THINGS: Toward a History of Efficacy in China. Jullien describes how the Chinese have traditionally sought to win without direct battle, by observing and trying to manage the flow of things, so that the opponent's power dissolves and disappears and one triumphs without having struck a blow; whereas the Greeks wanted the outright, direct, hand-to-hand <em>agon</em> to resolve the battle.

The battle that Obama is fighting is one that will be decided by which sides can mold public opinion. And this is a public that is the heir of the Greeks. This is a public that is shaped by a culture in which the reluctant Shane (like various other non-confrontational heroes in our movies) must, to gratify the audience, give up on his commitment to non-violence, strap on a gun, and go out to shoot down the black-suited Jack Palance and the greedy cattle baron who hired him.

The polls during the health care debate and since do not show that the quiet and reasonable truth defeated the screaming lies of the right. The polls show that while 98 percent of American families got tax cuts, only 12 percent know it. The polls show that most Americans are leaning toward blaming Obama for the bad economic times that he walked into.

The polls show the American people are not grateful for Obama's impressive record of achievement. The polls show that if the election were held today, the American people would take power away from Obama and his party and hand it over to the forces that have done nothing but lie and plunder and make a mess of everything they've touched, domestic and foreign.

In the arena, there's one side that is acting with the ferocity of battle as described in the <em>Iliad</em>. And the American people, heirs to that tradition, are not repudiating the battle cry of that side, because that kind of noise is all they know how to hear.

In the moral confrontation, there is one side that is shouting with moral outrage like the Biblical prophets --tyranny, betrayal, Nazi-- while Obama, as the leader of the other side, responds in subtle, non-confrontational ways.

The lack of moral outrage --no "malefactors of great wealth," no "I welcome their hatred," a la FDR-- is a forfeiture of power in a battle being fought out in the hearts and minds of a people schooled in such traditions of conflict, moral and otherwise.

Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.