Obama Admits He Was Too Optimistic—“Duh”

In an interview published by Reuters today, President Obama admits that he underestimated how intractable the problems in the Middle East are and has not made the progress towards peace that he wanted. Now if he would make the same admission about his goals of reshaping the political process in this country, he might regains some of the support he has lost.

In both these areas President Obama’s strength is also his weakness. Obama is an extremely reasonable man. In any situation he is ready to compromise on what he wants in order to achieve good outcomes for everyone. This is a posture demanded by mutual self-interest.

This paradigm is captured by the old story about the difference between heaven and hell. The story goes that a preacher dreamt that he met an angle who offered to show him around the afterlife. “Here is hell,” the angel says and takes the preacher into a room filled with an endless expanse filled with long tables, each holding bowls of wonderful piquant smelling stew. In front of each bowl sat one of the dead their faces contorted with hunger, pain, and anger. Great howls filled the room as the dead cursed their fate and each other. The preacher looked more closely and saw that each of the dead had a spoon in each hand that allowed them to reach into the bowls, but were too long to allow them to get the spoon into their mouths.

“They are doomed forever to sit frustrated and starving in front of food they cannot eat,” the preacher guessed, and the angel nodded knowingly and motioned for the preacher to follow him to a second room. He opens the door and says, “This is heaven.”

The preacher looks in and is surprised to see an identical room—the same tables, the same stew, the same long spoons—but here the dead are smiling contentedly. The room is filled with the sound of happy conversation and laughter. “How can this be?” the preacher wonders. Then he sees one of the dead at a table dip up a spoon of stew and hold it to the mouth of another across the table. Watching carefully he sees that all the dead are feeding each other. They had learned to share.

This is the model of mutual self-interest that rationally should dominate human interactions and which President Obama was able to foster in community organizing and other activities before becoming President.

Obama’s reliance on reason, mutual self-interest, and civility left him totally unprepared to deal with situations such as that in the Middle East or the American Senate where those seated at the table not only refuse to feed each other, but are more than happy to eat anything offered by another then hit their benefactor with their spoon.

The American voters, meanwhile, alternate between blaming one side or the other for the mess and demand that Obama fix it now.