The Forum Troll President

I have had an interesting time picking a story to write on for the past few days. An extremely busy weekend made it easy to delay the choice altogether, but I realized that I was shying away from stories involving our president. Enough has already been said about him, certainly, and yet I find myself writing one more entry about him today.

Obama has achieved and maintained total media saturation (indeed, with the media's acknowledged support and involvement) since his nomination, with significant coverage before then. That has not diminished. With the reception of the Nobel Peace Prize, the failed bid for the Olympics in Chicago, the situation in Afghanistan; everyone is waiting to see what the president will do.

Even aside from the media, in our national discussion President Obama has been like an especially controversial troll in a forum; some take his side and defend him, others hate him with that special hatred reserved for forum trolls, but either way he has now taken whatever discussion existed prior to his involvement and focused it entirely around himself and his statements.

This is what President Obama, consciously or unconsciously (considering the skills of his media team, probably consciously), has done on the national stage. Perhaps it's also the forte of a populist president; if you wish to run as a personality and not a platform, your personality must necessarily remain in focus if your goals are to be achieved.

Obama has gambled daringly that his 'brand' is sufficient to sustain loyalty to his goals and ideals. This has largely worked. (with perhaps the notable exception of the tea-party attendee types, who have been marginalized by the White House as disagreeists. Whether they can be successfully marginalized or not is a question for another time, but while they are numerous, they are still a clear minority.) It's interesting to note that if his brand becomes unpopular, his clout vanishes. He is only left with the usual political maneuvering, in a field where he is still a newcomer.

But for now, the president has the world's attention. The peace prize was as clear a sign of this as could be given. Consider Bono's recent editorial in the NYT. It's quite glorifying of President Obama, and at the same time surprisingly pro-American. More insightful pundits than me will doubtless pull many valuable observations from his take, but let me focus on one of the most obvious: The world is calling, and Obama is America's chance to respond.

Obama is our first global president. Perhaps fitting as America's power and influence in the world peaks and enters a decline (perhaps 'the' decline, but it's too early to call), a man has risen to the top who is using that high platform to spread idealism throughout the world. Many feel, as does this writer, that some (not all) of those ideals are flawed at best. But that is irrelevant in a global sense. I submit that the world in general feels more ownership of our president than we do, and that is both based in his approach to the world, and mirrored in his response to it.

Liberally-minded (in the modern political sense) Americans feel very strongly the pressure of the rest of the world opinion weighing in, and are finally basking in the glow of a president they think they just might be proud to show the world. For example, let us consider that the left end of the political comedy spectrum (SNL and the Daily Show), previously unwilling to mock Obama even in a tangential sense, are now doing so. But unlike former president Bush, it is not his ideals that they mock, nor his actions, but his inaction. Obama is their applicant to the rest of the world, to demonstrate their solidarity, to show that the world's most touted issues (environmentalism, poverty, nuclear disarmanent, etc) are their issues as well. They see this as their shot to be at the world's table not because of American's power, (a reason they would despise, like a crass and socially awkward uncle who nevertheless is invited to every family party because he also happens to be extremely wealthy) but as sensitive, knowing, and worldly intellectuals who belong there. Obama is their personified manifesto, their best shot yet at getting in. They don't want him to mess this up.
Neither does the rest of the world, as Bono writes:

"The Nobel Peace Prize is the rest of the world saying, 'Don’t blow it.'"

Conservatives often make two mistakes in their response, either blowing off the rest of the world altogether as irrelevant (short-sighted, unwise, and furthermore uncharitable: in these times, "no man is an island" applies to nations more than ever), or else attacking those ideals of Obama which are demonstrably false, yet without supplying their own methods of dealing with the problems he purports to be solving.

Example of the latter: People do need health care. I believe that no plan currently circulating through our congress would be anything less than a disaster, but our current situation is clearly inexcusably bad as well. While I have heard many compelling reasons given in impassioned speech as to why Obama's plan should be consigned to a place where the worm does not die, nor is thirst ever quenched, I have not yet heard a single agreed-upon workable alternative solution by those opposing the Obama plan.

What does that accomplish on a national level? The president (who seeks to advance his goals by the force of his own personality, remember) could easily claim that the attacks are not really against the health plan, but against himself. In fact, he doesn't even need to say this. His backers can do that for him. And we see that this is exactly what is occurring now. To return to the analogy, the troll has struck again. The forum topic is no longer health care, but all the commenters' opinions of the troll himself, generally expressed in wholesale irrational favor or disfavor. Few bring forth a detached, logical analysis of the forum troll and his arguments. He is now setting the agenda. His provocative statements, and existing opinions about his kind, generally reduce all conversation to endorsements, rejections, or endless bickering. Eventually the topic is closed, no meaningful progress having been made on the subject.

If we seek to have a meaningful national dialogue on anything worth accomplishing, this trolling must end. The president has ushered in a new era in which every political argument defaults back to himself. He remains the center of attention, and as long as we all argue about him, he wins. For is not that the goal of the troll?

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