The questions our president neglected to ask

Why am I at Columbia? You avoid this scary question, presume it has an answer, and resign yourself to asking more mundane ones such as: How can I get an A in Lit Hum? Maintain a healthy workout schedule? Balance social life and academics? These more inglorious questions are actually the key to your future success and collectively comprise the answer to the first question. Here is the story of someone who found himself just as disenchanted with an institution as you may be with Columbia. He failed to take advantage of his situation and struggle with these smaller questions. He is now suffering dearly for it.

A young, idealistic junior Senator from the state of Illinois looked on as Joe Biden gave a characteristically long monologue on the floor of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Bored out of his mind, the junior Senator passed a note to a campaign aide named Robert Gibbs on which was written, “Shoot me now.” Two years later, that junior Senator was President of the United States of America.

Remarkably, a slew of similar stories exists about Obama’s time in the Senate; walking out of committees waving his hands together in a talking motion and saying “yak, yak, yak”; telling his Chicago friends that D.C. was the “same bullshit” as Springfield, Illinois where he served in the State Senate but didn’t care to show up, voting present almost 130 times.

From the outset, Obama was an “everyman’s man.” A friend of old-time Republicans like Tom Coburn and Dick Lugar, he arguably voted present so many times because he feared taking a stand on polarizing issues.

But his absence was also a result of his feelings toward the Senate—he found the culture tiresome, uninspired, and cynical. In this sense, the Presidency was almost an escape for Obama. And so after just two years, Obama ascended the Democratic Party hierarchy at an unprecedented rate. He pleased everyone in the process, speaking to blacks in the South just as easily as to Jews from Chicago, East Coast Wall Streeters as effectively as to “Main Street” steel workers. Because of this adaptability, I, along with the country, projected my own aspirations onto him and, starry-eyed, forced myself to overlook the vagueness of his platform and flimsiness of his record.

“Yes we can” was not only a slogan of hope, but also represented the candidate’s naïve belief about political efficacy: that all sides in a debate, given reasonable data and an inspiring pep talk, can come to a compromise—that no side needs to be intrinsically wrong. The Republicans are just misguided. If we only communicate to them the rational merits of taxes and entitlements, they might just see the light.

Three years in and the results speak for themselves. Due to his intense aversion to bad will, Obama has repeatedly extended the olive branch to an unreceptive Republican opposition. He has ceded ground on funding for Medicare, the size and makeup of the stimulus, budget, and other legislation. The list of his compromises is far longer than the list of his accomplishments. But still, the Republicans do not hesitate to call him a socialist and rarely, if ever, endorse his legislative initiatives.

Worse, he is unable to communicate the merits of his policies that do, in fact, work. Healthcare was not just a moral crisis, but also a dire fiscal one­—“Obamacare” was deficit-neutral; the public option was actually pro-competition; and raising the marginal tax rate on the extremely wealthy by 3 percent—back to Clinton levels—is not socialism, it’s smart.

If Obama had worked toward passing more legislation as a Senator, he would have learned how to market policy decisions in a way that is clear and rational but congruent with American ideals. He would have fully comprehended Republicans’ unwillingness to cooperate when it is not in the their political interest. If he had stayed in the Senate longer, he might have garnered some “choot-spa” (in the words of Michele Bachmann) born of his intense frustration with years of gridlock and contemptible political posturing he saw there. He would now appear angry rather than cool and professorial, active rather than defensive, above the petty political pundits instead of drowned out by them, and empathetic toward the unemployed rather than oblivious to them.

If you’re like me, you view Columbia the way Obama viewed the Senate. It’s fun and stimulating, but you want to get your life started. You can’t take the unrelenting burden of homework anymore and find yourself trying to please all of your peers by going out and partying when you shouldn’t and joining organizations on a whim that you have little affinity for. You take genuine interest in about a fourth of your classes and you’re already looking for that dream career to exonerate you from it all. At the end of the day, school is there to kick your ass, not validate you. Take advantage of it. Hone a killer work ethic, learn how to connect, and communicate with people effectively. And every once in a while, bite the bullet, make a hard decision, and tick some people off in the process. The next time you find yourself passing sarcastic notes that amount to “shoot me now” as Robert Jervis rambles on about Realist political theory, remember that you are here for these noble reasons.

Jesse Michels is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in history. He is a member of the Debate Team, CUSP, intramural basketball, and dodgeball. Politics as Pertinent runs alternate Tuesdays.