recovering from the men we loved to hate: barack obama as a representative of post-post september 11...

GRETA OLSON

Recovering from the Men We Loved to Hate: Barack Obama as a

Representative of Post-Post-September 11 White House Masculinity

From the grounding of the country, presidents of the United States

have seen the political arena as a masculine testing ground.

(Michael Kimmel, “Integrating”)

If you, like the author of this essay, were an American long-term resident of

Germany, you would have experienced the November 2008 presidential election

with a sense of thanksgiving and relief. Your relief would have rested in your sense

that the dismal years of the pro-war and pro-torture Bush presidency had come to

an end. Your sense of thanksgiving would have been grounded in your belief that

your sister and fellow U.S. Americans had woken up from a long paranoia-induced

dream. You might have once more felt a sense of faith in Americans’ surprising capacity to renew themselves. Yet you would have also been glad that the hostility

that had inevitably been directed at you as a representative of your country of

origin was coming to an end.1 Perhaps even worse had been the all too frequently

articulated sentiment that you represented the rare liberally minded exception to

right-wing Americans and that you had been one of the few lucky ones to have es-

caped. I consciously place my historical person in relation to the subject of this es-

say because I believe that my having been frequently identified as an unusual and

‘good’ American is not incidental to German perceptions of Barack Obama as rep-

resenting a positive and more European type of man.

One part of Germans’ frequently expressed mystification at America rested in what they, as articulated by the German press, regarded as the cowboyesque macho

posturing and hyper-masculine discourse as well as foreign policy antics that had

characterized the public realm after the attacks of September 11.2

1 During my twenty-five years in Germany I have been asked to sign protest letters “gegen die

Amis” (against the Americans) three times. (The author is not obviously identifiable as U.S.

American.) This was first and second during the protest that preceded the first gulf war, and

third during the anti-war demonstrations of 2003. 2 For political reasons, I avoid the usual denomination of the events of September 11, 2001, as

“9/11” as I believe that this expression adds to the narrative of American exceptionalism.

98 GRETA OLSON

Fig. 1. Jean-Pierre Kunkel “Die Bush-Krieger” (Der Spiegel 8/2002)

This perception extended to the self-fashioning of the United States’ most promi-

nent public and political figures, the White House leaders. In the advent of the

Second Gulf War, multiple covers and articles of the 2002 and 2003 Spiegel and

Die Zeit featured images of Bush or America as a cowboy, an action figure, a re-

leased Gulliver, or some combination of the above. Barack Obama’s election in 2008 appeared by contrast to represent a paradigm shift. I write this not in the

much-used Kuhnian sense but in an explicit reference to the justification for the

change in U.S. American policy that followed upon the September 2001 attacks

(Bush, “Memo” 105; cf. also Morrow). Barack Obama’s multiracial identity, global

roots, and open admiration for his better-paid professional wife’s strengths ap-

peared to be the harbinger of a post-post-September 11 sensibility not only in terms

RECOVERING FROM THE MEN WE LOVED TO HATE 99

of U.S. domestic and foreign policy but also with regard to the reproduction of pub-

lic masculinity as represented by White House men.

In the following, I wish to rehearse phases of masculine performance by promi-

nent politicians after September 2001. These reflections will dwell not only on

American representations of masculinity but also, if secondarily so, on German

commentary on them. I then want to ask if the 2008 presidential election represent-

ed a break with the hegemonic forms of masculinity that had been presented in re-

action to the attacks.3 Does Barack Obama’s perceived and performed masculinity

indicate that the U.S. has arrived in a post-post-September 11 era with regard to ex-

pectations of political leaders?

Masculinity in the White House after the 2001 Attacks

The title of this essay refers to a public lecture I gave in early 2008. It plays on an

image from a 2002 Spiegel magazine cover which depicts the Bush administration

as action heroes and reveals a great deal about German attitudes towards American

masculinity. In Jean-Pierre Kunkel’s illustration, “Die Bush-Krieger” (The Bush Warriors), Colin Powell appears as Batman; Donald Rumsfeld as Conan, the Bar-

barian; George Bush as Rambo; Dick Cheney as the Terminator; and Condoleezza

Rice as Xena, the Warrior Princess (see fig. 1).4

Revealing tensions in the trans-Atlantic relationship caused by the impending

American invasion of Iraq, the German image implies that the agents of war are

deluded: they appear like little boys and an alibi girl, who in response to their fear

of vulnerability, dress up as superheroes in order to pump themselves up for an an-

ticipated battle. The president, the vice-president, and their closest cabinet advisors

fashion themselves as possessing superhuman abilities. Bush is styled in the man-

ner of Rambo in the theatrical release poster for the second Rambo film. Note the

large pecs, serious weaponry, and the forward-thrusting groin. Bush, according to

the image, fancies himself to be a heroic, avenging Vietnam veteran who uses un-

conventional and violent means to free forgotten POWs – as Rambo did in the se- 3 With “hegemonic” I recur to Connell’s delineation of certain forms of masculinity as cultural-

ly dominant. These are supported through complicity and by enforcing “the legitimacy of pa-

triarchy” (76). Within this historically contingent and mutable system, non-dominant forms of

masculinity are subordinated such as those of gay men, whereas others are marginalized, like

those, traditionally, of black men (78-81). 4 The cover was given a follow-up on the November 27, 2008 issue in Die Bush-Krieger – Ende

der Vorstellung (The Bush Warriors – The End of the Show). Bush, Cheney, and Rice are

pictured in nearly identical positions but as wounded and exhausted after war. Batman’s cos-

tume is empty, and Conan’s bloodied back can be seen in profile leaving the picture.

100 GRETA OLSON

cond installment of the film series. In Rambo: First Blood Part II, the protagonist

successfully manages to re-write events of the Vietnam War. He wins battles

against Vietnamese and Soviet armies as well as against corrupt Washington supe-

riors willing to abandon POWs in Vietnam. After successfully freeing a group of

these men, Rambo forces his superior to agree to free remaining ones with the

words “Mission accomplished” and a thrust of his enormous knife into the desk. Not long after its publication, Der Spiegel reported that Bush liked Kunkel’s illus-

tration so much that he had thirty-three large-size prints of it ordered for the White

House. Rather than seeing it as an agent of criticism, Bush was pleased by the im-

age’s presentation of his advisors’ and his intrepidness (“Betr. Bush-Krieger”). Moving from German commentary of the administration’s masculinity to the

president’s performance of it in the States, one remembers Bush’s posing with firemen and other first responders to the attacks. The Ivy league-educated, once

cheerleading Bush was also to be frequently seen in photos depicting his driving a

truck and clearing bush on his ranch in Texas. With their references to heroic acts

after the attacks and to the physical conquest of untamed land, these images sug-

gested a narrative of the traditional masculine quest. This narrative came to a dra-

matic highpoint when Bush reenacted Tom Cruise’s role as Maverick in Top Gun.

