Professor Obama
July 30, 2008
The New York Times has a story today about what Obama was like during his time teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. On the one hand, he was apparently an engaging professor, if a touch overly pleased with himself:
As his reputation for frank, exciting discussion spread, enrollment in his classes swelled. Most scores on his teaching evaluations were positive to superlative. Some students started referring to themselves as his groupies. (Mr. Obama, in turn, could play the star. In what even some fans saw as self-absorption, Mr. Obama’s hypothetical cases occasionally featured himself. “Take Barack Obama, there’s a good-looking guy,” he would introduce a twisty legal case.)
On the other hand, he sometimes got so wrapped up in the intellectual arguments surrounding an issue that he didn’t do anything about it:
While students appreciated Mr. Obama’s evenhandedness, colleagues sometimes wanted him to take a stand. When two fellow faculty members asked him to support a controversial antigang measure, allowing the Chicago police to disperse and eventually arrest loiterers who had no clear reason to gather, Mr. Obama discussed the issue with unusual thoughtfulness, they say, but gave little sign of who should prevail — the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposed the measure, or the community groups that supported it out of concern about crime.
What, if anything, do you think this all says about what kind of president Obama would be? A broader question: do academic types make good political leaders? Are there similarities between the skill set required to be a law professor and the one needed to be president? Or are we talking about two very different personality types here?
CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer
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This is an incredibly shallow and very misleading representation of the New York Times article on Obama’s teaching. It completely fails to convey anything of the depth and breath or nature of what Obama taught. I urge readers who want to understand Obama more to read the New York Times article.
Worse yet, this piece makes a claim about Obama that is in no way supported by the article–or by anything I have read before. Tamber says: “On the other hand, he sometimes got so wrapped up in the intellectual arguments surrounding an issue that he didn’t do anything about it”
Tamber then supports this claim with a case where Obama did NOT take a stand on an issue and did analyze that issue with his students. To claim that Obama did not take an issue BECAUSE he was too wrapped up in it intellectually is merely to reveal oneself as anti-Obama. It tells nothing about the reasons why Obama did not take a stand in this case.
This deep political piece closes with the following “broader” questions:
“A broader question: do academic types make good political leaders? Are there similarities between the skill set required to be a law professor and the one needed to be president? Or are we talking about two very different personality types here?”
Is Obama an “academic type” because of his part time teaching at the University of Chicago? I have always thought of Obama as a “community organizer” type, if he is to be typed in any simple minded way. And why doesn’t Tamber do something with this question about “academic” types? Woodrow Wilson was a college president before being president. I suspect there are other examples. Investigate, analyze!
Then Tamber goes into even more sloppy thinking. He moves glibly from “academic type” to a professor’s “skill set” to “personality types.”
The is all junk thinking and bad writing. It does not belong in the Maryland Daily Record. (Would it make sense to attack McCain–as this article attacks Obama–as being a “military type” or having a “military skill set” or “military personality”? I cannot imagine a more unilluminating approach to McCain’s policies and fitness to govern.)
My recommendation: Fire Tamber and the editor who approved this shoddy piece of anti-Obama work. Get some people on board who can do serious work. Do some serious pieces about Obama and McCain on legal issues that will be genuinely informative.
Ed Hopkins
Baltimore, Maryland
Fire Tamber? For a blog post? Ed, can you lighten up just a little? It is a blog post and she is laying out the issues. Blogs are are a drive-by and they really don’t have to be subjected to having to lay everything out bit by bit. I’m hoping the Daily Record is not having an editor look over these blog posts before posting because that is not what a blog post should be. This is not a new article. It is a blog. Different rules apply. (See Internet Rule 357623.5A.)
Do academic types make good leaders? It is a fair question. Obama is an academic type guy even if he was a part time prof. Do military guys make good leaders? This question has been asked about 100000 times.
I thought the “take Barack Obama” he is a good looking guy was not him being full of himself. (I’m also a part-time law professor and I would not want every word I say in class psychoanalyzed) He’s just trying to inject some personality in the class to make things interesting. But it is an interpretation I’m sure some people had at the time when he would say something like that.
By no means do I read an anti-Obama bent to this post although there would nothing wrong if their was.
Do yourself a favor and read some of Caryn’s articles. She is one of the Daily Record’s best writers tackling the details of complicated cases. Let her shoot off a little in a blog post without having to provide in-depth research. Otherwise, let’s just forget the whole idea of a paper having a blog in the first place.
Ed, a quick read of your email reveals you are probably a pretty bright guy. If you could loosen up just a bit, that might not be the worst thing.
Also, I don’t want serious pieces on Obama and McCain. I want quick stuff that would apply to lawyers if we are talking about these guys. . Let’s leave the deep political stuff to the Washington Post. I understand they write a little about these things. The Daily Record should stick to local business and legal articles.
Please note that I will be voting for Barack Obama in November.