Mr. President, Cheer Up!
By Oh Young-jin
Assistant Managing Editor
Close your Bible and skip your morning prayers for a day.
Hit the snooze button on your alarm clock set for 5 a.m. and ask the first lady to let you stay in bed.
Throw the batch of morning newspapers into the dustbin and keep your television switched off.
For that matter, tell your chief of staff to clear your docket for the day and give yourself the day off.
Then, try and think of things that make you happy.
If you feel an urge to go to the executive office and work, stop yourself and take a short stroll down from your living quarters to Sangchujae. Then, ask your aides to leave you alone so you can appreciate the beauty of the flowers ringing the square of perfectly clipped green grass.
In case current affairs still refuse to go away from your mind, then, stop resisting and go over what has happened since you won the Dec. 19, 2007 presidential election.
Maybe, you will feel upset to realize what a thankless job being president is and perhaps it could be a sense of betrayal that holds a grip on you. After all, a half of those who cast ballots supported you and it was nothing less than a landslide that sent you to the highest office of the nation. ``Where have all my supporters gone?'' is surely one of the most vexing questions that plague your mind.
Try to suppress this summary from getting into your train of thoughts and take one thing at a time, starting from the latest, in reverse chronological order.
First, candlelit vigils and truckers' strike.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in downtown Seoul on the 30th anniversary of the June 10, 1987 struggles, with many of them calling for your ouster. The following morning, you said that you had mixed feelings, recalling the irony that, when you were young, you also fought a dictatorship. In case your thoughts try to take you further down on this lane of logic, bring it to a full halt. Because I fear you would be tempted to sympathize with David in the Psalms, who was pursued and persecuted to the point of praying for God to take revenge on his behalf; or Moses who was assured of his role as savior against all odds for the Jewish diaspora through divine intervention.
The persecution complex or a self-belief that he or she is a chosen one is dangerous for politicians in general and, particularly, for those in power.
As former British prime minister Tony Blair once observed, politics is a game of possibilities so, considering your presidency is still young, you still have a chance of reversing your political fortune and endearing yourself back into the bosoms of the people, who, despite all appearances to the contrary, wish you the best of luck in their collective consciousness. Your job performance is closely tied with the fate of the nation and their livelihood.
Last week, you also mentioned a ``fresh start.''
For starters, I suggest that you push your clock back one hour or so. An unnecessary reminder is the theory about three kinds of leader. The first is one who is neither smart nor diligent; the second is not smart but diligent; the third is smart but lazy. Among the three types, conventional wisdom picks the third as the best, while the second is the worst. It is not hard to figure why.
Right after you took office, it was your early-bird habit that gave a jolt to public servants. I gather that this had two purposes ― bringing a dose of discipline to the civil servants corps and getting a head start on your presidential agenda.
This may have been refreshing at first to the public that are tired of official elitism but they are a ``workhorse with a soul'' that runs the nation irrespective of administrative changeovers with most of them imbued with a sense of mission. Simply put, don't give a whip or kick spurs on the horse that is already running at full throttle.
This is more for your benefit. In a nation where an elected president is allowed a single five-year term, few would blame the new chief executive for being in a big haste to take advantage of his first days in office and to get as much done as possible. But look at your predecessors and it would be apparent that it is not a presidential decree but people's will that will decide the fate of a given head of state.
For the mass media, it is a two-edged sword. So don't pay attention to every word in newspapers or sound bites used in broadcast news. But try and take what they say with a broad perspective, picking and choosing what you heed. Then, move on. After all, it is well known how fickle the media is in nature and how easily their tenor of reports can change. I am not denying a crucial role the media plays in modern politics as the voice of the silent majority. The first thing that should be done to influence the critical tone of the media is to get the reporters more access to what your administration is doing. To do that, fix your flack officers from top to bottom. Spokesman Lee Dong-kwan rarely meets reporters and, when he does, gets together with ones that represent big newspapers. In the pre-Internet era, one could manage the nation with the cooperation of big newspapers but, now, this over-dependency on the oligarchy of the print media can be politically suicide. Last but not least, it is important to keep your siblings at an arm's length. I don't need further explanations on that subject.
So keep your chin up and do lead the nation. I am sure that, if there is anybody who knows firsthand of ups and downs in life, you would be second to none.