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Obama Owns the Room
Evan Vucci / AP Photo
The president may have struck out in the opening statement of his first major press conference, but then he turned into Babe Ruth.
Barack Obama’s first press conference, like his presidency itself, got off to a bad start. But by the time it concluded, it was clear that America has a real president again.
Obama had to accomplish several goals in his opening remarks. He had to explain the nature of the present economic emergency to the American public. And he had to dispel the impression that he is a weak, Carter-like figure who in the first few weeks of his term has been easily rolled both by Republican enemies and the old bulls of the Democratic Congress.
In his answers to questions, Obama improvised the Rooseveltian Fireside Chat that he should have given earlier in his prepared address.
At first he failed. His prepared remarks were terrible.
He began with the biggest cliché of modern politics—he had met some real Americans, outside the Beltway, and learned from their wisdom. After recounting his photo-op visit to distressed Elkhart, Indiana, the new president then reeled off a list of goals for the stimulus package that sounded more like campaign rhetoric in a high-school gymnasium than a serious plan in the White House: four million jobs, college tax credits, wind turbines, and solar energy.
But the worst was yet to come. Speaking to a nation that longs for leadership, he boasted of bipartisanship, as though anyone cares about process in an emergency. The legislation, the president claimed, was supported by “both the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO…both Democrats and Republicans…” To be sure, the president knew his audience of White House reporters, who share the Beltway subculture’s bizarre obsession with bipartisanship for its own sake. In fact, two of the reporters in the question period earnestly asked whether Obama was being bipartisan enough. (I don’t recall George W. Bush being asked similar questions; perhaps only Democrats are expected to divide the fruits of electoral victory evenly with the party that the voters rejected.)
A viewer who changed the channel after Obama had hurried through his prepared remarks might have had cause for concern about the occupant of the Oval Office. But in the question-and-answer period that followed, a different Obama emerged—a leader whose combination of articulateness, passion and mastery of policy detail is unrivalled among his recent predecessors, with the exception of Bill Clinton.
In his answers to questions, Obama improvised the Rooseveltian Fireside Chat that he should have given earlier in his prepared address. He gave concise and clear explanations, in terms that laymen can understand, of the problems that banks have in evaluating their assets, of the role of the stimulus as part of a larger economic-recovery package, and other complex issues, without being either academic or condescending. He gently mocked do-nothing conservatives, while expressing respect for views different from his own. In style, the contrast with the combination of inarticulateness and irritability of his predecessor could not have been greater.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Going Rogue: The Index
Christopher Buckley's books include Supreme Courtship, The White House Mess, Thank You for Smoking, Little Green Men, and Florence of Arabia. He was chief speechwriter for Vice President George H.W. Bush, and is editor-at-large of ForbesLife magazine. His new book is Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir. Buckley's Daily Beast column is the winner of an Online Journalism Award in the category of Online Commentary.
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Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of The American Way of Strategy. He has been a staff writer or senior editor at the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, the New Republic, and the National Interest.
What He Should Have Said
Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of The American Way of Strategy. He has been a staff writer or senior editor at the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, the New Republic, and the National Interest.
Stop the Democratic Suicide
Michael Lind is the editor of New American Contract at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C., and the author of The American Way of Strategy. He has been a staff writer or senior editor at the New Yorker, Harper’s magazine, the New Republic, and the National Interest.
"Articulateness"?
So much for Mark Lind's vocabulariness.
The suckness of it is astoundingness.
lol at the above comment ...
Articulate (adjective), articulately (adverb), articulateness (noun). At least, you know, if you believe the dictionary.
i believe in science!!
...and the dictionary.
Regardless of what is causing medicare's issues, is it not an entitlement program, and is it not in trouble? why is that dismissed as a republican talking point
Also, I thought he was clear, if not concise, throughout the press conference. How quickly you all have forgotten Bush's bumblings... In comparison Obama is Churchill and Cicero rolled into one.
lefthem
I am in your Amen corner. After 8 years of being unable to parse a single sentence, we are faced with listening to a President speaking our language.
And more shockingly he didn't smirk at us once in the hour.
Pr-esident Obama not only did well on the macro level, he achieved something which I well nigh thought was impossible.
He won over my 85 year-old father.
I know, you don't care about the old boy, he is just another old man with his lifetime's supply of predjudices. But we spoke this morning, and he was telling me how very impressive our new President was in his address to the nation last night.
The reasons do not matter, but I can promise you that if Obama can win over the heart and mind of an old Oklahoman, he is a leader to be respected. My guess is that we are watching unfold, today in real time, a Presidency of a greatness which this country has seen only three times in its history!
"His masterly performance in his first press conference should dispel any anxiety that he was an appealing candidate but not a competent executive"
Seriously Lind? Are you completely incapable of detecting any hint of your complete and utter "buy in" to the cult that surrounds Obama? Have your feet not touched earth yet since the election? I watched the press conference and all I got was that he is long-winded, monotonous to watch, and at times somewhat angry.
I certainly didn't finish watching the rather mundane press conference and come away thinking that he is as brilliant as you think he is.
And, for that matter, I wonder if you were one of the people complaining about George Bush and the partisanship of his administration. Just funny, since you now seem to think that bi-partisanship is overrated.
I am one of those regular Americans out here and I think he did a wonderful job. I pray things work out.
Obama has shown everyone just how wet behind the ears he is.His head swiveled like a terrier watching a tennis ball and his rhetoric was unpresidential... a castastrophe from which we cannot recover unless the citizenry is taxed, taxed, taxed, and the government allowed to grow, grow, grow?
Cut the payroll taxes and stop government growth. It's simple; we don't need another Roosevelt, we need a Reagan.
Can someone please write a story on the petulant questions being asked? Journalists have gotten this presidency off to a rocky start and they need to be held accountable by someone. Framing everything in terms of what Obama made of the news cycle in a given week just exacerbates the fact that we no longer allow administrations do think or act in the long term, at least not ostensibly. I had to leave the room after the first two questions they were so inane. One woman asked if Obama thought was risking his credibility by using such dire languange. Get a clue lady.
"Articulateness" might technically be a word, but it is kind of an ironic word. It is also hard to read.
Lind, you are trying too hard. We get it, you are as nervous as the rest of us that he isn't what we thought he was, but now after proving that he could answer some prepared questions he is clearly Thomas Jefferson and FDR combined. Obama is still not acting like the president of a small business much less the United States. I didn't get over his opening statement as quickly as you did from watching him answer a few questions. There is still something wrong here. The jury is still out on whether or not we have another Carter on our hands.
Another regular American here, college educated, registered Independent. My husband is a Navy fighter pilot, ret., full-time employed, former Republican (Bush years drove him out), now an Independent. We both support our new president, and we're both sick of hearing the same old mindless chants coming from the dug-in right.
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