Today's my birthday! My Facebook friends and acquaintances have been filling my time lines with gleeful celebrations of the anniversary of my birth (at midnight, appropriately.) My colleagues at my office, however, despite a well-established tradition of similar clebrations have been distinctly...subdued.
And this makes me very happy. At home, I want to be loved and appreciated for kindness, humor, and love. At work, I want to be celebrated as someone who's tough but fair, focusing on the needs of the business and demanding progress towards them, recognizing all those who move us towards them, and calling out those who get in the way. My home life is dominated by hugs and help with homework. My work life? Yeah, no, not so much.
OK, great. We at dKos are all thrilled that demi has infested the world a year longer, right? But what does this have to do with politics, and particularly recent politics?
Everything, of course. For four-plus years, President Obama has sought to be "the adult in the room" by negotiating and trying to satisfy the other powers in our state. He acted as if he wanted to be respected and admired. He was wrong.
In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli observed that "it is better [for The Prince] to be feared than loved." The goal of the Prince is to protect his state and improve its welfare. It's not to be feted throughout the world as the nice guy, or as fair, or as "the adult in room". The Prince needs to be seen as reasonable, since otherwise his own folk will rise up against him, but he must also be seen as tough and dangerous, lest other states feel free to attack his state without fear.
Fortunately the President realized this applied to him after the 2011 budget crisis. He decided that the nation depended more on his defending it from attack than on him being a fair and just ruler. It was better for him to be feared than loved.
And when he realized that fiar but tough and unyielding won elections and took care of the country, he started winning, and, ironically, admiration followed.
So keep it up, Mr. President. I'm a huge fan of your family and how you care for it. In public, though, I want the enemies of the state to fear you. Sir, be fair, but tough.