One of my former students, knowing that I’m once again teaching my “Men, Masculinity, and the American Tradition” course this semester, asked me if I had any thoughts on Barack Obama as masculine archetype/role model. I replied that I’d have a lot more to say in a couple of years, but would offer at least some preliminary thoughts now. After all, the president has been in the public spotlight for several years, and for the past eighteen months or so, has been perhaps the most visible man in America — and indeed the world. I followed his campaign, read his wonderful first book (but not the follow-up), so I ought to be able to write something. Indeed, the very nature of his extraordinary celebrity has made me reluctant to do so until now, perhaps fearing that I’d be treading on too popular a path.

Michael Kimmel, our pre-eminent historian of American masculinity, points out that “manhood” has been a defining issue for presidents since at least 1828, when the hyper-macho war hero Andrew Jackson posited himself as the “one who could fight” against the effete incumbent, John Quincy Adams, the “one who could write.” That dynamic would show up again and again in American history, even as recently as 2004 with the Bush and Kerry campaigns. It’s worth pointing out again that from the beginning, these campaigns have always been about perception: the real war heroes tend to lose to those candidates who had less military service, perhaps because those who didn’t actually fight tend to over-compensate with bellicosity. (Think of McGovern, a war hero, being beaten by Nixon, who was anything but; or Kerry and Bush).

Andrew Jackson scornfully called John Quincy Adams a “professor”, and called himself a “plowman.” Invoking the so-called heroic artisan ideal, Jackson introduced into the American discourse a contempt for intellectual sophistication that has survived, lamentably, for nearly two centuries. Think of the anti-intellectual derision directed at Adlai Stevenson, a so-called “egghead”, or at the cerebral Michael Dukakis, who refused to abandon his thoughtfulness when asked how he would respond to the murder of his wife. Think even of this most recent campaign, when in the minds of some of her strongest defenders, Sarah Palin’s lack of intellectual sophistication was seen as an asset rather than a defect. “It took her six years to get through the University of Idaho? Well, that shows she was well-rounded rather than just a grade-grubbing grind.” (A conservative friend of mine actually said that. My jaw hit my breastbone.)

Often, men who have run for high office have gone to great lengths to appear more as “one who can fight”, hoping to be seen as a Jackson rather than a Quincy Adams. Think of Michael Dukakis’ unfortunate decision to be seen driving a tank. Or, more sinisterly, think of Bill Clinton making a special trip home to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign in order to sign the death warrant for a mentally disabled man; the draft-dodger needed to bump up his “tough guy” credentials, and signing an execution order was the next best thing to pulling a trigger. Of course, one might think of George W. Bush mysteriously reinventing himself with a West Texas accent, deliberately losing the clipped cadences of his privileged heritage. Rather than deny that he had been a mediocre student, Bush celebrated it as evidence that he was a “regular guy”, rough-and-tumble and full of hearty masculine fun rather than a thoughtful, reflective, intellectually curious person.

And into this rather depressing American legacy comes one Barack Hussein Obama, he of the unusual name, the unusual heritage, and the absolute absence of fear of being labelled the smartest guy in the room. I am thrilled that America has a black president, of course. But I am even more thrilled that we have a man who not only has extraordinary intellectual gifts, but who is utterly unafraid to display them. Barack Obama was not only a community organizer, he was the chief of the Harvard Law Review and a professor at the University of Chicago. While Democratic candidates before him would have felt compelled to downplay their erudition, Obama bravely and rightly used his considerable academic credentials as part of his resume for the presidency. Though he didn’t say “Elect me because I’m better educated than my opponent”, he never betrayed even the slightest hint of embarrassment about his intellectual background. Continue reading →