Columns

WORLD FOCUS: An exercise in futility

FRANK SHATZ

POSTED: March 1, 2010

Save | Print | Email | Read comments | Post a comment

“Did you get a response to your letter to President Obama?” I’ve been asked in reference to the letter I sent more than two months ago and summarized in one of my Gazette and Lake Placid News columns.

    In my letter I reflected on the first year of Obama’s presidency and noted that what would define the rest of his first term in office would be the war in Afghanistan, and the success or failure of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed power.

    I quoted some military and foreign policy experts living in Williamsburg, who advocate a course of action that would advance our country’s national interest.

    “What your presidency needs,” I wrote, “is to acquire a Charles de Gaulle approach to statecraft. With the Algerian conflict behind him, de Gaulle concentrated on achieving two objectives: To reform and develop the French economy and to promote an independent foreign policy and a strong stance in the international stage. It was called the ‘politics of grandeur.’”

    When I feel strongly about an issue, I write to the president or his top advisers, to senators and representatives. I identify myself as a concerned citizen, occasionally as a columnist, who keeps his ear to the ground and is attempting to convey the sense of the community.

    During the administrations of presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George W. H. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush, there was always a timely and substantive response to my letters. It came from such top presidential aides as Pat Buchanan, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, Bill Moyers, who was a top aide to President Johnson, Hodding Carter III, an assistant Secretary of State under President Carter, President Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Karen Hughes, one of the closest advisers of George W. Bush, and many others.

    Most of those letters are now part of the Special Collection at the Swem Library of the College of William & Mary.

    My attempt to communicate with top officials of the Obama administration has been disappointing. Although Obama repeatedly called for public input to guide him in formulating domestic and foreign policy, his top aides seem to find merit in citizens’ letters only when they can be used as props in the president’s speeches.

According to news reports, the atmosphere in the Obama White House, in contrast with previous administrations, is cordial and tranquil. It seems to suggest that top aides have a tendency toward “group-think.”

    David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, who in 2005 served as the Hunter B. Andrews Fellow in American Politics at the College of William & Mary, in one of his recent columns wrote:

     “Some would say the Obama administration is under-reacting to the incredible shift in the public mood. Some would say they need more voices from the great unwashed. But no one could accuse them of panicking, or scrambling about incoherently. In their first winter of discontent, they are offering continuity and comity. Whatever their relations with the country might be, inside they seem unruffled.”

    This behavior could be detrimental to achieving many of Obama’s stated goals. . In reaction to my column describing the content of my letter to the President, several readers have expressed disappointment over how their own communications with White House officials were handled.

    “What seems to be prevalent there is a high-handed attitude,” said a local college professor. “Constructive suggestions are ignored. Many of the top aides to the president apparently haven’t made the transition from campaign mood to governing.”

    Writing that letter to the President may have indeed been an exercise in futility.

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg, Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from The Virginia Gazette.