It bears revisiting this 1986 action movie to appreciate some of the symbolism of

Bush’s reiteration of its hyper-masculine mores on May 1, 2003, when he appeared

to pilot and land a fighter plane on an aircraft carrier. The Cold War movie features

top navy fighter pilots in a special training program. They fly against unidentified

communist planes, first in training and then in actual combat operations. The pro-

tagonist Pete “Maverick” Mitchell has a serious chip on his shoulder due to his fa-

ther’s having supposedly caused a fatal accident while flying as a pilot in Vietnam. Trying to impress his superiors and win the Top Gun award for best pilot, Maverick

flies recklessly, breaking multiple rules of engagement. He also begins a romance

with Charlie, a civilian flight instructor, who initially denies her attraction but later

admits her desire for Maverick not least of all due to his aggressive flying practices.

Just before graduating, Maverick is involved in a flying accident, which is in part

caused by his own aggressiveness and costs his co-pilot his life. Although

Maverick is cleared of responsibility, he chooses to retire from flying. Only then is

he told the true story of his father’s heroic death: he died in combat while defend-

ing his fellow pilots in a compromised plane. This narrative convinces Maverick to

graduate from the Top Gun program from whence he is immediately sent into com-

bat. There Maverick suffers from a loss of confidence and initially disengages from

confronting enemy planes. He then manages to overcome his doubts, returns to

combat, and heroically shoots down several hostile jets. Back on the ship, he re-

ceives a hero’s welcome.


Top Gun provides a parable of wounded masculinity that may be applied to the

post-attack period as well as to the life of George W. Bush. Maverick’s story of overcoming recklessness as well as a crisis in confidence to fly brilliantly against

the enemy and return to a triumphant embrace by his fellow flyers functions as an

alternative version of Bush’s own problematic biography as a warrior. Having avoided flight training during the Vietnam War (Moniz and Drinkard), he was also

initially accused of cowardice after the attacks due to his remaining absent from

Washington D.C. (cf. Seelye and Bumiller). Like Maverick, Bush junior was also

self-conscious about his father’s derided masculinity: in the 1988 election Bush senior had repeatedly been called a “wimp” (cf. Ducat, The Wimp Factor 7). Thus

when Bush junior reenacted the Maverick story he was simultaneously re-narrating

his own story as a man. Symbolically, he was returning to battle to avenge his fa-

ther’s honor by taking down the enemy who had once eluded his dad, Saddam Hus-

sein.

Enter Mr. Codpiece – White House Men as He-Men Warriors

Thus in a highly orchestrated moment on May 1, 2003, Bush mimicked one of the

final scenes in the 1980s movie, when Cruise as Maverick disembarks from his

fighter jet plane after his heroic defeat of the enemy and defense of his former rival

pilot. In a carefully choreographed event, Bush landed, or appeared to land, an

S-3B Viking jet on the USS Abraham Lincoln, disembarked from the aircraft in

military pilot garb and, after a change of clothes, gave a speech announcing that

major combat operations had ended in Iraq (Bush, “End”). This was to be the com-

pletion of the administration’s “shock and awe” strategy in Iraq. Bush spoke on the deck of the aircraft carrier with an enormous banner proclaiming “Mission Accom-

plished” hanging behind him. This banner recalls Rambo’s words as he avenges both personal wrongs as well as the grievances of unappreciated and forgotten

Vietnam veterans in Rambo. It was also to prove ironic, given that the United

States has only, at the point of this writing in early 2012, recently completed its exit

from the Iraq war.

A juxtaposition of a movie still and a picture taken after Bush’s landing confirms how the president’s landing was orchestrated to mimic the movie; similarly, it is worth studying how Bush’s waving from the flighter jet upon landing with his thumb up exactly copies another popular movie still from Top Gun (cf. Christ’s reading of a similar photograph of Bush). This imagery appears to have resonated

so strongly that it was commemorated with a “TOP GUN George W. Bush Action

Figure in Flight Suit” which may still be purchased on Amazon.

102 GRETA OLSON

Figs. 2 and 3. President Bush Re-enacts ‘Top Gun’ on May 1, 2003 (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

and screenshot from the movie

Bush’s Tom Cruise impersonation – a fighter, a talented but reckless hothead who

reforms to become a top pilot and a romantic hero – caused a flurry of commentary

in the U.S. media. For the greater part, men and women, in the early war euphoria,

admired the president’s enactment of the fearless commander role. In particular, commentators appeared to go into swoons over the overtly visible masculinity of

the president as displayed in the codpiece framing of his genitals in the flight suit’s harness. In a much-quoted description, conservative political commentator Lisa

Schiffren gushed on The Wall Street Journal Opinion web page on May 9, 2003

that:

I had the most astonishing thought last Thursday. After a long day of hauling the

kids to playdates and ballet, I turned on the news. And there was the president,

landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of a fighter jet in that

amazing uniform, looking – how to put it? – really hot. Also presidential, of course.

Not to mention credible as commander in chief. But mostly “hot,” as in virile, sexy and powerful.

Note how Schiffren affirms her own normative femininity and heterosexuality in

this oozingly admiring description of the then president. She positions herself as a

presumably married mother of more than one child (“the kids”), who dutifully


drives her progeny from one activity to another rather than being away from home

at work. Simultaneously, she asserts her desire for a man whose accoutrements of

masculinity and power allow her to take pleasure in her subordination.

