Sometimes, I wonder why I so frequently see disparaging remarks in the press about the president’s disposition or mien. He’s aloof, arrogant, detached, above-it-all, distant, dismissive. The thing is, he doesn’t strike me as any of those things. Maybe every once in a while I get a brief hint that he’s impatient or frustrated with the stupidity that surrounds him. But, to me, it seems like he hides it well. Watch him console grieving parents or enter into a little child’s world or work a rope line, and he’s compassionate, intimate, wholly-there.
The problem seems to be that he keeps his guard up around reporters. And reporters do the reporting on the president’s personality. Consider the observation that Robert Draper made while visiting the new Bush library with Maureen Dowd:
Robert Draper, the author of “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush,” perused the library with me and observed: “So 43 grew up entitled but could display a commoner’s touch, while 44 grew up hardscrabble yet developed this imperial mien. The former is defined by incuriosity, the latter by self-absorption. One is a late-blooming artist, the other a precocious writer. They can each make you kind of miss the other.”
In other words, there is something about Barack Obama that Robert Draper simply doesn’t like. Maureen Dowd obviously feels the same way. He has an “imperial mien.” In their mouths, descriptions like “precocious” and [using a] “lapidary logic” sound like insults. They hate the smart kid. Obama projects a sense of superiority to these reporters. He makes them feel small and excluded and less than. And they resent him for it.
But the same things that these reporters dislike are what draw me to the president. Incisiveness, reason, cool-headedness, dispassion, intelligence, compassion, strategic thinking, an eye on the long game.
How often have we seen someone in a crowd shout out “we love you” at the president and watched him say “I love you back”? The stuck-in-the-24/7-news-cycle Beltway press has no feel for a man who lives as much in the future and the past as he does in the present. What I see as thoughtfulness, they see as dismissiveness. They scream “we don’t like you,” and he intimates “right back atcha.”
The day-to-day clutter of manufactured controversy and faux-scandal is ultimately unimportant to the president. What does he care of critics who want to know why gay rights have not yet been addressed, when he knows he will have laid down the most progress in history on that front by the end of his first term? He’s working from a vision. When a Code Pink protester rails against him for the situation as it stands, he can afford to be magnanimous because he’s in the process of laying out where we’re going.
This is what the press sees as being detached and above-it-all. But, in the context of effective governance, those attributes are virtues. How could he not feel at least some disdain for those who are so absorbed in the now that they can do nothing but quibble and nitpick, attacking him with a million pinpricks while never sensing that his vision is too big to be stymied by such trivialities?
Of course, he pays a price for being unloved by the press. He pays a price for not tending to the narrative of the day with the same intensity with which he tends to the long game. But he’s only one man and he can’t have every skill that one might want. If you want someone to arouse populist passions, you probably don’t pick the guy who excels at keeping everyone calm in a crisis. And if you could look at all the thronging crowds at all those Obama rallies and still argue that the man lacks warmth or is detached or can’t arouse populist passions, then maybe your standards are too high.
Or, maybe, you have just enough depth to realize that the president thinks you’re shallow. And you know that he is right. And you hate him for it.
I was going to write that it’s not that journos are malicious, ignorant, and stupid but that they are professionally required to think and speak and act as though they were.
But, on second thought, you can’t pretend to be those things every day without becoming them.
And very likely for many of them the role fits like a glove, anyway.
Lee Atwater told Bush pere to stupid himself down and coarsen himself so he could be a man of the people, and so he did.
He became a stupid and coarse man of the people.
For GW, it wasn’t even an act.
I have yet to see Obama play along with this imposture.
Well, not very far along, anyway.
Charlie Pierce makes the following point with some regularity: professional reporters don’t let their feelings about the person they’re covering get in the way of doing their job. And, as someone who knows both worlds, Pierce regularly reminds political reporters that this is something that their colleagues in the sports section tend to do a much better job at.
That’s why Pierce, Taibbi, and Zirin are three of the best political reporters today.
None of those three are actually reporters.
Pierce does some reporting in his current job for Esquire but yes, most of his work these days is a form of opinion journalism and/or media criticism.
His critique holds however (at least in my view). The “narrative” that President Obama is cold, aloof, distant, etc. reveals more about the purveyors of that narrative than it does about the president. And one thing it reveals is their failure and/or inability to do their job as journalists as well as most of their colleagues in the sports media routinely do.
