"Observant Catholic" Garry Wills Speaks

In today's NYT, here.  The highlights:

As a presidential historian and emeritus professor at Northwestern, you’re well aware that the Democrats are facing the likelihood of an electoral setback this Tuesday. Yet President Obama continues to be the object of scathing criticism among Democrats, including yourself. Why won’t you give him credit for getting things done?

He gets things done in a very crippled way. The health care plan and the finance plan — he made so many bargains along the way.

You’ve accused him of excessive ingratiation, or “omnidirectional placation,” as you wrote in a blog post for The New York Review of Books.

As a black man with an odd name, he often had to ingratiate himself in the companies that he kept, and he does. Beyond that, I think he may have a principle of trying to compromise, but that has proved to be a big mistake.

 

You were invited to the White House for an off-the-record dinner during Obama’s first year in office, along with some other presidential historians. Can you tell us what advice you gave him?

I said, “Don’t go into Afghanistan.”

 

We were already there, so I assume you’re referring to the deployment of additional troops. How did he respond?

He was very prickly. He said: “I’m not a naïve optimist. I know of the difficulties. They’re all being considered and taken care of.” He really cut off this conversation.

That’s surprising, especially since you describe him as a placater.

He’s kept a pretty tight little circle around him. By the way, that meeting with us was supposed to be the first of many. There have been none after.

You’re an observant Catholic. What are your thoughts these days about Pope Benedict XVI?

 I think he’s irrelevant. 

Irrelevant to what?

To religion; to the Gospel. . . .

Whom will you be voting for in this Tuesday’s election?

I always vote the party. It’s ridiculous not to. You may like a person who is Republican, but if you vote for that person, you’re voting for all the apparatus that comes along withit.