Had this been a one-of-a-kind comment on the president’s perceived virility, it might have been simply a humorous anecdote about a successful performance of

hyper-masculinity, albeit one that is drag-like in its exaggerated quality: big-balled

Bush as the dynamic, reformed (note his history as an alcoholic) fighter pilot for a

country that had been attacked by terrorists using passenger jets. Yet Schiffren was

by no means alone in her drooling heteronormative adulation for Bush’s perceived manliness. Similar commentaries were heard on MSNBC’s May 7, 2003 edition of Hardball with Chris Mathews and could be read in The Washington Times. In the

latter, Suzanne Fields intoned that Bush fulfilled the need for a renewal of can-do

(Indian fighting and brawling) Andrew Jackson-style presidential masculinity with

the following words: “The president has to meet a testosterone standard that ap-

peals to women but does not offend men. George W. Bush succeeds with both and

that drives Democrats crazy.” On Hardball, Gordon Liddy waxed eloquent about

the president’s package:

And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know – and I’ve worn those because I parachute – and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run

those – run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has

just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those

women who say size doesn’t count – they’re all liars. (“Mission Accomplished”)5

This admiration of manly leadership as measured in terms of literal size was paro-

died as early as it was first articulated. For instance, Richard Goldstein wrote sa-

liently for The Village Voice about the staging of the president’s prominently dis-

played sexual organs during the landing:

I can’t prove they gave him a sock job, but clearly they thought long and hard about the crotch shot. […] The real triumph of Bush’s media team is not a matter of lighting and positioning but of creating a presidential persona that radiates stead-

fastness, plainspokenness, sexual continence, and righteous religiosity. These are the

hallmarks of conservative macho.

With the words “Fasten your crotch straps. With luck, we’re in for a bumpy ride,” Goldstein trenchantly looked forward to the 2004 election. There, the Bush cam-

5 William Harris reads this commentary as a homosocial projection of desire onto an imagined

woman viewer (83-86).

104 GRETA OLSON

paign criticized the presumed lack of macho conviction in the Democratic contend-

ers John Kerry and John Edwards.

Importantly, Bush was not the only prominent member of his administration

whose overt masculinity was celebrated in the post-attack era. Particularly during

the early months of the Iraq War, Donald Rumsfeld was styled as a warrior figure.

In tones resonant with Schiffren’s, his admiring biographer Midge Decter explained that his power resided in his masculinity as a one-time wrestler. First entitled

Rumsfeld: The Making of an Artful Warrior, Decter’s biography asserts that

Rumsfeld answers the public’s need for a public form of “manliness,” something the author asserts they have been “deprived of” (213; cf. also 216, 220).

The December 2, 2002 People Magazine also adjudged Rumsfeld to be one of

the ten sexiest men alive, and the December 31, 2001 issue of National Review fea-

tured a cover story called “Don Rumsfeld, America’s New Pin-Up.” The appeal of the Secretary of Defense’s manliness is explained as follows:

In a feminized society – whose idea of a male sex symbol has been the Brad Pitt-

style pretty boy – he is a relief, or a rediscovery. He has walked out of Father

Knows Best, or some WWII flick. And just as he’s the anti-Alda, he is – as everyone

says – the anti-Clinton. The ultimate anti-Clinton. Whereas Clinton was a pain-

feeler, Rumsfeld is more a pain-inflicter, at least where the country’s enemies are concerned. (Nordlinger)

I want to dwell briefly on the comparisons made in the above passage because they

relate importantly to later perceptions of Obama’s masculinity. For all of his overt

heterosexuality – who could forget the semen stains on Lewinsky’s dress – Bill

Clinton was regarded as symbolic of what was considered to be a 1990s crisis of

masculinity (Malin). Thus he is compared with the feminist actor Alan Alda in the

above.

Bill Clinton had been termed the first “feminine” president because of his emo-

tional style (Glass). In contradistinction to this “pain-feeler,” Nordlinger lauds an earlier era of more clear-cut gender roles that characterized the World War II peri-

od in which the Lacanian Father as Patriarch really did still know best.

Nordlinger’s praise for Rumsfeld as “a pain-inflicter” strikes me as strangely pres-

cient: in a 2003 memo Rumsfeld advocated interrogation techniques, otherwise

known as torture practices, including forcing bound detainees to remain in standing

positions for many hours with the argument that he stood while working for at least

eight hours a day.

The press’s celebration of the President’s and the Secretary of Defense’s hyper-

masculinity found its counterpart in the rhetorical creation of the fearful “security mom”; this woman had supposedly traded in her former Democratic interest in civil


liberties and disarmament for an enthusiasm for fire arms and an anxiety about her

children’s and her nation’s safety.6 As Time reported:

“9/11 changed everything,” says a senior Bush aide. “Everybody’s more concerned. But what’s driving the movement is women, especially women with children.” And sure enough, because security trumped everything, these women voted Republican

even though they continue to disagree with the party on many issues. (Tumulty and

Novak)

If White House masculinity was moving towards a hyperbolic extreme in Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s public performances, then it was mirrored by a push for women to

appear and act in more exaggeratedly feminine ways. I recur here to Joan Scott’s insight that gender is a relational system that works to constitute relations of power

between those categorized as men and women (1067).

That Bush and Rumsfeld were both revered and stylized as warriors and he-men

– fighter pilot and wrestler – was by no means simply a matter of their visible im-

ages. It also extended to verbal rhetoric, including the feminization of any country

that did not concur with the United States’ decision to invade Iraq in 2003 – with or

without UN mandate. In the post-attack period Rumsfeld’s public remarks were not only jingoistic but also hyper-macho. This pattern of speech belonged to a larger

discursive trope of gendering the United States as a child or a despoiled woman,

who required manly defenders: the body politic had been exposed as vulnerable

(Malin 145-87; Faludi, The Terror Dream 5). Muslim and Arab women were also

represented as needing the defense of American warriors to be liberated from their

patriarchal oppressors. As Laura Bush said in a radio address to the nation in No-

vember 2001, “the fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.” Thus images of hyper-masculinity as well as of hyper-femininity were

drawn upon ideologically to justify war rhetoric (Agathangelou and Ling 519).

