Yin President

There was a pretty harsh piece on Obama in the Times yesterday. I remember when Chris Matthews was all, “Where's my shining city on a hill?” about his inauguration speech, which I found sober to match the times. The NYT piece goes all the way back to that and accuses Obama of a lack of leadership. Since the piece is about style I thought I'd weigh on style today.

By “bad leadership” is meant, not giving speeches like that “shining city on a hill” one that Reagan sort of borrowed. Well, passing the most meaningful healthcare reform ever was good enough for me. And in any case, after eight years of Dubya, “adequate” was going to be just fine, thank you very much.

Of course the writer also castigates Obama for the healthcare thing. He shouldn't have done it at all, he argues. He is a political science prof. from Emory and he's thinking about the whole thing as political theater. Here in the world I have kids who need health care when they leave home. Organizing for America were polled as to what they thought the number one issue was, and overwhelmingly people said health care. It was a collective decision.

Which brings me on to Obama's decision making style, the way Maureen Dowd (amazingly) accuses him of being too feminine, like listening to people and the dreaded “leading from behind” thing. As a certain kind of Tibetan Buddhist I'm a big big fan of Taoism. And Obama exemplifies the yin style.

Now America is a yang country. It just is. It could without doubt use a little yin. I'm quite happy with that. In fact, that's one reason why I voted for him in the first place. Call me weird.

Yin people make you think. They infuriate yang people (another plus as far as I'm concerned!) and they force you to be conscious. They look like they're doing nothing from a super yang point of view. You can keep your glorious bombast and pomp and circumstance.