A Line in the Sand Is Occasionally Useful

Two significant comments in the past two days by trusted White House advisers, which Barack Obama has felt compelled to correct, taken together suggest that Obama's inside style is so masked, conciliatory, and evenhanded that even the people closest to him are not sure where his willingness to compromise stops. Joe Biden's comment that Israel is a sovereign nation, and can decide its own actions, was hardly an unrehearsed response. For Biden said the same thing in just the same careful words more than once, in replying to the same question. Similarly with Rahm Emanuel on the possibility of dispensing with the "public option" in the Obama plan for health care. Emanuel said that the option might only be held in reserve, to be triggered as necessary by a crisis. He did not make this up. Plainly he was repeating a formulation he had heard and thought he understood, but whose exact valence his ear mistook.

Both positions -- that Israel's sovereignty is absolute, and the U.S. must never appear to press Israel very hard, so that Israel might even be allowed to bomb Iran if it made the strongest case; and that the public option may just have to be dropped, and is indeed ultimately expendable, provided it can be held in reserve in the way spelled out by Emanuel -- both views (one must suppose) were "entertained" by the president in a manner so lacking in definition that his vice president and his chief of staff took him to have budged. Both believed they were authorized to convey a subtle change of stance. Then embarrassment struck on both fronts, and Obama backed off his backing off.

It has been said by many observers that Barack Obama is the only leader at present in the world who has some of the qualities of a world leader. And if urbanity, grace, and the ability to take long views are what we have in mind, it is clear why so many cherish the hope that this lofty estimate will turn out to be true. But principle is a different matter from style. Commitment is measured not by large intentions, but by specific tenacity; and this means at points a refusal of pliability whose meaning is impossible to mistake. Yet, on this question of political character, the evidence on Obama is mixed and its core oddly elusive. Can he be a world leader without being a leader of his cabinet or his country?

Comments

[Tackora]

This president is dangerously inept, without a mandatory minimum of good will and resolve towards the American People. Unfortunately, relative to the previous president he looked deceivingly good and got elected. Otherwise he is an empty suit.

[Netizen]

Agree.

[nevadamike]

I am pluzzled by the notion that the failure of every member of the cabinet and staff to echo President Obama on every issue somehow reflects on the President's"political character". We certainly had enough "follow the leader" , "group think" or "right or wrong , yes Mr. President," with Geroge W. Bush-- Must be a Yale thing -- most issues are not black or white, yes or know, and the fact that this President encourages or at least allows people in his Administration to voice different views is in my judgment a sign of "real" character rather than "political character". whatever that may be.

[wanttruth]

Nice post.

[NWNHNM]

The assumption you begin with is that Obama has principles but he is elusive in fully pressing those principles. I have come to the conclusion that Obama is only "elusive" in the sense that he doesn't want to come out and say that he has abandoned all his campaign promises and "principles".

For months we have heard that the bailout of the banks was the policy of Summers and Geithner, and that Obama was somehow out of the loop. Please.

The question should be can a person be a world leader if he sells out his own country. Not like it hasn't been done many times before.