In a sustained analysis of this phenomenon, Susan Faludi refers to the disappear-

ance of women from the public sphere during the post-attack era (The Terror

Dream 35-45). The heroism of women first responders was elided (79-88); political

commentary by women was ignored, and anything remotely registering as feminist

was derided as anti-American. Women, Faludi contends, could only be visible in

that they appeared as victims, grievers, or those who needed to be defended. Thus

she also critically investigates the medial creation of the security mom.7

6 Note that scholars question the validity of this argument. Cf. Mattingly, Lawlor and Jacobs-

Huey. 7 Her insights are supported by post-attack films in which fatherhood and patriarchy are pre-

sented as heroic, and girls and women are troped as helpless and vulnerable (Shoemacher).

106 GRETA OLSON

Faludi’s analysis importantly reaffirms a central insight of masculinity studies. Masculinity is traditionally affirmed through the elision of the non-masculine – the

feminine or the queer (A. Harris; Kimmel, “Masculinity” 33). Masculinity is hence

articulated through a demonstration of not being feminine or gay: “At any given time, hegemonic masculinity is elevated over femininities and all other masculini-

ties, legitimizing patriarchy, and giving these men the dominant position” (Pitt and Fox 3). Yet it would be simplistic to say that the return to a preference for tradi-

tional mores of masculinity was caused only by the 2001 attacks. Faludi’s earlier work in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (1999) draws a portrait of ma-

ligned white masculinity in which men had been forced into the service industry

due to the loss of industrial work and were increasingly subject to the same physi-

cal objectification as women. Mirroring the assertion that normative masculinity is

anxiously proven through the degradation of the feminine, Faludi and others point

out a late twentieth-century historical pattern in which the invisible privileges of

white American manhood were reduced, and women and minorities were given the

blame (cf. Savran). These developments took place while the formerly ‘imperial presidency’ was being eroded. The protraction and disastrous end of the Vietnam War, Watergate and the near impeachment of Nixon, the Iran hostage crisis, and

the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal have all been said to have contributed to the dimin-

ished symbolic stature of the president.

All of these factors may have contributed to performances of hyper-masculinity

in the post-attack period. This troping of the country as the home of masculine war-

riors transpired in academic forums as well. Historian and foreign policy commen-

tator Robert Kagan wrote a well-received 2002 article for Policy Review in which

he postulated that Americans were from the warrior planet of Mars whereas Euro-

peans were residents of the Goddess of Love’s planet Venus:

That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are

from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one

another less and less. […]

Europeans claim they know what it is like to live with danger, to exist side-by-side

with evil, since they’ve done it for centuries. Hence their greater tolerance for such threats as may be posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the ayatollahs’ Iran. Americans, they claim, make far too much of the dangers these regimes pose.

The first sentence recurs to John Gray’s popular 1992 book Men Are from Mars,

Women Are from Venus, which suggests that due to fundamental differences, such

as men’s need to “withdraw to the cave” and women’s need to constantly com-

municate and emote, the genders are doomed to misunderstand one another. Based

on essentialist views of men and women, this non-fiction book became a couple’s


therapy manual. Its simplistic wisdom informs Kagan’s prose as he describes why the United States is ready to embark on war and Europe is wary to do so. In gender-

ing what he views as the United States’ realpolitik awareness of threat, which in a

Hobbesian world must be met by violent state power, and a European commitment

to reconciliation, Kagan hit a popular nerve which was to be reiterated ad nauseam

by White House men in their descriptions of pro and anti-Iraq invasion sentiments.

Rumsfeld recurred to Kagan’s binary of masculine activity and feminine passivi-

ty when he described France and Germany’s condemnation of the planned Iraq in-

vasion. At a news conference on January 22, 2003, he stated that “Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem.” Germany and France represent

“old Europe,” whereas NATO’s recent expansion entailed that “the center of gravi-

ty is shifting to the east” (“Rumsfeld”). The fashioning of Germany and France as old and implicitly as less active and thus – if we accept the dichotomy that Kagan

proposes – as less Mars-like in their aggressiveness was part of a gendering rhetoric

that informed political debate before the March 2003 invasion. Rumsfeld’s com-

ment on Germany’s unwillingness to do anything – like Libya and Cuba – belonged

to the same line of imagery (Pauly and Lansford 99). With respect to normative

masculinity, age and passivity are both commonly associated with deficiency, with

diminished physicality and strength, and are thus troped as feminine.

Most saliently, a feminizing rhetoric was used to denigrating purpose in the 2004

election in which John Kerry and John Edwards were continuously maligned as

effeminate and weak on security. For instance, in his Republican National Conven-

tion Speech from September 1, 2004, Cheney reiterated that Kerry was simply “too sensitive” to deal with the security threats posed by a world under the threat of ter-

rorist attack:

And on the question of America’s role in the world, the differences between Senator

Kerry and President Bush are the sharpest, and the stakes for the country are the

highest. History has shown that a strong and purposeful America is vital to

preserving freedom and keeping us safe – yet time and again, Senator Kerry has

made the wrong call on national security. Senator Kerry began his political career by

saying he would like to see our troops deployed “only at the directive of the United Nations.” […] Even in this post-9/11 period, Senator Kerry doesn’t appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a “more sensitive war on terror” – as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.

Cheney’s speech reiterates rhetorical patterns familiar from Kagan and Rumsfeld. As the opposite of “strong and purposeful,” Kerry is figured as soft. The supposi-

tion is that in a violent world, real men really do need to carry large sticks.

108 GRETA OLSON

The 2004 Republican Convention has frequently been described as an exercise in

phallic imagery that featured an enormous projectile shaped stage. In it the sup-

posed strength of the GOP was reiterated both visually and verbally (Ducat,

“Buzzflash Interview”). This entailed gendering Democrats with negative connota-

tions of femininity:

The Convention rhetoric depicted the Democrats as an ineffectual party trying to

make a kinder and more sensitive foreign policy, as though kindness makes you a

wimp…like a woman…not manly…not capable of being commander in chief; unable to fight a war on terror. The Republicans use gendered language to humiliate

and undermine. Women are sissies; men rule. Democrats are like women.