Then define “reporter.” I’m sure Pierce and Taibbi would like to know what their time spent at campaign and conventions wasn’t the work of “reporting.” And since when does poring through government and lawsuit documents and writing up what those documents contain isn’t “reporting?” Or all those congressional hearings that Taibbi sits through aren’t “reporting.” And Zirin never does any leg work? GMAFB
I was reading charles pierce on obama’a speech just now. My eyes lit on his short bio for a moment, and when I read the first line I thought back to this thread.
“Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976.”
My first thought was, well, Pierce obviously considers himself a journalist, but then I came back to this thread and saw the word was “reporter”, not “journalist”. I wondered if you were making a distinction between being a journalist and being a reporter.
Many of today’s so-called journalists certainly are reporters. They report what they are told to report by their corporate masters, they report the republican talking points, and some even report every stupid thing they read or hear from a single unconfirmed source.
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t call that journalism.
Oh, and turning the conversation back to Obama… If there’s one thing he respects, it’s competence, and there’s not a lot of that in the white house press corps.
And W played those reporters/pundits like the smarmy,smirking frat boy that he is. Nicknames, faux Texas country boy accent, backslapping and all. Plus, they knew down deep that if they raised any real questions, they would be thrown out of the club tout suite, into the outer darkness of the Rational.
If he did do what the WHPC wanted, they’d criticize that, too. The President knows this. I’m beyond caring what the WHPC think of this President. They can’t see his magnificence; they’re petty and jealous. That’s never going to change. They don’t want a President who goes about the business of providing effective government and they don’t want someone who is cool in a crisis. That, they think, doesn’t sell. They want their juicy gossip and sexy scandals and he is depriving them of that. What is truly odd about these people is that they don’t seem to recognize that the press given to the President that is respectful and interesting sells better than any of the standard scandal/fear-mongering. They appear to be wholly incapable of being flexible and willing to change.
One of my summer jobs was working at the inn that served as the press headquarters for the HW Bush summer white house so we had the press with us for practically a whole month in the summer. They are an insufferable bunch.
One of my tasks was to photocopy the faxed daily press briefing and distribute it. While I was copying it I used to read the stupid thing and make a list of questions I would ask if I had the chance. Then I would watch them scurry around and gossip and vie for attention from the President. HW was smart he would invite them to go for rides on his boat and they loved that. They would brag to me about it and try to get me to have drinks with them. They were pathetic.
One of the photographers for the AP told me that the whole thing was a sham. He said the only reason they follow the President is to get the still or the footage if something bad were to happen. He said that they are all idiots. He was right.
If Maureen Dowd fell off a tall building, no one would miss her.
And I have no idea who Robert Draper is. Sounds like an asshole.
Good post, Booman. Also, whatever caution President Obama has about dealing with the media was likely reinforced by his brief community organizing career. Senior organizers at Gamaliel and networks like it tended to be people who’d had visceral experiences of being “burned” by the media—whether personally or (more commonly) professionally when the fickleness of what makes for “news” hurt the organizations they worked for.
Rooman, while reading your post, I kept thinking of Eleanor Roosevelt, who said something like “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
So I think you really nailed it with your final paragraph:
Deep down, they know what they are, and what they’ve become, and they resent Obama for making themselves see it, too, even if it’s just for a minute, before they turn it into a rejection of him.
They’re just pining for the days when they got to spend so much time in Crawford and were allowed to watch Bush ride his bike and chop down scrub. And covering the First Lady was such and easy gig because she was hardly ever seen except when holding her husband’s hand as he boarded and disembarked from one of the POTUS flying machines.
I think it’s more about racism. They hate him for his skin color and obvious comfort in that skin.
I’m with you.
he’s
Black
Black
Blackedity
Black
Black
Black
Blackilicious
Black
Blackeriffic
Black
and, he’s comfortable in his own skin.
Black and comfortable?
unforgivable.
Amen
And the smartest and wisest guy in the room.
Absolutely cannot be tolerated.
But he’s also
Half White
White
White
Maroon
White
White
Semi-White
White
White
Mulatto
Not Black
Multi-racial
Biracial
…and people who are beholden to old prejudices are so very respectful of people of mixed-race backgrounds.
No, I’m just trying to play devil’s advocate We are so blinded by the fact that he’s half Black that we fail to look at his policies with a critical eye. If he can meet with illegal immigrants at the white house he can address Black unemployment and poverty.
So now you’re up to three comments.
The first of which was to rebut the claim that President Obama’s critics are motivated by racism, by pointing out that’s he’s a “mulatto.”
The second of which was a regurgitation of Newt Gingrich’s “Democratic Plantation” argument.
