Joe Klein's brilliant Obama article.
...Which was unfortunate, because he has done a great many other things very well. Obama was right, of course, about the troubles he faced when he took the oath on Jan. 20, 2009. He came to the presidency at a moment of crisis, in the midst of a financial collapse and two wars. He acted with purposeful restraint to help stabilize a juddering economy. Overseas, he quickly restored diplomacy to its rightful place at the center of U.S. foreign policy while moving aggressively to combat al-Qaeda and its allies in Afghanistan and the borderlands of Pakistan. Almost all his choices were controversial — an economic-stimulus package that was called too small by some and too large by others, the Afghan escalation, an effort to address climate change that was also called too weak by some and too radical by others — but none of them were dishonorable. His has been a serious and substantive presidency. But the question, a year in, is whether it has been politically tone-deaf — and why the best presidential orator in a generation finds it so hard to explain himself to the American people...
....A renewed campaign for fiscal discipline will be announced in the State of the Union speech, but it's also possible that the President will push back against the myopic and solipsistic members of Congress, in both parties, who did so much to make health care reform a mess. "We've had to hold fire on the Congress," says an aide. "We've lashed ourselves to them in order to get health care passed. Politically, that's been like having Bernie Madoff in the Cabinet."...
....On the morning he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama met with a nervous group of aides. The award might be a political problem, they said. It might be ridiculed. He hadn't achieved any of his foreign policy goals yet. "It is kind of crazy," Obama acknowledged with a laugh, "but that's not the real problem we're facing here. How do you accept the Nobel Peace Prize when you're the Commander in Chief of a military that is fighting two wars?"
The President's next meeting was about one of those wars — the one in Afghanistan — with his National Security Council in the Situation Room. Everyone stood as the President entered. "I was waiting for people to start applauding or someone to say, 'Congratulations, Mr. President,' or something like that," an aide recalls. "But no one said anything, and the President didn't say anything about the prize either. He just started in on the agenda...
...Unlike most politicians, Obama doesn't thrive on sycophancy; he mistrusts it. That's why no one in the Situation Room congratulated him on the prize. And he's not very good at faking the hail-fellow camaraderie that is part of American public life, either. He doesn't seem to enjoy the game of politics all that much. In his memoir of the 2008 presidential race, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says his candidate grew "increasingly sullen" on the road during the early months of the campaign. Communications director Robert Gibbs asked Obama if he was having any fun at all. No, Obama replied. Was there anything that could be done to make it more fun? Again, the answer was no. "He found most coverage of the race banal," Plouffe writes. "And there wasn't nearly enough time for his favorite part of the campaign — noodling over policy, or, as he called it, think time."
Does this matter? In a high-minded, policy-driven world, it wouldn't. But we don't live there. The presidency exists in a show-biz maelstrom - especially now, with an opposition party that simply refuses to participate in governing the country, barnacled special interests that detour and distend any attempts at major legislation, and noxious, shortsighted media that convey heat more accurately than they do light.
In such an atmosphere, the President has to convey a little heat too. He has to be as concerned with stagecraft, political appearances, feel-your-pain empathy as he is with substance. That seems like an effort for Obama. In his first meeting with aides on his Nobel morning, he skipped past the political question — How could they react to the perception that the prize was premature? — to the heart of the matter: What was the rationale for a war President to receive a peace prize?...
...After a year of "think time" on serious policy issues, the President faces a very different landscape in 2010. He will have to go to battle, shedding his preternatural calm at times, and fight to regain the public trust. He will have to be more politician than policymaker — and yet remain true to his values in the process. He will have to understand that in the poisonous atmosphere of American politics, triumphs are no longer a realistic possibility; survival is as good as it gets.
In other words: Obama's biggest mistake this year, was trying to treat Americans as adults.
This entire Klien's feature is just wonderful and highly, highly recommended.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955401-2,00.html#ixzz0dHWTUN3B
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