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The Sin of Dispassion
The curious critiques of Obama's calm
By Bryan Warner
Published: July 16, 2010
RALEIGH - It’s been a greater challenge than was the case with Bill Clinton’s mild corpulence and suspected licentiousness. It’s proven more difficult than with the gift to caricature artists that was George W. Bush.
Whereas the two-dimensional, boilerplate summation of presidents 42 and 43 were solidified before they took the oath of office, comics and pundits have fretted over how number 44 might be reduced to just a few easy-to-lampoon traits.
Barack Obama’s physical appearance provides little fodder. Yes, his ears are a bit protruding, but not to a Perot-like radius. His eloquence is beyond reproach, free of the malapropisms of Bush and void of the occasional longwinded linguistic vanity of Clinton.
It was, after all, at the 1988 Democratic National Convention that then-Gov. Bill Clinton turned his opening-night address into a somnolent droning that brought cheers only when he at long last fell silent. Obama, to the contrary, launched his astonishing rise to the White House with a riveting keynote speech at the 2004 convention.
His keen intellect is without question, having graduated from Harvard and made his career as a professor of constitutional law.
And although his bowling skills were found atrocious in an unfortunate Pennsylvania photo op, and his fondness of arugula a ripe target for charges of elitism, Obama survived his marathon against Hillary Clinton and sprint versus John McCain essentially untethered to any reductive branding.
It took until the 18th month or so of his presidency, but it seems that the attack resonating with the chattering classes is that Obama is scandalously, outrageously, perhaps unforgivably ... calm.
The slight is strange, given that the same equanimity possessed by Obama was hailed as a major advantage in his push for the presidency. McCain’s suspension of campaigning in response to the nation’s economic crisis made the Republican nominee seem mercurial in some eyes. Obama’s serenity belied his relative youth and political inexperience.
However, the clamor of critics assailing Obama’s alleged lack of passion has grown more cacophonous in the wake of the calamitous BP oil spill.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had to convince the press corps that Obama’s jaw was sufficiently clenched in response to the crude crisis. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd found the commander in chief too logical and detached, dubbing him “President Spock” after Star Trek’s stoic half-human, half-Vulcan -- perhaps it was the ears, after all. Obama himself seemed troubled by the criticism, assuring the nation that he would find out “whose [posterior] to kick” for causing the spill.
The volleys against Obama are no more unfair than those leveled against Bush and Clinton. The former was far brighter than the “misunderestimation” of him by foes; the latter was not nearly as rotund as comics claimed (the jokes about a wandering eye, sadly, proved a bit too on target.)
The charge of Obama’s criminal coolness may be unique to this era, a fitting time capsule for our epoch of Oprahtic emotional voyeurism, tell-all books and “reality” television histrionics.
The intimacy between presidents and the People has grown with the rise of technology. Franklin Roosevelt’s voice crackled through the radio like a warm hearth into millions of American homes terrified by the prospects of economic ruin, then attack by foreign hordes. John Kennedy and his beauteous Camelot players beamed into living rooms across the nation as a charming, spectral dinner guest.
And with the growing familiarity afforded by radio, then television and the Internet, there has bred an expectation of heightened emotional connection between the Oval Office and the kitchen table. Bill Clinton told us that he felt our pain. George W. Bush seemed a good guy to grab a beer with.
Although the president has arguably the world’s most daunting job, we seek a sentimental bond with him unlike, say, with our own physician. Seldom do we hear someone complain that the surgeon who removed a cancerous growth didn’t seem “angry enough” about the tumor.
It seems we want our president to be more than a leader, more than a politician. We want him (and someday her) to be our everything -- at once exceptional, yet salt-of-the-earth; displaying a command of the intricacies of international affairs, yet not above pontificating on the latest pop cultural flare up. We want him to be our pal, our dad and our god on Mount Olympus.
Obama has certainly waded into more than a few pop culture rivulets, filling out his NCAA bracket on ESPN and taking sides in the feud between Taylor Swift and Kanye West. And he has done his part to raise expectations of his presidency, declaring that future generations would look back at the night when he secured enough delegates for the Democratic nomination as the very moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
With professed power such as that, it’s no wonder many were left frustrated by the fits and starts of health-care reform. Or by the federal government’s admission that it was left impotent to seal the gash gushing oil from the sea floor, having to rely on BP’s series of outlandish attempts to halt the vile flow.
It’s quite understandable that Americans would be apoplectic by failures to prevent or stop the tragic gulf oil spill. And certainly with the heavy memories of Katrina still vivid in our minds, the seeming ineptitude of the federal government to respond more forcefully and effectively is cause for deep concern. It stands to reason that the president shares our frustration.
But to question if the president is sufficiently “angry” is perhaps a critique reflective not so much of Obama but of our emotive times.