A tale of four great U.S. Presidents - The Democrats: Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, and Obama

With Obama’s massive defeat of Mitt Romney - a worn opponent who swore to start repealing the law on his very first day in office – the Act appears secure. The law had already been upheld by Supreme Court in a narrow 5 – 4 decision, with the key vote cast by none other than a Republican supreme court appointee, Chief Justice John Roberts.

Politics is dodgy and opportunistic. One party’s sparkling success is another’s startling demise. When it is said that partisan democracy is not perfect, this incongruity could be the hideous nail in that coffin. The hypocrisy and dismal lack of objectivity miss the golden rule that political thinkers should think of the subject at hand – in the nation’s interests – rather than in the contexts of greedy, selfish aims.

History is for the long haul. It is neither for the shortsighted nor the faint hearted. Seeds for momentous achievements always had their bitterest antagonists. Antipathies come a dime a dozen. But true leaders lead with or without consensus, with or without agreeable public opinion.

Without the two leadership qualities – that is, selfless vision and gumption - a nation and its people perished. Pretenders professing to have what it takes soon morph their rhetoric into stale defenses or visible confessions. But true leadership is the rarest of commodities. While watching the sky for portents, the stargazers had better not hold their breaths. Many are called, but the real thing comes once in a blue moon.

In the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris, Woodrow Wilson’s seminal League of Nation’s plan (to prevent wars through international teamwork, etc) was taunted by such worldly figures as British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, the famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, and the incensed Georges Clemenceau of France who mocked that God’s commandments are ten, but Wilson’s are fourteen. Named “the Tiger” by his people, Clemenceau was driven by what the historian, Leon Edel, called “the primitive passions that called for revenge and punishment rather than reconstruction … a disaster that could, as it ultimately did, spawn a Hitler”.

Franklin Roosevelt’s conservative opponents called him a cripple. They taunted: “social security (is) a violation of the traditional American values of thrift, initiative, and self-help”. They cried: “every American would have to submit to the indignity of wearing a dogtag bearing his social security number”. They charged: “social security was a case of robbing a thrifty Peter to pay an improvident Paul”. Roosevelt’s critics (now lost in the passive fringes of history) were peeved that the president was “grafting a welfare state upon a capitalist foundation”, the very same reactionary arguments used against Obama. Today, how would most elderly Americans fare without the monthly social security checks? Call that the Roosevelt vision!

With Lyndon Johnson, his own south - from the cradle - was up in arms against him. He was reported to have responded in the 1966 campaign that when you start feeling sorry for yourself that no one loves you, just ask yourself who you would trade places with!

Before Johnson, the south had so intimidated both President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, that these American political idols misplaced their compassion for the disenfranchised and thereby lost the golden opportunity to put the famous Kennedy name to the civil rights bills for “equal protection of the laws”. It was no accident of history that the younger Ted Kennedy - till his death - rooted for Obama in both the 2008 Democratic primaries and the health care bill.

A nation rich in conquests can confront its health care crises and win that too. The United States stand to gain for one good reason: A universal health care served the greatest good for all including both the working poor and middle class.

By his seminal health law and re-election, Obama has waded into greatness in the spirit of what he terms a “Fair Shake” for all Americans.

Article: Anis Haffar