Shilling For Your Dollars ... And Votes

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"[O]ne of the great goals of this nation's war is to restore public confidence in the airline industry. It's to tell the traveling public: Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America's great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida."

George W. Bush
Sept. 21, 2001
O'Hare Airport, Chicago

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I guess it's official now. Presidents don't lead anymore. They shill.

Do you remember, a little more than a week after the September 11 attacks, when George W. Bush was in Chicago, and he pleaded with Americans to travel to places like Disney World? The popular rhetoric of the time was aimed at encouraging Americans to spend their money on expensive jewelry, clothes, family vacations, etc. — because, if they didn't, the reasoning went, "the terrorists win."

The idea — and it truly was worthy of Madison Avenue — was that the attacks were all about capitalism and consumerism — the American way of life. And it was the natural extension of the Republicans' simplistic argument — "They hate us for who we are."

Such an assessment defied the only conclusion that could be reached after a logical review of the facts — but it did have a few things going for it. Primarily, it could be boiled down to a simple, memorable phrase that Americans could remember, like "don't ask don't tell" or "just say no."

Never mind that, only a few days before, as he was standing on the South Lawn of the White House, Bush warned that the war on terrorism — which he described, in an unfortunate word choice that conjured up medieval memories for those in the Muslim world, as a "crusade" — was "going to take a while."

On that day in Chicago in September 2001, Bush faced a crisis in the airline industry. Commercial airline travel had been shut down for three days after the terrorist attacks, which had been costly, but business had been shaky before the attacks, and it was really struggling after them.

After seeing the events of September 11 unfold, people were, understandably, jittery about air travel. The demand for tickets plummeted. Airlines were having to cancel flights.

Bush knew that air travel played a key role in economic activity, and he wasn't eager to let the airlines drag the rest of the economy down. So he shilled for the airlines. Things remained bad for the airlines for several months — there was so much unused jet fuel that, by the end of 2001, gas prices had fallen below $1/gallon for the first time in decades — but folks didn't blame Bush for that. It had been the work of those nasty old "evil–doers."

No matter how long it took to wage the war on terrorism, the airline industry — and all the related industries, like hotels and restaurants — needed a boost right away.

Say what you will about the Bush administration — and I've said and/or written most of it before — but he was light years ahead of his successor when it comes to self–serving photo ops.

He was a superior shill.

See, I feel I am witnessing the same kind of thing from the current occupant of the White House — only it has been far less competent. Some people see that as a plus — that Barack Obama is such an amateur at shilling — but the truth is that shilling has become perhaps the primary role of a president.

The Gulf of Mexico is huge. It is the ninth–largest body of water in the world. It took Hurricane Katrina nearly a week to cross it and make landfall in New Orleans. Contrary to what you might have imagined, the Gulf isn't one big oil slick.

That doesn't mean that three months of constant flow of crude oil into the waters of the Gulf didn't take their toll.

Certainly, the oil has created an environmental catastrophe that will be decades in repairing. People are staying away from the Gulf. The many Gulf businesses that depend on tourism are struggling, even if they are a great distance from the actual location of the oil spill — and the Florida Panhandle is not far. Many of the people there truly are suffering.

That suffering can't be blamed on the previous administration, but it's still a threat to the economy, and Obama seems to be intent on nipping it in the bud. Maybe he thinks there are still votes to be won for this November's midterm elections.

Oh, he warned everybody that there was a long slog ahead. "Our job is not finished," he said yesterday, promising that the work would go on until the job was done. It was meant to reassure the folks on the coast, whose jobs are now at risk because the tourists aren't flocking to the beaches — and who might be thinking about voting against the Democrats in November because they're tired and angry and frustrated and they need to lash out at someone.

I'm more inclined to think this is about 2012 than 2010 — unless Obama is still harboring fantasies about avoiding midterm losses this year.

And I don't believe he is naive enough to think that his constant slide in the polls can be reversed in time to make a difference in November.

