The political mavens who argue that President Obama has to be more expressive are barking up the wrong tree. The real question is if Obama has deep feelings (other than for his family) -- or is a cold fish. If his blood does not boil when Republicans and conservative Democrats, in the same breath, refuse to extend unemployment benefits but further cut taxes for business; when he finds out that mine owners and oil companies bribe regulators rather than protect the lives of their employees; if he cannot feel the pain unemployment still inflicts on us rather than deficits -- then he should not fake it and suddenly turn demonstrative.
President Reagan got it right when he responded to a suggestion by image maker Michael Deaver. Deaver urged the president take off the jacket of his suit, swing it over his soldiers, and walk into a press conference much more informally then he had up to that point. Reagan responded saying that "this is not me," that such moves would make him uncomfortable, and that voters would sense it -- even if they could not verbalize their unease.
Ditto for Obama. If he suddenly started shedding tears, say, for the hundred of miles of beaches that are about to be devastated, he will not gain support but lose one of the few things that he has going for him -- the people's sense that this is a man who has integrity. Cool but honest; restrained but thoughtful.
All this holds only if Obama's heart is as cold as he comes across. However, if deep in his chest there are buried some strong emotions, if he is holding back because he believes it is uncouth to voice one's feeling; if he keeps these feelings under the hood because he long ago learned not to fall prey to them -- then the time has come for some quick lessons by one of his many method-acting friends. Then he can learn to reach into his inner self and draw on these well-concealed emotions and air them. We (and he) would all be better for it.
In short, all those mavens -- from the Washington Post's David Broder to Maureen Dowd at the New York Times -- who insist that Obama should wear his feelings on his sleeves, must first find out: does he have any? I believe such emotions are to be found -- though the president has worked long and hard to convince us otherwise.
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I don't agree with you on this being a "white people" uncomfortable situation. I am white. I completely support President Obama in his approach. I think it shows he runs his presidency with his head and not his heart. He is a wise man. Every decision he makes, especially right now, is not going to satisfy everyone, but they are decisions that need to be made and they take a person with courage to do what needs to be done.
I will judge him by what he does for the country, not by how much emotion he can display for the cameras.
You would like nothing more than for the President to act as a puppet with THEM as the ventriloquist, pulling the strings so that he behaves ONLY as they tell him to.
Go to he// you dirty, rotten scoundrels.
What American needs are political leaders who don't shill for Wall Street and corporate America in exchange for an ocean of corporate campaign cash.
What we need is a President like FDR who said of the conservative movement of his day, "I welcome their hatred."
So now, Chris Matthews decides to start an irrational emotional tirade against Obama, then Carville, a few others and finally the great Maureen Dowd. Of the aforementioned I am most disappointed in Dowd. For the past year and a half she has been silent on substantive policy issues that certainly were begging a response. Instead, nothing. Crickets.
Now Dowd finds her voice, she wants Obama to be her daddy and hold her hand. And yet when her blogging fans overwhelming push back, she persists. I am a huge fan of hers yet I don't understand Ms. Dowd's obsession. We voters want the calm, cool, smart guy.
Enough already. I know I don't want to hear a silly emotional response from Obama. The last thing I want to hear from him is, SPILL, BABY SPILL.
Rahm is his emotions.
I think what happened during the response to the oil spill was an effort to not look like Bush but with no sense of what was really going on. Anybody in the administration who jumped up and down or from the outside yelling were simply ignored as Obama cannot understand outrage nor angry urgency regardless of who it comes from. (The pro-Obama side should also realize that the outrage is not hysteria but does come some informed factual basis. 'An angry environmentalist doesn not imply some one who is not an expert.)
And now Obama has come to understand at an intellectual level that people are feeling these foreign things called outrage, anger, and disgust, and that he must now react in some political or practical way to these outside emotions.
God!
Everyone has an opinion and thinks they have all the answers and the best solutions, sitting on the side lines, it looks easy, but when your in the thick of it, considerations in decision making is a balancing act that is not perfect and not done just for the benefit of one or some. The welfare of an entire country is at stake, which includes over 305,000,000 people, 50 states, over 30,000 cities, and over 25 million businesses. It is often impossible to get two people to agree on one issue, the POTUS faces an impossible, demanding task 24/7.
Nitpicking over how much or how little emotion is or isn't shown, is the most self centered, selfish grasping at straws for a put down yet. How soon people forget the condition the country was in before President Obama. We have much more to thank him for than to keep griping about.
I agree with you, a hot head and a whack job, such as McCain and Palin, may have filled the bill on an emotional level, the touchy feely are dying to see.
I will take my country with a side of intelligence and compassion, not fears to tears.
He is who he is and he deals with issues in an analytical way. Reviewing his emotional content is a great way saying nothing about the issues.
So shut the eff up. What a stupid article.
Unfortunately, this mindset leads to bad leadership, as with the BP Gulf oil disaster. The Administration's first instinct was to distance themselves from the unpleasant event, control the PR, and let BP take the hit, when what he should have done is lead.
There is plenty of emotion on the political level. Obama and his crew will stop atr nothing to get what they want politically. But this is the wrong kind of emotion, aimed at all the wrong targets.
Obama's rhetoric can't hide the fact that he didn't panic because he didn't care. He was so caught up with his political calulations, he did not even see the magnitude of the crisis. Also, since Obama is not a very good performer, he could not even pretend to be involved. Americans recongize this failing, and they don't much like it.
Okay, you have my attention. Get specific. Tell me what more Obama should have done. Persuade me.
Agreed. Just because one doesn't run around screaming and crying in a crisis situation doesn't mean one doesn't have feelings; it simply means that those feelings are under control, which is the mark of a good leader. And to those with father issues, like Maureen Dowd, who want Obama to behave like more of a parent: I voted for a President, not a Daddy. Grow up.