(Eisenstein 191)

Contingently, Kerry was feminized due to his cosmopolitan habitus, ability to

speak other languages, wealthy foreign-born wife, and his lack of a good-old-boy

ability to throw a football. His running mate Edwards was also figured as a Breck

Girl due to his reportedly expensive haircuts (Ducat, “Buzzflash Interview”). Kerry’s more guarded stance on the Iraq War was regarded as being akin to that of the French who had voted against UN resolutions authorizing the war. Accordingly

he was vilified as a “EU-nuch,” a “Eurowimp,” a “Euro weenie” (Camon), and a “cheese-eating surrender monkey.” I offer a condensation of these representations in the form of a popular image from the 2004 election, which was printed on T-

shirts and mugs:

Fig. 4. Tony Rogers

John Kerry Goes Campaigning tonyrogers.com

Similar images feature Kerry in a beret and with a thin mustache: to be French is to

be less than a real man, weak, conciliatory, and, in short, from Venus. Moreover,


Kerry’s supposedly ‘Frenchified’ qualities resonated with associations of his being too elitist, out of touch with the people, and, in a country that had reverted to cul-

ture-war divisions, too East coast. On a verbal level, this feminization of all things

Democratic was expressed in the popular 2004 bumper sticker: “Don’t be a girlie man. Vote Bush ‘04” (Cafepress). This was a citation of one of the paragons of ex-

aggerated public masculinity, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s statement at the 2004 Re-

publican Convention: Republicans “must be fierce and relentless and terminate ter-

rorism,” and continue to believe “in free enterprise” by not being pessimistic or like “economic girlie men” (“Schwarzenegger”). Combining Schwarzenegger’s asper-

sions on Democratic voters’ masculinity with representations of Kerry as a French fop, one comes to the conclusion that to vote for Democratic presidential candi-

dates is to admit to effeminacy and anti-Americanism.

Enter Obama – The Post-Post-September 11 White House Man

To a degree this narrow pattern of gendering was continued during the 2008 presi-

dential race. Despite voter disenchantment with the increasingly Vietnam-like sce-

nario presented by the United States’ entrenchment in the Iraq and Afghanistan

wars, the Republican contender John McCain was frequently represented as the

more manly of the two candidates, whereas Obama was criticized for being weak.

This continued a representational pattern of gendering Obama as less than fully

masculine that had typified the Democratic primaries. It bears returning to the rhet-

oric of the long primary battle to see how this troping functioned.

Hillary Clinton framed herself as the more experienced and ‘tougher’ of the two candidates. This extended to her positions on security issues, including America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Her perceived toughness gave cause to many commenta-

tors to gender Clinton as the more masculine of the two opponents. Famously, the

Clinton campaign advisor James Carville quipped that Clinton would win the pri-

mary in great part due to her greater fortitude. The strategist’s remarks were report-ed in Newsweek as follows:

“The Republicans will eat him alive” is what the Clinton campaign is telling the superdelegates. Hillary is the tougher of the two, the candidate you want on your

side in a knife fight, a gender reversal that prompts Carville to indulge in some

ribald humor: “If she gave him one of her cojones, they’d both have two.” (Clift)

This was one of a string of comments that troped Clinton as the more manly of the

two candidates. References were also made, for instance, to her greater “testicular fortitude” (Tapper).

110 GRETA OLSON

In a historic race in which for the first time a woman and a black candidate had a

realistic chance of becoming president, this ‘dick talk’ strikes one as highly curi-ous. On the one hand, it renews the imagery of the post-attack period in which an

adequate response to terrorism was equated with perceived masculine prowess as

reflected in genital size. On the other hand, the need to feminize Barack Obama and

masculinize Hillary Clinton bespeaks their outsider status in a political order that

still expected presidential candidates to be white men. As the candidates pushed the

frames of what was possible in terms of political representation, Clinton was pre-

sented as masculine and Obama as feminine. The New York Times political com-

mentator Maureen Dowd encouraged this pattern when she gave Obama a number

of monikers that figured him as a lightweight contender in the contest. This includ-

ed “Obambi” and “Dreamboy” in contrast to Clinton’s “Hilzilla” and “Godzilla.” The gendering of the presidential candidates proceeded further after Obama won

the nomination. I focus on a pair of images to demonstrate how this figuration func-

tioned (figs. 5 and 6). On the left, one sees an illustration from the May 22, 2008

issue of The Economist featuring then seventy-two year-old McCain as Indiana

Jones. On the right, in an allusion to Dowd’s moniker, Obama is portrayed as the helpless and later motherless protagonist of the 1942 Walt Disney movie about a

deer. Whereas McCain figures as a rugged, intrepid, hyper-masculine adventurer,

Obama appears as a harmless mixture of infantilized animal and saccharine friend-

liness. Similarly, a repeated contrast was made between the former POW McCain’s toughness and Obama’s good looks and popularity. Again, masculinities were con-

tested: whereas McCain had been tortured in Vietnam in the notorious Hanoi

Hilton, Obama’s persona was compared to another Hilton – the actress and entre-

preneur Paris Hilton. His crowd appeal was likened to her appearance-oriented

popularity in a 2008 Republican campaign spot called “Celeb.” McCain’s autobiography Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoir features a pho-

tograph of his younger self in fighter pilot garb, thus emphasizing his conformity

with traditional masculine roles and his appropriateness for the role of Commander

in Chief. Once again, Schwarzenegger figured the campaign as a race between

sufficient and deficient masculinity. He underlined the difference between the

seasoned warrior McCain and his fresh-faced contender in terms of physical

prowess. Voicing his opinion on the presidential candidates’ relative merits, he stated that Obama “needs to do something about those skinny legs […] those scrawny arms. If only we could do something about putting some meat on his

ideas.” A literal lightweight – in other words a girlie man – as well as a mental one,

Obama was deemed lacking in contrast to McCain: “Senator McCain, on the other

hand, he’s built like a rock. His character and his views are just as solid” (“Gov.

Arnold”).


Figs. 5 and 6. Kevin Kallaugher’s Indiana McCain Rides Again (Lexington) in contrast with the illustration Obambi (jimmycarter08.com)

During both the primary and the presidential races, Obama was also frequently crit-

icized for not taking a harder line on Clinton’s and later McCain and Palin’s asser-

tions that he was a Muslim, in cahoots with terrorists, and probably not really an

American at all. His ‘deficient’ displays of aggression had motivated Dowd to call him an Obambi. Such comments functioned to feminize the candidate. Yet they

failed to see Obama’s performance of masculinity in the context of his identity as a black man. Obama had to walk a careful line in appearing manly enough to take up

the mantle of power in a hyper-masculinized public sphere while also avoiding tra-

ditional, racialized images of the angry black man. As James Hannaham wrote in

Salon:

Obama is damned if he performs his black anger too fiercely – that would give

biased people the impression that he’s an “angry black man” or worse, an extremist, and therefore unelectable. But now he has to face criticism from the left because

he’s not performing his anger – a specifically black, unreal variety of anger,

remember – in the correct measure.

