Is Obama too presidential to be a great president?

Undaunted by Barack Obama’s landslide victory last November, Peggy Noonan has returned to her abiding complaint: Barack Obama is not likeable, he’s too formal, and too self-important to fill the boots of men like Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and now even George Bush. Last week, in her column "The Presidential Wheels Turns", Noonan compared Obama unfavorably against all four former presidents still alive and able to attend the opening of George Bush’s Library. Here’s how she compares the two star performers:

“He (George Bush) thought he was luckily born, quick but not deep, and he famously trusted his gut but also his heart. He always seemed moved and grateful to be in the White House. Someone who met with Mr. Obama during his first year in office, an old hand who'd worked with many presidents, came away worried and confounded. Mr. Obama, he said, was the only one who didn't seem awed by his surroundings, or by the presidency itself.”

Barack Obama, too, spoke sincerely of Bush’s likeability at the Library proceedings, "To know the man is to like the man, because he's comfortable in his own skin.”

Setting aside the saccharine screed Noonan employs in her partisan columns, is she making a serious point? Are presidents usually more relaxed than Barack Obama? Has his presidency been diminished by his spotty ability to help other self-important people feel comfortable?

(First, we should clear something up. Obama was describing past-president George Bush—a man seemingly enjoying his retirement—when he used that tired cliché about being comfortable in his own skin. Of course, we can’t really know George Bush’s state of mind when he was actually making presidential decisions. Today, memoirs from old White Houses uniformly contain only lawyered regrets and assurances that every one slept peacefully when there was time.)

The appearance of self-assurance is important in public, especially in dangerous times. When a president is speaking to Congress or just one of those Washington gossips that Noonan calls “old hands,” he daren’t show nervousness. Can you imagine a young president in the spring of 2009, asking strangers whether he ought to nationalize the banks or reintroduce the Gold Standard? And whether anyone in the room understood what Larry Summers was talking about?

We say leaders should be relaxed and we note approvingly that leadership is a lonely business. Politicking may be as relaxing as golf. But decision-making isn’t. Getting to the right decision isn’t relaxing work. And it’s lonely—for one thing, because leaders can’t show their misgivings in public.  

After just one panic attack in the House of Commons in the mid-20s, Winston Churchill never spoke in public again without speaking notes. He would have loved the teleprompter. Also, he acknowledged that he had misgivings every time he committed British forces to action. President Dwight Eisenhower smoked 4 packs of cigarettes a day during his tenure as commander of Allied Forces.

These nervous gentlemen were not nervous in public. However, those who miss the style of the Reagan and Bush presidencies should at least accept that governance isn’t the same as horseback-riding. Helping the helpers relax isn’t the job of productive executives or presidents.

Finally, would Obama have been more successful in his first term and now in his second term if he were less formal—less presidential—in his dealing with his opponents in Congress and with disaffected journalists?

America is definitely ready for a female president. However, was America ready in 2008 to elect, ready in 2012 to re-elect, and ready in any time in the foreseeable future to elect a black politician noted for being “comfortable with his own skin”? A man, for instance, as inarticulate and as teary as George Bush, as promiscuous as Bill Clinton, or as vulgar and as manipulative as Lyndon B. Johnson?

Would he even win an affectionate rating from Peggy Noonan? 

Rhetoric: Who’s the Real American and Who’s the Fraud?

Below are a dozen quotes from Barack Obama's Inaugural Address and yesterday’s Shared Vision speech by Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. It’s fair to accept that both were carefully thought through, knowing they’d be judged toughly. (Peggy Noonan insists that you can tell when you’re applauding an "applause line" and not a thought.)

The two speeches are reviewed separately in the media. However, looking at them together offers a striking early clue that the center in Washington is becoming a roomier place.

The audiences and the speakers’ styles are very different. Consequently, we shouldn’t have too much difficulty sorting them out. Further, I didn’t cheat by putting in the references to God, joy, and the “light of freedom” by the liberal or the conservative’s references to inner-city children, a police officer named Vicki, and the city of San Francisco.

Here they are:

“The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob.”