Anyway, there was a lot of talk about how Obama and his daughter went for a dip in the Gulf of Mexico. But it wasn't seen by anyone who could verify it independently. CNN reports that no press cameras were on hand to record the symbolic swim, but, lucky us, the White House's photographers apparently were there.

Well, a photo of the president and his daughter in some water was promptly circulated. The non–verbal message? Come to the Gulf of Mexico. The water's fine. The food is great. The beaches are as white as sugar. Come to the Gulf and spend your money.

I hate to be a party pooper, but there is nothing in the picture that could possibly confirm where it was taken. Not to go all "Capricorn One" on you, but suspicious minds might surmise that the Obamas went ahead with their original plans to visit Martha's Vineyard, and that the picture was actually taken at one of the exclusive/private swimming holes in Massachusetts.

Water is water, right?

Now, why, you may ask, were no press reporters there? Obama had an answer for that. "I'm not going to let you guys take a picture of me with my shirt off," he said. "You guys will tease me just like last time. I was on the front page ... People commenting."

So the president wanted to help the Gulf economy — but he was sensitive about being teased. You know, most of us got over that when we were still in elementary school.

I'm not suggesting that this was staged. But photo ops that can be that easily questioned won't achieve their primary objective, which is to be of some benefit to the person(s) in the picture.

Just sayin' that the symbolic swim should have been witnessed by some folks who aren't on the White House payroll — because whoever arranged for this photo op really dropped the ball.

And maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the Obamas have tried to keep their children out of the spotlight whenever possible. And that really has seemed to be typical of all the presidential families in my lifetime. But this time, the president apparently had no trouble using one of his daughters as his prop.

Perhaps, in spite of his protests, he is influenced by polls, like the AP/GfK poll that shows Democrats losing the allegiance of independents, who played an important role in the sweeping Democratic triumphs of 2008.

Those voters, report Alan Fram and Trevor Tompson of the Associated Press, have shown "especially strong concerns about the economy, with 9 in 10 calling it a top problem and no other issue coming close." But they have seen little improvement and little indication that the administration is doing anything to create jobs or prevent further job losses.

Perhaps Obama feels some pressure to shill for those who depend on the sand and the sea of the Gulf for their livelihoods — because it's entirely possible that he is going to want their help in a couple of years.

A Black Rain's Gonna Fall

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"And what'll you do now, my blue–eyed son?
And what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a–goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a–fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest dark forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
And the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and speak it and think it and breathe it,
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it,
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a–gonna fall."

Bob Dylan
(Emphasis added)

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When you look at the video of the oil that is pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from the sea floor, it is rolling, boiling, raging, furious, like the nuclear clouds that swirled above two Japanese cities 65 years ago this summer.

But when it reaches the surface and, then, the coastline, the oil is in globs — the embodiment of Dylan's "pellets of poison ... flooding [the] waters" nearly 50 years after he penned that phrase.

As I understand it, Dylan wrote the song during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and its symbolism was intended for the Cold War age and a nearly unimaginable nuclear war. But it has been two decades since communism's collapse left the Soviet Union in tatters. The nuclear threat still lives. The Soviet Union does not.

Yes, nuclear disaster will always be a possibility as long as any nuclear weapons exist. But even when the Soviet Union and the United States had their missiles aimed at each other, a more insidious threat was growing like a cancer.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union — and, even, to a degree, in the years before — oil emerged as a threat in so many ways.

It is only common sense to conclude that there must be at least some truth to the claims that the poisonous gases being belched into the air have affected the global climate. It may not be quite as dire as some alarmists have suggested, but that doesn't make the conclusion less valid, just less vivid.

So the air that we all breathe must be affected — to a certain degree. And so, too, it could be argued, is the rest of the natural world because, once the oxygen (and/or the water) has been altered, even if it is in minor ways, the entire ecosystem is affected and must adjust.

In such adjustments is the reality of evolution. I am not a scientist, but I presume that life on this planet has always been at the mercy of one thing or another — asteroids, earthquakes, hurricanes, plagues, etc.. The species that couldn't "roll with the changes" (as a song from my teen years urged) disappeared. That was what happened to the dinosaurs and most of the species that have lived on this planet.

