Obama: Lion or Lamb?

I normally don’t put much stock in Chinese New Year symbols, but this year, starting on February 14th, Valentine’s Day in the West, the Chinese will begin the year of the tiger. Now the only tiger we identify in our own culture is Tiger Woods, and since his stock is way down right now, the year of the tiger will probably remain ironic at best in the U.S. Our tiger is currently toothless and being retooled (I mean rehabbed) in Mississippi, where sex addiction is apparently best addressed, Mississippi and sex addiction treatment seeming strange bedfellows aside.
For the first year of his presidency, Barack Obama has been much the lamb. He has tried to reach out to Republicans, find common ground, pursue consensus, and leave the law-making to congress, all of which has led to a decline in the country’s perception of him as a leader. While the nation seems to like him as a person, when they can separate the two roles in their minds, they have concluded that he is not the leader they had hoped for. Had he lined up with the Chinese symbol of 2009, he would have adopted the persona of the ox, not a likely persona for the slim, fit, agile person that he is. Besides, the last think the country needed was a bull in a china shop approach to issues, although he might have used that image to good effect with Wall Street, who know a bull when they see one, or so they keep telling us.
What this country needs right now is a lion, not a lamb. It is time for Obama to take off the kid gloves, stand up to the Republicans, show them that they are mere capons, not roosters they think they are, and roar and claw his way back into the leadership role the country expected him to assume in the first place. He should stop being so accommodating to the Republicans, especially now that they have rearmed themselves with that insidious weapon of mass destruction: the filibuster. Now there is no reason for Obama to worry about appearing a bully.
The primary reason Scott Brown won so easily in the Massachusetts election for Ted Kennedy’s former seat was that Scott looks and acts like a leader. His opponent did not. The heavily and traditionally democratic Massachusetts electorate, representing the general electorate as a whole because it was the only election available, sent a signal to Washington that the American people are sensing a vacuum in leadership that actually both represents and leads them. It is tired of seeing what it perceives to be the continued tiptoeing, kowtowing, and slinking around among politicians who are funded and influenced by special interest groups like Wall Street, the insurance industry, Big Oil, or corporate health care. They are desperate for a representative of Main Street and they found their first potential hero in Scott Brown.
America is purportedly a nation whose majority is at least descended from the Christian tradition. It is ironic, therefore, to be asking the President to be more the lion than the lamb, given the historic relationship between the Christians and the lions. However, Americans have never been consistent or wholehearted in their application of Christian virtues and imagery. For example, America loves football, a very violent sport in which never a cheek is turned. America is not in a generous position or mood today, especially toward other Americans. It saves its generosity for disasters outside America, such as the aftermath of the earthquakes in Haiti.
Barack Obama is the head of the Democratic Party. No democratic candidate can look forward to the 2010 election unless Obama changes his persona and starts acting as if he is king of the jungle rather than a lamb being readied for a Republican spit. If he is not bolder, he may end up an isolated black sheep, an image the racists would surely love to promote. Lambs negotiate; lions don’t.
America would rather respect and gain confidence in a lion than lie down with a lamb.