Swickard: That One Moment of a Mobster President

© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. “You don’t understand, I could have had class. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am.” Marlon Brando in the 1964 movie, On the Waterfront.
     Some think too little about it while others think too much. At some point most people consider their legacy. “How will I be remembered?” Most people are born relatively anonymously. They live and die such that only friends and family know them, but the world does not unless they have “That One Moment.”
     Almost everyone famous has had That One Moment when they went above themselves, or below. Some are branded by events that define their entire life. Former President Richard Nixon is best remembered from the aircraft door waving as he left his tarnished presidency. Harry Truman is remembered holding up an incorrect newspaper headline: Dewey Wins. President Gerald Ford will forever be stumbling down stairs.
     President Bill Clinton is remembered for his believable denial, “… I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky…” It was a great performance ruined later when he confessed he was lying the whole time. Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller had a heart attack possibly in the intimate embrace of a woman who was not his wife.
      First President George Washington was afraid he was going to be impeached before he could finish his second term. History instead remembers his best moments. History gave a moral pass to Thomas Jefferson, Lyndon Johnson, James Garfield, perhaps Eisenhower and certainly Franklin Roosevelt.
     Last week there was a moment which may become the legacy of President Barack Obama. It was the placing of an unnecessary fence around the World War Two Memorial. No other government shutdown resulted in the closing of Memorials.
     The core issue is that President Barack Obama was trying to make the partial government shutdown worse than it needed to be for ordinary Americans. There was no reason to hold 90 year-old veterans hostage other than the spitefulness of a Chicago style Mobster President.
     To many Americans this action was an indecent exposure of the Mobster President’s soul. This evil will be his legacy. It erases all of the good he did in other things because history will remember him for That One Moment. Read full column

Swickard: That One Moment of a Mobster President