112 GRETA OLSON

Hannaham’s remarks confirm a pattern in negative portrayals of black men. Tradi-

tional representations feature these men either as dangerous revolutionaries or as

hypersexual bucks (Cooper, “Against Bipolar”; Walsh). These images were so

prevalent that Obama was forced to project a counter image to defuse them, one of

calm deliberation and the absence of any sign of visible anger.

Calls for Obama to “fight back” and defend himself and to be “more of a man” also elicited a public debate about how masculinity was being defined in the 2008

elections. It appeared that McCain represented an old-school brand of brash physi-

cality and lack of manners that remained for some the measure of leadership:

Nobody in the media seems to question John McCain’s “masculinity” because, according to the media’s picture of him, he likes to get into fights, chases skirts, lacks tact, brags about his military service, and has a nasty temper. To which I say

only goes to show how far our ideas about how a man should behave have degraded.

(Knapp)

Frank Rudy Cooper has offered a model for understanding how to read allegations

about Obama’s deficient masculinity in comparisons with McCain. In “Against Bi-

polar Black Masculinity,” he reminds readers of the necessity of not seeing race, sexual orientation, or gender in isolation but as intersecting categories that consti-

tute frameworks of multiple forms of hierarchization. Employing intersectional

analysis, he describes representations of American black masculinity as being bipo-

lar. Drawing on myths regarding black masculinity, Cooper demonstrates that black

men have been represented as “Bad” – hyper-sexualized, hyper-embodied, crimi-

nal, and demanding – or, as “Good” – denying their racial belonging and deempha-

sizing their sexuality. The extreme focus on black men’s virility and physical prowess in sports and entertainment works as a form of containment that lends a

few black men superhero status as national representatives but actually serves to

further strategies of exclusion (892-93). Alternative forms of assimilation occur

when a few token ‘good’ black men are rewarded for downplaying issues of dis-

crimination and by not appearing angry or overtly sexual. Published in 2006,

Cooper’s essay looks forward to issues in Obama’s election and presidency. Obama fit the Colin Powell model of black masculinity that Cooper as well as others de-

scribed as necessary to overcome prejudices about the dangerousness of African

American men.

In our current historical moment, with its pervasive sense of diminished expecta-

tions and sheer economic fear, it bears remembering how Obama was greeted as a

new model of manhood during his presidential campaign and the beginning of his

presidency. Obama was, and in many quarters still is, lauded as personifying a new

ideal of masculinity, one that represented a critique of the hyperbolic performance


of traditional masculinity that characterized the late Bush era. In the first heady pe-

riod of Obamamania, praise for his new delineations of masculinity could not be

great enough. In a series of 2008 articles Jewel Woods, for instance, described the

widespread “man-crush” on Obama as well as his redefinition of traditional Ameri-can masculinity.

Woods attests that loss of working-class industrial jobs and the shift towards a

technological and service-oriented economy has resulted in blue-collar mores of

manliness having become more prized than ever. This trend extends from the popu-

larity of sports such as ultimate fighting to music. In both cultural forms men’s brawniness is displayed and revered as an ideal. For Woods, Obama’s appeal lies in his ability to perform white-collar masculinity in a manner that also appeals to a

culture that is enamored of blue-collar manhood. In this he resembles a star athlete:

These men [Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods] perform at levels that are without

equal in their respective fields – it just so happens that Senator Obama performs

white-collar masculinity. On the other hand, what sets his particular brand of

masculinity apart is his ability to blend aspects of both blue-collar and white-collar

masculinities. Senator Obama not only plays word games like Taboo, he also plays

basketball. […] Consequently, the key to Senator Obama’s appeal among men is not solely his intelligence or his elocution, but his smooth and unflappable character, or

simply his “coolness.” Senator Obama has become the embodiment of smooth. […] The result is that Senator Obama has accomplished what men like John Kerry and

former Al Gore were not able to accomplish – he has brought sexy back to white-

collar masculinity. (Woods)

What is perhaps most interesting here is Woods’s assertion that Obama has rede-

fined not only an overtly physical image of black masculinity, but rather re-hauled

masculine ideals altogether by making white-collar activities such as playing word

games and lecturing look appealing. Moreover, Woods claims that by playing bas-

ketball and having done community work in Chicago, Obama also fulfills the re-

quirements of physicality that normative blue-collar masculinity demands: he is

both an eloquent speech maker and a fine ball player.

Woods’s much-quoted reading of Obama’s appeal counters allegations, for in-

stance by Karl Rove, that Obama – like Kerry – was an elitist who was bound to be

out of touch with the common man or woman. Rove compared him to a “snide” guy at the country club (Moeller). Or, as MSNBC talk show host Joe Scarborough

suggested during the campaign, Obama could not be a “real man” because he did not bowl (“Scarborough: On Obama’s”).

The thesis that Obama’s white-collar success could only be appreciated due to

his street credibility bears following up on. Basketball plays no small part in this

114 GRETA OLSON

appeal and it is strongly identified with black culture. As Eva Boesenberg, among

others, has shown, basketball presented African Americans with a new forum for

black male achievement after the desegregation of the game during the fifties. Cur-

rent NBA playing style incorporates streetball with professional game practices;

and basketball foregrounds important “post-industrial” values such as flexibility, speed, and coordinated team work (Boesenberg). As the most popular youth sport,

basketball has become a platform of coolness.

Significantly, the transcendent player Michael Jordan’s elegant playing style has been compared to the finesse of Barack Obama; the so-called Jordan effect on pop-

ular culture in some ways anticipates the discourse surrounding the impact of

Obama’s (initial) enormous popularity. Michael Jordan’s “transracial” appeal (Asim 69) was, for instance, said to have “obliterated” the color line in advertising (68). Thus just as Jordan’s “Be Like Mike” commercials suggested “that taking on the mantle of blackness is not only virtuous but pleasurable” (70), Obama’s per-

formance of white-collar, non-solely athletic masculinity represented a new manner

in which blackness looked worthy of aspiration.