And the third is to tell us that you’re “just playing devil’s advocate” when you echo a right-wing talking point about race.
I admire your restraint in waiting this long to tell us that Robert Byrd demonstrates which party is The Real Racists.
There is no question that race p-lays a major part in the opposition to BO. Let’s agree on that.
Not that I agree with the comments, but you need to check the archive box to see people’s old comments.
Thoughtful post, BooMan. I believe, though, that you put too much thought into it, when you were so close to nailing it in your second sentence. There is one adjective that summarizes the list of, “aloof, arrogant, detached, above-it-all, distant, [and] dismissive,” and that is, “uppity.”
The media thinks our first black president doesn’t show enough humility. Bush never showed an ounce of humility in his life, but he passes the test because the test never applied to him. He’s a political heir in a long line of them. He’s allowed to be arrogant, detached and dismissive because he’s one of our betters. Obama is uppity. He doesn’t know his place. He should be kissing their asses.
I guess I recognize the old dogwhistle keywords immediately, living as I do in a former Confederate state. It’s jarring to read Dowd, etc., working in that vein, but it’s also unmistakable. They don’t know how to respect the office when a black man occupies it. It’s the usual racist fuming.
This is one of my favorite posts of yours. I laughed out loud when I got to the last line. Awesome.
Obama is always the smartest person in the room.
check
Obama doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and most of the press are surely fools!
check
Obama is completely comfortable in his own skin – in every sense of the word.
check
I see all those things and think how lucky we are that Obama is our president.
But some people think Obama isn’t “grateful” enough that he was elected president, you know, being that he is black and all. Idiots.
It’s a plain fact that in third grade everyone else hates the smartest kid in the class. I’m not sure that it’s much more than that. Though the fact that the smartest kid happens to be black can’t help.
I will never for the life of me understand modern American anti-intellectualism. It’s the foundation of the Tea Party, and now the entire Republican Party, and more than a few others besides. Its manifestation in presidential politics crested with the Palin phenomenon, where millions of people adored her and wanted her as VP or President because they (wrongly) saw her as “just like them” – inexperienced, incurious, stupid, but morally certain of their wrong ideas.
You know what? I don’t what the POTUS, any POTUS, regardless of party or policy, to be “just like me.” I want him or her to be a lot smarter, and harder-working, and better in a crisis, and emotionally grounded, and so forth. It’s the hardest job in the world, and the most powerful. The person who has it must be exceptional in every sense to have any chance of doing it well.
And when one is – and I don’t have to like every Obama policy to acknowledge that he’s a rare and stunning political talent who could also succeed at just about anything else he put his mind to – a significant chunk of the national political press hates him for it. They’re just as anti-intellectual as the most ignorant Teabagger, and just as emotionally mature as your average third-grader. Which is why they’ve excelled at their chosen career in modern corporate media, which entails stenography for the cool and popular kidz in class. When the smartest kid is also the most popular kid in school, their heads explode.
I don’t want… duh…
There are two levels of criticism about Obama’s aloofness. One refers to his personal demeanor. Another refers to his administration’s relations with the press, including the responsiveness of his press office to reporters’ questions, the level of transparency with which he executes his office, and how he deals with reporters who publish information he wants to keep secret. This post, as many others do, addresses the more frivolous criticisms while glossing over the more substantial ones. I feel no comfort from reading posts like this. Obama’s press office was so fucking sure of itself that it completely failed to respond to attacks on the ACA, giving us Republican control of the House in 2010. Waste time gloating over the likes of Maureen Dowd at your peril.
“Gloating” is an odd choice.
As in expressing self-satisfaction over an opponent’s misfortune, in this case Dowd et al’s inanity.
Odd choice of “misfortune.”
In support of this point, I watched a bit of Kornacki and MHP yesterday morning. I forget which show, but David Cay Johnson was on one of the panels. He was very critical of the WH press office for being so non transparent and secretive and uncooperative versus his experience with Reagan’s press office. Said that those who answer the phone now don’t/won’t identify him or herself and when the journalist/caller asks a question the question right back at him is “Why do you want to know?” Johnson has been quite critical of the administration of late. That concerns me, cause he’s not a conservative.
Oops! Should have been David Cay Johnston.
Obama’s press office was so fucking sure of itself that it completely failed to respond to attacks on the ACA, giving us Republican control of the House in 2010.
So that’s what did it.
Here I was thinking it was a vastly changed mid-term electorate, and enough Astroturfing to recreate the pre-Homestead Act prairies.
Turns out it was 30-odd people in the White House.
