Okay, stop reading this and go on line to NPR and click on Fresh Air with Terry Gross and click on the Michael Lewis interview about his months shadowing President Obama. Then come back.
So, okay, you're back now.
Did you have the same feeling I got, hearing the details of the time Lewis spent with Obama, this is a guy you know? He's the sort of guy you knew in college. He will never be a professional basketball player, but if he could have been, he would have preferred that to being President. He knew himself and his own abilities well enough to know he would be successful as President but not in pro basketball.
He is intensely competitive, but he "stays within himself," i.e., he does not try to do things he is not likely to succeed in doing.
He understands what most Washington people learn quickly, that the blowhards like Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell et al who call him a socialist, or a racist, or a closet Muslim or foreign born Kenyan or whatever the charge de jouris, they are not describing him but themselves.
He is not hurt by criticisms which pertain to a fantasized Obama rather than the real Obama.
He took a long time to realize that Mitch McConnell had no intention of cooperating with him on anything, that if Obama said black, McConnell would say white and that was his only agenda. When he finally saw the game, Obama thought, well, then McConnell will pay the price of looking obstructionist, but no, back in Kentucky, McConnell was celebrated.
I'm going to run right out and buy Vanity Fair and read Lewis's article.
It struck me that Lewis observed Obama is really a writer, at heart. He stands back and observes, for which he's been accused of being "aloof."
And it strikes me that sometimes this nation gets a President who is better, far better, than we deserve. It was that way with Lincoln.
And that's something which on a certain level makes me very uneasy. One of the things Lewis talks about is how strange Air Force One is. It has special bay doors which are meant to be big enough to allow for the loading of the President's coffin.
It is an eerie and sobering reminder of what this man faces every day.
I'm old enough to remember Kennedy.
And I grew up in the South.
There are haters out there.
Let's celebrate him while we have him.
I am moved by your last lines because I've also had that feeling of uneasiness about the President.You're right there are a lot of haters out there, many of whom would probably feel heroic in some twisted way harming him. You wonder how he deals with that possibility--does it cross his mind before he steps out in front of a huge crowd. It would surely cross mine. Maybe he deals with it the same way I and a lot of people deal with flying. Once we leave the gate I know I can do nothing about the outcome so I don't worry about it. Maybe he knows he's already left the gate and there isn't much he can do to influence what will or won't happen in that regard. Sad.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note the article in Vanity Fair was excellent. Most of VF's articles on celebrities and politicians are less than flattering so I give Obama a lot of credit for giving Michael Lewis that amount of access. The article illustrated so clearly that the President is not just a figurehead and that who is in the office really does matter. Obama was able to think outside the box and come up with a solution for Libya that wasn't even initially presented. My money would be on Romney never being able to do the same thing. I'd be betting on him to have done nothing or gone for the useless but showy no fly zone option--nothing about Mitt suggests creativity. Obama came across in the article just as I had imagined--an honest, intelligent man trying very hard to the right thing.
Maud
I'm eager to read it. I only heard the NPR interview. But what I heard Michael Lewis say gave me the same feeling you report: He is pretty much what I imagined.
ReplyDeleteI was very uncomfortable when he made that acceptance speech election night, 2008, at Grant Park, Chicago. He was standing out there on that stage and all I could think was, "Get off that stage and into some secure studio."
But I guess, as you say, he had already left the gate.
The Southern half of my family (North Carolina) reports all sorts of casual references in public places to killing Obama. If I were chief of his staff, he would never set foot below Northern Virginia. New Hampshire with its free staters--scary enough.