Other factors of Obama’s re-defined masculinity include his somewhat postmod-

ern awareness of how masculinity is acculturated and constantly performed. In

Dreams from My Father, Obama describes learning how to be a man via the older

men players who taught him about attitude on and off the court. While waxing po-

etic about the joys of the game, he, nonetheless, maintains a self-reflexive aware-

ness of the constructedness of his youthful passion and behavior:

I was living out a caricature of black male adolescence, itself a caricature of

swaggering American manhood. […] Each of us [the ‘man-boys’ around him] chose a costume, armor against uncertainty. At least on the basketball court I could find a

community of sorts, with an inner life all its own. (79-80)

This passage does more than reflect on the anxieties of becoming a man, in general,

and a black man, in particular. It also acknowledges that the trappings of masculini-

ty with which young men equip themselves are a form of defense. A similar self-

reflectivity can be found in Obama’s awareness of perceptions of class divisions in relation to masculinity. During a trip through Illinois, his aid insisted that he only

eat yellow mustard so as to look like a regular guy, although the waitress was eager

to offer him Dijon. Obama’s reply to his aid that it might be safe to have the better-

tasting Dijon as no photographers were present is then ironically reported on in the

public space of his memoir (Dreams 49-50).

Yet what is most strikingly different from Obama’s public masculinity in relation to the White House men who came before him is his insistence on the importance

of the women in his life, their different subjective experiences in relation to his


own, and the various pressures on the genders today. Obama claims that he owes

the “best” of himself to his idealistic, kind, and persevering single mother (Dreams

xii). Importantly, the last chapter of his second book, The Audacity of Hope, is de-

voted to the subject of family. As is his frequent rhetorical strategy, he uses the

prism of his own experience there to discuss broader demographic changes that

challenge Americans generally. These include the increase of one-parent house-

holds and economic pressures upon all middle-class families, which necessitate that

both parents have to work. After claiming that he could not win a political race

against his much more talented wife were she to decide to run against him (Audaci-

ty 327), Obama goes on to describe how having children impacted his wife’s life differently than it did his own and necessitated her putting her own career ambi-

tions on hold. This is the basis for his calling for subsidized childcare and more

flexible working schedules for parents. Since gender takes place within fields of

relationships and particularly within sexual economies, Obama’s relationship to his wife cannot be ignored in a discussion of his perceived masculinity.

Finally, as Marc E. Shaw and Elwood Watson have argued, Obama appears to

break the frame of the desexualized married American man (149). The Obamas’ perceived sexiness includes their frequent touching on the 2008 campaign trail, an

evident physical enjoyment of one another that stood in contrast with both the

McCains and the Clintons. Michelle Obama’s refashioning of the First Lady role to include a funky reinterpretation of how athletic this public figure may be and what

she may wear has also contributed to Obama’s image as a sexual married man. Similarly, Obama’s youth, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and media savvy have led to his

being perceived, as he was entitled by the August 2008 issue of Ebony, as one of

the “COOLEST BROTHERS OF ALL TIME.” Obama further challenges Bush-

style masculinity by combining his role as Commander in Chief with being the vis-

ibly devoted father of two young daughters (Shaw and Watson 150). As Melissa

Harris-Perry has pointed out, no small part of Obama’s appeal rests in the sheer beauty of his intact family, including Michelle and their healthy young children.

8

Thus positive readings of Obama regard him as having challenged both the

hegemonic masculinity of the Bush era as well as binary representations of black

men as either ‘good’ and conciliatory or ‘bad’ and angry. “Obama’s contradictory masculinities” have complicated both racializing images of black men as hyperse-

xual and of married men as emasculated (Shaw and Watson 136). Cooper, in turn,

has commented on Obama’s potential to shatter both the Good-Bad binarism of

perceptions of black men, as well as simplistic normative constructions of gender.

8 These remarks were made by Harris-Perry during her lecture in Giessen on “Race, Gender and

American Citizenship: The Promise and Limitation of the Obamas” at the Conference “Obama and the Paradigm Shift” (July 1, 2011).

116 GRETA OLSON

Due to the very expectation that black men will demonstrate characteristics of an

exaggerated masculinity such as aggression, Obama can afford to behave in ways

traditionally derided as feminine (“Our First Unisex President?” 650-51). Obama

may thus augur a time in which identity constructions may be drawn more

generously: “If the President can be both black and unisex, maybe we are all more

free to perform our identities as we see fit than we had imagined” (660-61).

In Cooper’s very positive readings, Barack Obama’s persona has the valence to potentially deconstruct the heteronormative binary or to perform what Judith

Lorber calls undoing gender (Breaking; also Hirschauer). Thus he may potentially

upset the “gender divisions [that] still bifurcate the structure of modern society” and the “ubiquitous division of people into two unequally valued categories that

undergirds the continually reappearing instances of gender inequality” (Lorber, Breaking 4). Such readings cohere with the modifications that have been made to

R. W. Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity. They suggest that conventional

or normative masculinity is more complex than Connell initially claimed and that it

transpires along a spectrum. Accordingly, men who test the bounds of conventional

mores of manhood perform “heterodox masculinity” (Pitt and Fox 7; Connell and Messerschmidt). This might fittingly describe Obama’s performance of manhood.

Fig. 7. Pete Souza Obama and Staff in the Situation Room (May 1, 2011)

(Wikimedia Commons)


This analysis of Obama as representing a more intelligent and less simplistically

posturing form of public masculinity extends to how his behavior was perceived at

the time of the operation to raid the bin Laden compound in Afghanistan in May

2011 (see fig. 7). Arguably, this successful raid represents Obama’s heretofore most striking performance of the traditional mores of American presidential power.

Whatever one may make of the legality of the raid, he was acting as Commander in

Chief. In a moment in which national security appeared to be the central presiden-

tial task, commentators were quick to compare Obama’s manner to that of Bush. A direct comparison was made between Obama’s low-key style of leadership in war-

time and that of George Bush, particularly in his Tom Cruise Top Gun impersona-

tion.

Yet Obama’s willingness to be photographed without the typical Oval Office

swagger gives birth to a new type of swagger, says Contee of Jack & Jill Politics.

