Obama's Nixonian Traits: Beach Walking with Two Disliked Presidents

President Obama is a puzzling leader and a complicated man.

Sadly, his conflicted internal dramas are exacting a toll on his presidency and, as shown, for instance, in the ludicrously protracted health care reform debate and in his passive-aggressive resistance to responding to the Gulf Coast's historic environmental disaster, are causing damage to our country.

While I reject every last one of the unhinged comparisons of Barack Obama to the nutcases, villains, and assorted psychopaths of history, I sheepishly admit to detecting certain unsettling Nixonian traits in our 44th president.

I fear that, without major changes, President Obama could be forced out of office, one way or another.

Beach Walking with the 37th and 44th Presidents
Mr. Obama's public foray on a tarred Louisiana beach last week felt eerily familiar: a President silently walking a beach, overdressed in dark slacks and crisp, long-sleeved dress shirt while those around him were attired in casual khakis, and polo, button-down, and short-sleeved I'm-one-of-you shirts.

The President looked solemnly uncomfortable milling and crouching on a sandy beach, and awkward chatting with his few companions. During the subsequent 15-minute news conference, Mr. Obama dispassionately read from prepared notes that detailed technical concerns. The President said most of the right words that needed to be said, but in an unengaged monotone that evoked no emotion, no ownership of the sentiments. He took no questions.

Watching the spectacle unfold, I was thunderstruck by two chilling observations:

• This is decidedly not the same aspirational person who electrified the nation on July 27, 2004 at the Democratic convention with an energetically inspiring speech in which he proclaimed:

  "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope? ...

  "I'm not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial."

  You can view Obama's landmark 2004 speech HERE on YouTube. (Text is at Obama's Inspiring 2004 Democratic Convention Speech.)

  Either Barack Obama has drastically altered in six years, or we never really knew the man we saw that fateful summer evening. Six years ago, Obama hungered to lead our nation. Today, he seems to have lost interest. Like post-Watergate Nixon, Obama looks defeated and deflated compared his 2004 ebullience.

• On the scarred Gulf Coast beach, Obama's neat business attire, rigidly-controlled body language, and emotional distance from others were jarringly reminiscent of Richard Nixon's stiff seaside strolls wearing business dress. Reports Trivia-Library.com:

  "Nixon always appeared to be more comfortable in his 3-button business suits than in casual wear. While relaxing in the sun at Key Biscayne or San Clemente, he was often dressed primly in a sports jacket. During his solitary walks along the beach, he generally wore his black dress shoes."

Certainly, Barack Obama is not freighted with most of Richard Nixon's terrible flaws. In Obama, there's nary a shred of Nixon's legendary paranoia. As Michigan State University Professor John Coogan recently wrote, tongue-in-cheek, to a student:

"I trust Mr. Duffy will keep the MSU community informed as the president continues to adopt 'Tricky Dick's' policies. Perhaps 'Tricky Barack' can initiate a secret bombing of Laos and an invasion of Cambodia? Reactivation of the draft? An 'enemies list?'

"An FBI director 'twist(ing) slowly, slowly, in the wind'? National guardsmen gunning down students at Kent State? Snipers in Beaumont Tower, armored personnel carriers blocking Abbot Entrance, and a student demonstrator kicking the president of MSU in the crotch? Ah, the good old Nixon days!"

But since Obama's sullen four-hour visit to Louisiana last Friday, comparisons between our 44th and 37th Presidents haunt me, including:

• Apparent inabilities to regularly exude genuine warmth toward or emotions for others, coupled with propensities for isolation.
  
• Nuanced intellects, first-rate educations, unusually inveterate book readers

• Contradictory impulses to be both pro-war mongers and historic peacemakers, toward both bomb-dropping slaughters and peace-seeking diplomatic initiatives.

• Burning hatred for and suspicion of the press, and an insatiable drive to control the press.

• Intransparency and thin-skinned hostility to criticism

• Extraordinary reliance on a tiny coterie of political advisors to near total exclusion of policy experts from their inner circles

• Inflexible, fuddy-duddy attitudes towards the proclivities of young people

Professor Coogan half-facetiously put forth a handful of comparisons between Obama and Nixon, but most could be applied to dozens of U.S. presidents, including:

• "Double standards for high officials (neither Nixon nor Treasury Secretary Geitner paid their full income tax)"
• "Inoperative promises ("I am not a crook"/"I will close Guantanamo within a year")"
• "Plentiful rhetoric about protecting the environment accompanied by plentiful off-shore drilling"
• "Public presidential denunciations of the U.S. Supreme Court"

It Didn't End Well for Nixon
Here's my point: it didn't end well for Richard Nixon... in large part, I've always believed, because he was so thoroughly disliked on Capitol Hill and detested by the American public. Other presidents have committed some mighty unconscionable or stupid acts, and they weren't hounded from office.

President Nixon, was uniquely hated, though, or at least, uniquely until now, with the vociferous intensity of President Obama's opponents approaching Nixon-era levels. Put simply, a whole lot of Americans, particularly conservatives Americans, really, really don't like Barack Obama and his methods of operation.

My fear for President Obama, should he choose to stick with his intransparent, emotionally tepid, hyper-political way of conducting the nation's business is that:

• First, that President Obama's public approval ratings will continue to drop. Rasmussen reports his May 31, 2010 "strong" approval to be merely 27%, with 40% of the nation "strongly disapproving".

• Second, that Republicans will win control of Congress in the 2010 mid-term elections, and hence, win the power of the Congressional subpoena.

• Third, that Congress, goaded by Americans livid over the flagging middle-class economy, ongoing endless wars, horribly botched oil spill, favors for corporate backers, or any number of issues... and egged on by Tea Party types who simply detest Mr. Obama... will hound him from office. Or worse...

I say all this to fervently urge the Obama White House toward more transparency. Toward more connection with the desires of the American people. Toward less reliance on political hacks to hone policy and policy messaging. Toward more courage, boldness and forthrightness, and less Nixonian-style "cynical political maneuvrings."

It didn't end well for Richard Nixon. I, and most Democrats, desperately want it to end well for Barack Obama. But our 44th president needs to realize that time and patience are running dangerously short.

(Photo #1 taken on Jan 13, 1971 of President and Mrs. Nixon walking the beach in San Clemente, CA: National Archives/Getty Images. Photos #2 and #3 taken on May 28, 2010: Win McNamee/Getty Images.)