The Obama Presidency: Epic or Tragedy?

“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses.”

For decades, centerpieces of the Core Curriculum like the Iliad have united generations of Columbia College graduates, the most notable now being President-elect Barack Obama. The reason why the Core is such an institution at Columbia is because it gives students a broad-based education, designed to improve the way we think and make decisions. Moreover, while the Core may be criticized as dated, its lessons remain timeless. In that vein, I would like to discuss one aspect of the Iliad that Barack Obama should most certainly be taking to heart.

Like the Greek King Agamemnon, Obama now finds himself at the head of a great power suffering from both war and stagnation. Our first glimpse of Agamemnon is as a heavy-handed ruler who incurs the wrath of his greatest warrior, Achilles, by requisitioning his prize, Briseis—a maiden captured from a Trojan-allied town. Initially, Agamemnon ignores Achilles’ protests, substantiating his own selfishness with a belief that the petulant young warrior has already claimed all the treasure he deserves. Yet, when the time for battle comes and Agamemnon needs to harness the strength of the Greek army, Achilles’ refusal to fight leads to an embarrassing Greek defeat, prolonging the Trojan War.

The lesson that president-elect Obama should draw from this story is that wealth redistribution for its own sake is a very bad idea. Like Agamemnon, Obama has structured his tax plan on the premise that the wealthy—along with the small businesses caught in the tax bracket—need to “pay their fair share.” The problem, however, is that like Achilles, the wealthy and entrepreneurial disagree with Obama/Agamemnon on the definition of fair. Now, this wouldn’t be an issue if the commercial class was a negligible force, but as in the Iliad, America needs this group if it is ever going to be victorious in its own Trojan War—the 2008 financial crisis. This is because just as the Greek campaign against Troy stagnated without swift-footed Achilles, so too is the American economy stalling from a lack of capital in the financial system.

At this point, I feel that it is necessary to address the natural counterargument to my Iliad metaphor, which is that while Agamemnon took Briseis for himself, Obama is “spreading the wealth” from rich to poor. Putting aside the questionable efficacy of such a policy over the long term, I want to point out that Agamemnon’s folly was not that he took Briseis, but rather that he misallocated resources and strayed from his primary goal of defeating the Trojans by needlessly wronging Achilles.

Similarly, while Obama was elected on a broad platform of change, it is obvious that the main reason voters sent him to the White House was because they believed he could fix the financial crisis. This task, more than any other policy goal, needs to be Obama’s first priority. This is why his tax proposal is so unjustified. Despite what we might want our government to achieve in the next four years, the reality is that the nation is in the midst of an economic crisis, and Obama simply does not have the luxury of experimenting with the welfare state of the 21st century by raising taxes to fund additional Social Security and Medicare expenses—just as Agamemnon should have focused on winning the Trojan War rather than satisfying his own personal agenda.

Fundamentally, Agamemnon and Obama have made the same mistake in thinking that the detriment done to one element of society will be outweighed by the good done to others. For instance, despite the best efforts of Agamemnon’s other heroes—including a divine “stimulus” package bestowed upon Diomedes by Athena that caused him to go on a blood-rage and fight Aphrodite and Apollo in Book V—Agamemnon’s only hope of victory ultimately rested on the willingness of Achilles to enter the fray and quash that sub-prime Trojan leader, Hector. Likewise, the capital sorely needed by today’s economy will not come from the poor, who are losing their homes, or from the members of the middle class, who are responding to economic turmoil with conservatism. The only groups in this country with the power to meaningfully affect the economy are wealthy families and small businesses making over $250,000 per year. These groups are a key source of job creation, according to the independent group Americans for Tax Reform. Regardless of your beliefs on inequality, the fact remains that the American economy is facing a crisis of capital, and by penalizing society’s two largest sources of investment, Obama threatens to tax away this country’s ability to recover.

The key lesson that Obama needs to take from the Iliad is that even the greatest leaders are not all-powerful. Agamemnon’s mistake was that his faulty priorities led him to ignore the strategic importance of a critical element of his army and alienate Achilles at the worst possible time. Similarly, while the wealthy and small businesses may not let the economy tank out of hubris, Obama’s redistribution policies are certainly robbing them of the ability to increase investment. Let us hope that eventually, the wisdom of Athena—Warren Buffett—prevails upon our new leader, and that we are not stuck fighting this economic malaise for the next decade.

Jon Hollander is a Columbia college junior majoring in economics. Reasonably Right runs alternate Wednesdays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com">Opinion@columbiaspectator.com