People who attribute the 2010 midterms to anything but the worst economy since the Great Depression are trying to sell something.
Sat down with our newly arrived print version of Time magazine last evening. Aside from the 2 page spread on the Obama 1979 prom photos, there’s a “commentary” by Rich Lowery about how the President’s leadership problems are the result of his unwillingness to compromise with Congressional Republicans.
I know Lowry’s a conservative and most things they write are from a purely partisan platform, but, gee whiz, what’s this President supposed to do? From my POV, operating from the left of where this President has been for over 4 years, I think that he’s gone out of his way to find common ground with the GOP. At this point, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by compromising with what’s on offer from the right. Lowry mentions immigration, but it seems to me that there’s bipartisanship already underway on that issue. Why should Obama intervene in that process?
Seriously, how much was GWB asked to compromise with Dems during his 8 years? I don’t remember that being the clarion call that it is now? Am I wrong?
Bottom line, it seems that Obama, for whatever reason or reasons, is being held to a standard that no President has been held to in my lifetime. I don’t get the aloofness and elitist claims either. That’s not how I see him. Ofttimes he seems to me to try too hard to appease his political opponents. As one who’s also a lifelong resident of a former Confederate state, I think it’s racism by another name.
“Or, maybe, you have just enough depth to realize that the president thinks you’re shallow. And you know that he is right. And you hate him for it.”
PERFECT, BooMan! PERFECT!!!
Reagan and Dubya sucked as presidents, but the press loved them because they were the kind of guys ya could have a beer with. No, not even that. They were great because they GAVE THE IMPRESSION they were kind of guys you could have a beer with.
Is that the criterion of a great president? Giving the impression you would enjoy having a beer with them?
Obama must have more than that, otherwise he wouldn’t have won two elections. In fact, even by that standard, I’m sure millions of people would love to have a beer with Obama. Most people, not being in the PR business, have more substantial criteria.
I think he’s arrogant and aloof when it comes to Blacks outside of the very few in his inner circle. A few days ago he met with a group of illegal aliens at the White House to talk about immigration reform (aka amnesty). Now, we have been programmed to think that what’s good for Massa (the Democratic party) is good for us. But just think about it for a minute. With Black unemployment already twice the national average at 13.8%, why would we be excited about legalizing a bunch of unskilled workers that will work for beans and crackers and will compete for the few low level jobs that many Blacks need? If I’m wrong, give me an example of the president meeting with a group of unemployed AMERICAN Black workers.
Watching a right-winger try to play a race card is like watching a monkey that’s gotten ahold of a field researcher’s call phone.
I’ve been around for years. Don’t try to dismiss my comment with a childish insult. I’m a hell of lot more progressive and liberal than anyone on this board. But it’s telling that you couldn’t dispute a word that I said.
We can click on your name and read your old comments.
In your case, that means the two comments you have ever written on this site, both of which you wrote today.
Ooops.
So I didn’t exist before I posted on this site? Cmon, I’m not here to argue with anyone. I can’t believe it’s not obvious that he avoids dealing with Black issues. That wasc my point.
The passage of the Affordable Care Act was an extraordinarily important achievement on behalf of the African-American community. Yes, it helps the lower and middle class of all races, and it is already helping arrest unsustainable rising costs of health care and their destructions of our public budgets. But the expansion of Medicaid and the subsidies and regulations of the private insurance exchanges help African-Americans more than any other ethnicity. So you can bag the race baiting.
I’m not race baiting, I just have an opinion that’s different from yours. I don’t doubt that the ACA will eventually help everyone but I have always felt that having a good job generally solves the problem of being uninsured (sometimes it doesn’t). For that reason I think the focus should be and should have always been on helping to create jobs. We need it more than any other group, I don’t know why that’s race baiting but you are entitled to your opinion.
It’s not health care. It’s the idea that creating a pathway to citizenship for Latinos who are already here is going to cost the black community jobs. In general, the policies that help Latinos find work will also help blacks find work. Additionally, the pathway takes 13 years.
I think the immigration legislation, if it actually passes, will also make it harder to immigrate illegally and harder to find work if you don’t have the legal right to be here. So, overall, it should reduce competition for jobs that blacks are seeking in competition with Latinos.
Finally, the right loves to pit the working class against each other on racial terms. You should be reluctant to do their bidding.
About 18% of blacks under the age of 65 currently lack health insurance. Huge numbers were insurable due to hypertension, diabetes, sickle-cell anemia, cancer, or other pre-existing conditions.