“We will advance proposals aimed at producing results in areas like education, health care, innovation, and job growth. Our solutions will be based on the conservative principles of self reliance, faith in the individual, trust in the family, and accountability in government. Our goal – to ensure every American has a fair shot at earning their success and achieving their dreams.”

“Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise; our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.”

“Just like parents, Washington must start showing care for the generations ahead while leaving the parenting to the parents.”

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.”

“One of our priorities this year will be to move heaven and earth to fix our education system for the most vulnerable. And when those children graduate from high school, we must expand their choices and college should be a viable option.”

“We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.”

“But, explaining that rising health care costs are depressing take-home pay is little consolation to a working mom. Her grocery bills are higher, her kids’ school needs are more expensive, rent is up – and now, she’s just trying to get by. And getting by is not the American Dream.”

“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.”

“There is an appropriate and necessary role for the federal government to ensure funding for basic medical research. Doing all we can to facilitate medical breakthroughs for people like Katie should be a priority. We can and must do better.’

“We must act, we must act knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial, and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years, and forty years, and four hundred years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.”

“This is the kind of common sense legislation that should be non-controversial and moves us in the right direction to help make life work for families.”

Sure, they’re only words. But remember: the trenches in Washington today were dug with words as well.

Obama’s persistent image problem

Sorry, but winning a second majority isn’t going to change Barack Obama for the better.

He’s not going to feel less self-possessed, more anxious about how other politicians feel, and less excited about being one of American history’s great presidents. He’d be as thick a politician as Mitt Romney, however, if he can’t see that his challenges are smaller now than they were through his first term—and his adversaries are smaller as well.

Terrible clouds are lifting. Consequently, Obama’s confidence, toughness, and exceptional personal ambition will likely shine more brightly.

Peggy Noonan can be counted on to tell us how exceptional presidents should conduct themselves when they’re having fun. Here’s her take on Obama’s bracing first press conference back in Washington:

“He's looking very stern. You don't have a problem with Susan Rice, you have a problem with me, he says, with a scowl. He talks about the fiscal cliff but not in a way that shows a real eagerness for compromise. He does not define areas of potential give, potential progress. He won, after all. He doesn't have to.

“What is needed is bigness, magnanimity. It's not all about him, his party, it's not all about self. It is not even all about one's deepest political intentions. There are other ways and schedules for moving forward there.

“Get the Republicans leaders on the Hill together. Suggest in subtle ways you'll let them save face. Quietly acknowledge you weren't the best negotiator in the world the first time 'round, and neither were they.

“Maybe no one was quite their best. But the nation faces a real challenge and there will be economic repercussions in mishandling it. ‘Let's make a deal and let's make it quickly. We all have to play games but not too much and not too long.’”

Boehner can wear sunglasses during the “fiscal cliff” negotiations if he has a problem with Obama’s glittering political success.

This year, he’ll deal with Obama whether he likes or loathes the man. He’ll compromise on taxes because he can’t walk out or refuse to return the President’s calls. Obama has his job for four years. John Boehner holds his job at the pleasure of a defeated Republican Party. 

Rice and Noonan’s brush with perfection

There’s a grace that seems to descend on intelligent women who’ve worked for Republican presidents. Condoleezza Rice was at George Bush’s side through each of his Middle East adventures, and Peggy Noonan wrote speeches for the sunny side of the Ronald Reagan presidency. Both are listened to respectfully, whether they abandon their critical faculties or not.

Here’s the conclusion of Rice’s speech to the Republicans in Tampa—a speech that many judged as the finest and wisest of the convention:

“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have the experience and the integrity and the vision to lead us – they know who we are, what we want to be and what we offer the world.

That is why this is a moment – an election – of consequence. Because it just has to be – that the most compassionate and freest country on the face of the earth – will continue to be the most powerful!”

Here’s Peggy Noonan in her blog for the Wall St. Journal today, outlining what state of mind Mitt Romney should take to his first debate with Barack Obama:

“What Mitt Romney has to show is command, talent, resolve. He has to move with firmness, strength. Americans don’t really want someone they’d like to go out and have a beer with, they want someone who can help them afford a beer. First things first. Romney at this point should just forget likability—let’s just say he’s likable enough. He needs people to see certainty, guts, ability, and heft. Americans are tired of trying to like these guys, they want to respect them. They’d like to feel honest awe.”

