Professorial kin

LITTLE ROCK — I have come to believe that, like me, President Barack Obama has the DNA of an academic.

Now retired and over 15 years from getting chalk dust on my sleeves, I miss the satisfying rush of a well-delivered lecture. I usually had a couple of jokes in reserve in case things got dull. Most students want to be entertained as well as instructed, and I knew they would evaluate me at the end of the term. While I found campus politics a drag, I miss the upturned faces, smiles and adulation of receptive students.

I suspect Obama and I are professorial kin. We seem to get the

same emotional charge from our

loquacious abilities.

Obama may be our president but deep down he seems to see himself as our professor, a vocation he has continued since teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. From the eminence of the White House he is our teacher at large. He loves the podium and the rhetorical arts.

Compared to the fractured syntax of Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, Obama is smooth as silk. Like a metronome, he oscillates in a 90-degree arc, never taking his eyes off the two teleprompters. He seems convinced that, “If I can say this just right and flavor it with my winsome persona, Americans will accept my programs to reshape our culture.”

The White House daily ritual is thoroughly academic in nature. The ceremony opens before a select audience, followed by a brave prescription to correct a specific evil left over from the previous administration. Next, our professor-president is seated, surrounded by the disciples of the day, all of whom applaud and receive one of his professorial pens which has scratched out a quarter of an inch of his signature. Academics, too, enjoy signing petitions and my colleagues seldom let one go by without their John Hancock. After all, it seemed to give them stature; doesn’t the wisdom of a Ph.D. outweigh that of a hundred Joe Six-Packs?

While I enjoyed my 40 years in academia, it may be a dangerous place to look for politicians. Data indicates 80 percent of our guild have a leftist bias on sociopolitical issues. We are an isolated and pampered guild who pontificate from safe places protected by the ivied castle walls of tenure. Few of us have calluses on our hands or originate from the mill, mine or the farm. Like cloistered monks, we have an important but all too partial view of the world.

We have not had to meet a payroll, downsize a company, fire employees or close a factory. While the entrepreneurial and business world is a hard taskmaster, our world is fairly soft. While some of my colleagues worked like beavers—10 hours a day, six days a week—a significant number opened their offices at 10 a.m., met a couple of classes and left at 2 p.m. While outside our cloister we often support radical change; when it comes to protecting our departmental turf, we are as defensive and conservative as a mother wolverine protecting her den.

The world looks simple behind the lectern. Few professors have an existential knowledge of the thousands of factions or special-interest groups that clamor for largess. Professor Obama missed the best apprenticeship for being a successful president—of having been a state governor or big-city mayor. For far too many liberal academics, the world is like a Zane Grey Western novel; that is, made of those who wear black or white hats.

Alas, our professor president, while a U.S. senator, eschewed the hard-knuckle late-evening agonies of crafting prudent legislation. For Obama, his two years spent on the lecture circuit giving voice to “Hope You Can Believe In!” were far more rewarding.

A cardinal sin of my guild is the penchant to moralize, please and polarize. Like lazy professors who each term regurgitate their dog-eared, yellowing notes, Obama should worry about the diminishing value of his daily penchant for being loquacious. John Q. Voter is fickle and might increasingly respond, “not him again” or “I’ve heard that all before.”

During my academic career, I have discovered that exceptional verbal ability often correlates with a smug form of arrogance.

Eric Hoffer, the longshoreman philosopher, wrote that history reveals “men of action” and “men of words.” Our best presidents—Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan—had modest intellects and assets, but they acted prudently and decisively from a wisdom that was generated outside ivied walls.

Up to now, President Obama’s words have outweighed his deeds of leadership.

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Walter W. Benjamin, Ph.D., is a professor emeritus of Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., and a wintertime resident of Hot Springs Village.