I’m a fan of Obama, but I’m also aware that he’s not the perfect politician for me. My stances are more liberal than his. But he’s still the best shot America has at truly improving itself over the next four years, so I’m cool with his imperfections. The change he brings may only be incremental rather than revolutionary, as his rhetoric implied, but it will be positive change nonetheless. A friend of mine, more offended by Obama’s recent dismissal of the legalization of marijuana than me, continued the argument by quoting from Glenn Greenwald’s article praising Senator Jim Webb’s recent push for prison reform, despite its impolitic implications.

I can do little but agree with this. It is the mark of a great man¹ that he says what people don’t wish to hear, that he pushes for the things the silent majority wishes to remain silent. And by this metric Obama is, for the most part, not a great man. He is an inspiring man. He is an articulate man. He is an intelligent man. But he is also a pragmatic man. And pragmatic men do what they think they can get done. Obama knows that to push for the legalization of marijuana, even timidly, would create a backlash that would distract from the work he has to get done.

Is his stance cowardly? In its own way, it most certainly is. And Webb is a braver man for the fight he brings to the Capitol. But that is, I think, something for which Obama has been previously praised. His pragmatism is what allowed a first term African-American Senator, with the middle name Hussein, and a Muslim father to get where he is. He wouldn’t accomplish much at all if he was pushing for the wild-eyed quixotries of others. Unfortunately, his visual and cultural radicalisms limit his ability to be truly radical politically.

But this is not to say that he follows this actively. He simply is a political moderate man. The liberal arguments that he is secretly for the legalization of marijuana don’t hold any weight for me, any more than the conservative arguments that he is secretly a Muslim. He may not be someone fervently for the prosecution of casual users, as evidenced by his recent mandate that the DEA no longer raid state-run marijuana farms and his support of medical marijuana, but I don’t think that equates to legalization, or even decriminalization. His past usage is not compelling in this respect to me either; hypocrisy at this level among politicians is hardly new.

It’s disappointing to me that President Obama is unwilling to address the unpopularity of the marijuana and hemp laws, but it’s not entirely surprising. That’s not to say I support this position. I do not support it, nor do I respect Obama’s reasons, but I do understand it is a part of his politics.

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Footnotes

1. A great woman as well, but let’s not get into neutral pronouns today, m’kay? [↩]