She says that photo shows Obama’s self-assurance and leadership style. He seeks

out the opinions of his advisers. He believes in collaboration – all while he’s taking down the baddest terrorist on the planet. He doesn’t need to wear a “Top Gun” flight jacket to project strength, she says. (Blake 2011)

As the commentary confirms, Obama’s attitude appears entirely different from the groin-thrusting, weapon-bearing action figure that we observed in the Kunkel illus-

tration or in Bush’s Top Gun impersonation. Instead, Obama displays a serious de-

meanor in the photo that includes casual civilian clothes and a posture that does not

indicate his relative position of power. Nothing signifies the need to cohere with

images of overtly masculine wartime leaders.

Perhaps the most important aspect of admiring perceptions of Obama’s differ-

ence from George W. Bush concerned his representing a new version of publicly

enacted masculinity. Obama had opposed the Iraq War and, upon taking office, had

worked consistently if not entirely successfully to close Guantánamo and other

black prisoner sites and to put an end to White House rhetoric that had gendered

America’s war strategy or had fashioned America’s post-attack foreign policy as a

crusade against evil. In his speech patterns, habitus, and actions, this more mea-

sured, more self-reflexive president appeared to embody a virtual critique of Bush’s nervously displayed hyper-masculinity with its attempts to rewrite the past. It was

this Obama that arguably won the admiration of voters in the United States as well

as in Germany.

118 GRETA OLSON

Contested Masculinities in the 2012 Election

This is the story you, dear reader, would like to hear and the one that I would like

to be able to tell you; for the greater part, Obama has been represented in the Ger-

man media as the Good American. Unlike Bush, he is presented as similar to a sen-

sible European who understands the necessity of coalition building, international

treaties, and multilateral foreign policy decisions. This new type of president does

not need to dress up as a cowboy or a fighter pilot to prove that he is a man and can

defend his country. I borrow the division of Good and Bad from Cooper’s work on common perceptions of African American men and use it to describe common

German perceptions of American leaders.9

Yet particularly since the crisis regarding the debt ceiling at the end of July 2011,

Barack Obama has been increasingly depicted as weak, overly conciliatory, and

unable to enact his policies. In the best case, reactions to Obama’s perceived weak-

ness as president are ones of disappointment. At the point of this writing, many

Obama voters appear to be asking what has happened to their candidate with his

promises to end the wars, reform health care, and counteract the Bush administra-

tion’s dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency. Thus in “What Hap-

pened to Obama,” Drew Westen sings the lament of those who fear that Obama had

traded away the last of his rapidly diminishing political capital by being too concil-

iatory towards the Republicans’ stonewalling during the debt ceiling crisis:

But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand

bully dynamics – in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action,

because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time – he has

broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

The arc Westen refers to is both that of the story of necessary reform that govern-

ment must enact and the arc that Martin Luther King Jr. referred to by stating that

history will inevitably bend toward justice. What Westen sees as Obama’s charac-

ter fault – “his aversion to conflict” – has caused him to fail to reform due to his

inability to confront. Westen’s article represents a moderate form of criticism. In the worst case, Obama is called incapable of leadership, compromised, and weak, a

9 Christ argues that the German press regularly creates a binary division between the occasional

“good” American and the far more frequent “bad” ones, which serves as a form of identifica-

tion politics. Accordingly, the “good” American is aligned with supposedly progressive German and European values, whereas the “bad” American represents an image of everything Germans do not wish to be (“Michelle Obama”). As my opening remarks suggest, this pattern may pertain to German perceptions of Americans in general. Cf. Kreis on the United States as

a field upon which to simultaneously project both attraction and hate.


description that has plagued him since the 2008 campaign when he was said to lack

the “cojones” that Hillary Clinton had. As Scarborough – of bowling comment

fame – said after the debt ceiling debacle: “A president that cannot control 45 backbenchers in the opposing party in the House of Representatives is too weak to

be president of the United States. It is that simple. Lyndon Johnson would have

eaten these people up for breakfast and spit them out before lunch” (“Scarborough: ‘A President’”).

In Scarborough’s remark, I see a return to rhetoric familiar from Kagan in his

Foreign Policy article or Cheney in his 2004 denigration of Kerry for being “too sensitive” to deal with terrorists. The comment that “Johnson would have eaten these people up” is one about the perceived superiority of masculine aggression as

a model of leadership. We are back to “testicular fortitude” talk. In essence, Obama’s most virulent critics are saying that he is a pussy. He is

weak and he has surrendered to stronger, more belligerent foes. This type of dis-

course reenacts the ideal of White House masculinity that characterized the post-

September 11 period. The gendering patterns of this dick talk are not identical to

their 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2008 permutations. Yet the similarities are disturbing.

What I would ask the reader to watch out for in the coming 2012 election is any

reference to Obama’s alleged weakness or lack of conviction that is coupled with aspersions on his masculinity. Let us be on the alert for discussions of the opposing

candidate’s virility, cojones, manly characteristics, or origins on Mars. Such talk, I

contend, will do more than hurt Obama’s chances of reelection or obscure the very troubling issues of continued high unemployment, stalled growth, and the increas-

ing material stratification of the United States. Rather, it will also harm all those of

us who believe that the measure of a man, of a leader, or of masculinity in general

cannot be reduced to the size of the pouch.

Postscript

The drama of the presidential election has now unfolded; it showed my postulation

about how competing masculinities would play out in it – written much earlier – to

have been only partly correct. Mitt Romney’s contention that Obama was “ex-

hausted” and out of energy in August 2012 recurred to the collocations of weakness

with femininity and a lack of political drive that characterized the Obama-blaming

summer of 2011. Yet an August 2012 issue of Newsweek labeled Mitt Romney a

“weenie,” a “wimp,” and “insecure” (Tomasky), suggesting that this candidate was adjudged to be not man enough to be the president. By his supporters, Obama con-

tinued to be praised for his post-feminist masculinity – restrained, competitive, pro-

120 GRETA OLSON

gay marriage, and proud of his status as First Dad. Romney, in turn, was lauded by

the National Review as the ‘real’ would-be provider, who had more male offspring

and was hence destined by evolution to be the country’s alpha male (Williamson). These conflicting readings of the candidates’ relative manliness demonstrate that desirable masculinity, however it is conceived of, continues to be perceived as a

factor that an American president must possess.

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