Rocco Landesman is President Obama's handpicked chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Last week he gave the keynote address
to the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference. Those of us concerned
about the politicization of life and art in the Age of Obama will not
be consoled by a reading of Landesman's speech. The speech bears
examination in its entirety, but Landesman's tribute to Obama is
especially worth a look:
This is the first president that actually writes his own books since
Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since
Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is
the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most
powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American
artists.
Landesman compares Obama favorably with Julius Caesar as "a powerful
writer." Landesman is not referring to Obama's skills as a writer, but
rather to the power he holds by virtue of his office. Some might think
that the literary comparison sells Obama short. Caesar was something of
a self-promoter and propagandist in his writing.
Yet Landesman knows Obama is like Caesar, somehow — a friend asks,
is it in the transformation of a republic into an empire with a divine
ruler? Perhaps if Landesman had his wits about him, he would note
instead that Obama is the most powerful speaker since the other JC.
Well, so what if Landesman is a bootlicker? Landesman is also an
idiot. Lincoln never wrote a book, although I believe he did compile
the texts of his 1858 debates with Douglas for publication in book
form. And Landesman misses a few presidential authors since Theodore
Roosevelt.