http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124105013014171063.html100 Days: 'Harry, I Have a Gift' If opinion polls were real life, Barack Obama would be walking with the immortals. In polls taken as he headed to his 100th day, his numbers are high and heavenly, cruising on issue after issue at 70-plus percent.
One number in last weekend's Washington Post/ABC poll, however, stands out. On whether he is "willing to listen to different points of view," Mr. Obama elevates into hyperspace, hitting 90%. Just behind is "he understands the problems of people like you," at 73%.
An argument made repeatedly during the campaign by converts to the Obama movement was that this guy simply "gets it." If one pressed the argument deeper into the soil of, say, the high costs of green energy or of federalized health insurance, it seemed the details were beside the point. The remarkable ability to put people around him at ease with the feeling that he "gets it" has brought Mr. Obama to this place and into the high ethers of public approval. Even a doubter can marvel.
Permit a doubter, though, to offer a cautionary tale.Early in the campaign, in January 2007, a New York Times reporter wrote a story about Mr. Obama's time as president of the Harvard Law Review. It was there, the reporter noted, "he first became a political sensation."
Here's why: "Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once." Also: "People had a way of hearing what they wanted in Mr. Obama's words."
Harvard Law Prof. Charles Ogletree told how Mr. Obama spoke on one contentious issue at the law school, and each side thought he was endorsing their view. Mr. Ogletree said: "Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me."
The reason I have never forgotten this article is its last sentence, in which Al Gore's former chief of staff Ron Klain, also of Harvard Law, reflects on the Obama sensation: "The interesting caveat is that is a style of leadership more effective running a law review than running a country."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a book out next week, tells of congratulating freshman Sen. Obama on a phenomenal speech. Without a hint of conceit, Mr. Obama replied, "
Harry, I have a gift."He does.
We know from tradition, though, that when the gods bestow magic on mortals, the gift can also imperil its possessor. The first hint of potential peril in Mr. Obama's gift arrived last week with the confusion over where the president stood on the terrorist interrogation memos and prosecution of former Bush officials. Here, as 19 years ago, many on both sides of a contentious issue who heard him speak thought Mr. Obama agreed with them.First, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Sunday morning there would be no prosecutions of the authors of the Bush interrogation memos. He said this emerged from the president's decision-making process.
Then on Tuesday, Mr. Obama
seemingly reversed Mr. Emanuel (as happened earlier to Larry Summers on bonuses) by saying the prosecution decision belonged to Attorney General Eric Holder. Now it may be true, as many concluded, that Mr. Obama decided to tack left to appease the anti-Bush obsessives, who screamed after the Emanuel remark. Most interesting, though, was an account in this paper of the White House's efforts, "as aides struggled to gain control of the message."
According to the Journal, "Aides said that Mr. Obama's seemingly contradictory remarks were misinterpreted, and that the president's view had been conveyed poorly."
Misinterpreted? Let's look at what he said.
What follows is the Holder-will-decide part of the answer. By my reading,
the first half of it is what the left wanted, and the second half is what conservatives believe. Even inside each side's half, one finds caveats and self-protective hedges:
"
With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."As a general deal, I think that we should be looking forward and not backwards. I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations."The new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests the public did its own translation: 61% oppose the prosecutions.
The Gift has been good for Mr. Obama. But in a
still-dangerous world, in which one's listeners now have names like Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Putin, Hu Jintao, Netanyahu, Sarkozy and Merkel, the costs for the rest of us of being "misinterpreted" for a compulsive lack of clarity could be high.As back in January 2007, the key question remains: Is this Hamlet-like style of leadership suited for conducting the presidency of the United States?
More bluntly, is it leadership?As he heads towards the next 1,300 days, Mr. Obama might consider trying a different gift that served an earlier Democratic president, Harry Truman, quite well once in office: Plain speaking.Write to
henninger@wsj.com **********************************************************************
I will dare to post that in simpler words, it's known as "double-talk" and now that the veil dance of the first 100 days is over, to quote Shakespeare......"sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines".