Obama has been very aggressive and effective in going after the con artists who prey on the black community. He passed the Credit Card Act. He has the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cracking down on usury in many forms, from check cashing joints to payday lender to income tax preparers.
His food safety bill was huge and under-appreciated as was the Healthy Hunger-Free Kid Act of 2010.
And, he finally fixed the crack/powder cocaine disparity.
For the most part, Obama has focused on things that help everybody, but many of those things disproportionately help the black community, which infuriates the tea baggers. The problem is, they focus on the wrong things, like food stamps and welfare (which mainly benefit white folks), instead of on consumer protection (which mainly protects the poor and undereducated).
I really can’t argue with any of those things that you mentioned but I think he could do more and I think he should make it a priority just as he does immigration reform. I’m one of those people that lost my job and had to transition into an entirely new career because there just weren’t any jobs in my field and I lack the ability to relocate because of family obligations. I’m still making that transition, working and going to school, even after obtaining my bachelor’s degree 14 years ago, I’m back in school again to retrain. I haven’t had health insurance for over a year now but will again soon from my new employer. So I’m one of those uninsured Blacks that you mentioned. What bothers me is that he can invite illegal aliens to the White House to highlight their plight and talk about that as his priority, but you never see him talking about 14 percent Black unemployment and explain what he’s going to do about it. It seems as though he takes us for granted. And when I do see him address the Black community on those few occasions, it is to lecture and scold us about personal responsibility and to talk about dead beat fathers etc. I admit that I’ve come to resent him, while at the same time I still want to see him succeed.
The first thing to consider is that the Republican Party basically fuels itself on the idea that the Democratic Party taxes hard-working white American patriots so that it can give hand-outs to blacks in the form of welfare, food stamps, and (now) subsidies to buy health care.
Whether the president is white, black or purple, this creates an optical problem anytime they appear to be pandering to the black community. It basically is no different from paying for the gas to fuel the GOP’s resentment campaign.
Yet. there’s no question that the resentment car gets better MPG when the Democratic president is black.
This results in even less public pandering that usual with this administration. No doubt about it.
But what matters is results. He had tremendous results in his first two years and almost no results in the last two. Why is that?
We all know that the Republicans have basically decided to hold the legislative process hostage to their outrageous, extremist demands. So extreme that even Bob Dole has now called them out. 🙂
No question, the only thing that matters is results. Until this moment it hadn’t occurred to me that Blacks have actually sunk lower on the social pecking order than illegal aliens, and with a Black president no less. That’s pretty sad but I can’t argue with your point. But if that is also causing the president to scold and talk down to Black audiences the way that he does, I wish he wouldn’t show up to these Black events at all. Just MHO.
I don’t see Barack’s public addresses, such as the recent commencement at Morehouse, as “talking down to Black audiences,” but I accept your point of view on that.
But I do have some responses to your perception that Blacks are “lower on the social pecking order than illegal aliens.” First off, being hosted for a meeting in the White House, while nice, is not the prime indicator that the President is prioritizing your issue and advocating for it effectively. In the case of comprehensive immigration reform, yes, the President is prioritizing that issue effectively. But think about it: will Blacks be hurt or helped by pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants? I hope you understand Blacks will be helped tremendously when this is achieved. Among the reasons:
Another thing re. your preoccupation about getting hosted for a White House meeting: Obama has hosted Labor groups and leaders over and over again at the White House. While I’ll acknowledge that his NLRB appointments and narrow regulatory decisions have been pro-Labor, can we say that the Union movement and power of the working class has been effectively prioritized and advocated for by Obama? It’s safe to say the answer to that is “NO”.
So, I’d be happy if Labor leaders never met in public with the President again, as long as we got results instead.
Finally, Obama has been hammering away at job programs he has proposed which would provide substantial jobs to the Black community. I’m glad you recognize that with the current House there’s almost no chance we can get the President’s proposals through Congress. It’s apparent to me that inviting a bunch of unemployed African-Americans to the White House would not just be seen as pandering, but particularly toothless and ineffective pandering which would deliver no results from the Federal government.
“He’s aloof, arrogant, detached, above-it-all, distant, dismissive.”
It means he doesn’t invite reporters over for lunch, to camp david, or to sleep over night in the lincoln bedroom.
remember their freak out when he didn’t take them to see his daughter’s soccer team. How infuriated they get when he doesn’t show up the grid-iron dinner. How pissed they were when he called on Nico Pitney at a press conference on Iran (Milbank called Pitney “a little dick”).
the thing is with twitter, they’re becoming exponentially irrelevant. And like all forms of impotence, it drives them to insane frustration.