Can you imagine Pat Buchanan or Dick Cheney imagining, let alone getting away with such complacent, romantic nonsense?

A black conservative academic may want America to be more compassionate, and any speechwriter for any president will want her words to suspend our disbelief and leave us in a state of awe. However, Rice and Noonan shouldn’t be able to utter such sugary platitudes about who Americans are and what Americans want in a president without being laughed at.

Maybe, it was only an awkward fleeting period in the emancipation of smart women. Let’s hope, however, that the next generation of powerful women who ride in the back seat with future presidents don’t come out of the experience as hero-worshippers and shameless flatterers.

Racial discord: two intellectuals prepare to ride it out

Walter Russell Mead and Peggy Noonan offer cold-eyed assessments of the spectacular violence in London and increasing racial incidents in American cities. They seem to want Americans to pay attention, but not to lift a finger. 

Walter Russell Mead in “American Tinderbox” states:

“Even taxing “millionaires and billionaires” to the eyeballs won’t manage out of control entitlements — much less inaugurate yet another “Marshall Plan for the cities.

“The United States badly needs a workable and affordable post-Great Society approach to the inner cities. Unfortunately, we don’t have this yet and it is quite possible that we will face some testing times as a result.

“. . . Whites as well as Blacks have lost faith in the government and the intellectual and cultural elites. Some whites resent what they see as excessive privilege for Blacks reflected in affirmative action.”

Click on: www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/08/08/american_tinderbox_261064.html

Peggy Noonan in her tender-hearted way is more emphatic, writing, “Après le Deluge, What: Riots and flash mobs have root causes that government can’t reach.”

“The normal, old response to an emerging problem such as this has been: The government has to do something. We must start a program, create an agency to address juvenile delinquency. But governments are tapped out, cutting back, trying to avoid bankruptcy. Which means we can't even take refuge in the illusion that government can solve the problem. The churches of America have always helped the young, stepping in where they can. That will continue. But they too are hard-pressed these days.

“Where does that leave us? In a hard place, knowing in our guts that a lot of troubled kids are coming up, and not knowing what to do about it. The problem, at bottom, is love, something we never talk about in public policy discussions because it's too soft and can't be quantified or legislated.”

Click on: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:vRyJ9rRDnsUJ:online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html+Apr%C3%A8s+le+D%C3%A9luge,+What%3F&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com

It can’t be a very serious problem to a public intellectual if the first and last thing to be said is that there’s nothing that government can do. Furthermore, there’s a strange logic to the argument that government—when it tries to heal social divisions—is impotent and corrupting at the same time.

Their stoicism is daring and unprecedented.

In the Sixties and Seventies, when American society was in far deeper trouble, conservatives didn’t argue that government should simply enforce the law and moralize. In 1970, Daniel Patrick Moynihan unintentionally launched the conservative critique of the interventionist Great Society with the term “benign neglect.” Here is what he said, in context:

“The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of "benign neglect.". . . The subject has been too much talked about. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades. The Administration can help bring this about by paying close attention to such progress—as we are doing—while seeking to avoid situations in which extremists of either race are given opportunities for martyrdom, heroics, histrionics, or whatever.”

Click on: www.larrydewitt.net/Essays/Moynihan.htm

The Great Society was not a pie-in-the-sky, top-down solution to problems of the heart. On the ground, it was a scrambling effort to find ways to encourage and assist young Blacks and poor kids generally, enter a middle class society. Mistakes were made. But no more money was wasted on investing in kids at that time than is wasted today in Medicare services for the affluent.

Nixon did let the “Great Society” fade. However, his expectations for a more open and less divided society were as ambitious and as dewy-eyed as any mainstream progressive today.

In 1970, the US unemployment rate was approximately 5%. Today, it’s over 9%. (Today, unemployment among young black men is almost twice as bad as well.) In the sixties and seventies, the challenge was to help blacks integrate into an expanding economy. Without an expanding economy now, it’s preposterous to talk about waiting out the festering social problems in America’s cities.