POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Hail O!

I won, I taxed, I redistributed...

In the wake of last month’s dustup over the NEA’s attempts to officially involve artists in the positive propagandizing of the President’s legislative agenda, you’d think that agency’s leadership would be especially careful to avoid the appearance of any gratuitous promotion of Obama or his policies.  So I’m guessing that chairman Rocco Landesman’s specialty is not music, or perhaps he is writer seeking an equivalent to the graphic work of Mapplethorpe, since the tone deaf slobbering tribute he gave Mr. Obama during his keynote speech to the 2009 Grantmakers in the Arts conference amounts to a public fellating:
 

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.

Now both Scott Johnson and John Miller point out that Landesman is obviously referring to power as, well, literal power as opposed to as a compelling talent. To quote Miller:
 

What an absurd statement by NEA chief Rocco Landesman. He doesn't mean that Obama is a powerful writer in the sense that he is a compelling writer; he means that he is a writer who wields a lot of political power. This is not necessarily a distinguished category of authorship: It includes the likes of Lenin and Hitler. (It also includes good men, such as Churchill.) The most powerful since Caesar? Egad.

Johnson also notes the absurdity of Landesman’s declaration:
 

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.

It never ceases to amaze me at how all of these educated people always mangle historical references, like Obama, or seem to lack any sense of scale or historical context.  I mean, surely there have been other talented writers who also enjoyed great power in the intervening years between Caesar and Obama; Churchill, Wilson, or Dante Alighieri perhaps?  And is it even a necessary prerequisite?  As Beran points out, the artistry of statesmen is in their public performances as opposed to their literary exposition, with but a few exceptions.  He also points out this curiosity:
 

Mr. Landesman seems to think that the possession by a leader of an artistic sensibility is necessarily good for the arts. As proved, I suppose, by Nero and Hitler. Qualis artifex pereo!

What I really want to know is, in which famous Roman’s mold is he cast? Cicero, as he’s been hailed by many thus far, or Caesar, as Landesman asserts.  Given his demonstrated lack of leadership on Obamacare and dithering over the question of reinforcements for Afghanistan, I’d more likely cast him as Nero, with perhaps a golf club instead of a fiddle…

Rocketman