But not man. Not yet.

There was a time when oil propelled civilization forward into an industrial age that meant better lives for everyone, but it seemed to reach a point of diminishing returns some time ago. We've known all along that oil was a nonrenewable energy source. The fact that there was a limited supply of oil should have inspired man from the beginning to develop other sources of energy to accomplish the many tasks oil increasingly was expected to achieve.

Maybe, in the beginning, there were those who could anticipate a time when the world would run out of oil. But they lacked the technology to seek its successor. Now that we have the technology, we are at the mercy of those who control the funds.

There was a time when it seems wars were fought for many reasons. In the last couple of decades, it seems all our wars are fought over the land beneath which a fortune in oil can be found. There may be side issues — religious, cultural, what have you — but when you get right down to it, oil (or, rather, the possession of it) is at the heart of armed conflict in the 21st century.

There are many reasons why the United States would be wise to free itself of its addiction to oil.

I say that in large part because the oil spewing into the Gulf is one of those events by which Americans judge the effectiveness of their leaders. Obama has made several trips to the Gulf region. He has addressed the nation about it (during which he spent much of his time talking about the need for alternative energy sources).

What else can he do? wonder his supporters, who no doubt wish the spill would go away. Many of them seem to comprehend the threat this catastrophe poses to the president and his legislative agenda. But they seem powerless — not unlike Obama himself — to do anything about it.

And so the image of an irresolute president is born. I have my own issues with that, not the least of which is that it isn't true. But perception is reality.

It reminds me of a great line from the 1981 film "Absence of Malice," in which a reporter (Sally Field) has a relationship with a liquor distributor (Paul Newman). Field implicates Newman in the disappearance of a local labor leader in an article she writes. When their relationship is exposed, Field's newspaper has to write an article about it, and one of the reporters is dispatched to interview Field.

Field is asked to describe the relationship. "Just say we were involved," she says haltingly. "That's true, isn't it?" the reporter asks. "No," Field replies, "but it's accurate."

(As someone who has worked for newspapers, that would be my verdict on how well the film portrayed the men and women who work for daily newspapers and the journalism profession itself — it wasn't true, but it was accurate.)

I guess that is how I feel about Obama's handling of the oil spill. It isn't his fault. And I'm sorry there are other pre–existing problems that are demanding their fair share of attention, like high unemployment and two wars, and potential problems, like predictions of an unusually active hurricane season, that may yet develop. But that is the way the presidency is. The American people judge a president's effectiveness by how he performs when he has to juggle chainsaws, not nerfballs.

To this point, Obama probably has been as effective as he can be. His problem, I think, is that expectations were unrealistic, although hardly surprising considering how he was presented to the voters. So, in that context, if someone said to me, "Is it true that Obama has been ineffective?" I would have to reply, "No, but it's accurate."

I read, in the Wall Street Journal, that a poll it conducted with NBC News indicates that "grave and growing concerns about the Gulf oil spill" have left Americans "more pessimistic about the state of the country and less confident in President Barack Obama's leadership than at any point since Mr. Obama entered the White House."

OK, the Wall Street Journal has never been one of Obama's fans.

And it quotes a Republican pollster who reminds everyone that voter attitudes are typically set by June of any election year.

But that is merely conventional wisdom. Considering the source, it may seem partisan, but that is primarily because it doesn't favor the majority party. It seldom does. Ordinarily, it takes something very dramatic — usually an international crisis — to reverse such a trend.

And that could happen this year. Based on what the WSJ is reporting, Obama the pragmatist needs to hope that something dramatic does happen.

Because "[i]t would take an enormous and seismic event to change the drift of these powerful forces before November," the GOP pollster told the WSJ.

This isn't foolproof — far too many things can happen between now and November — but Obama had better hope that the oil spill gets resolved soon, and he'd better be prepared for anything else that might come along.

The things that eventually bring down presidencies — like "third–rate" burglaries, hostage situations and broken tax increase pledges — seldom seem big enough at first glance.

But they loom large in the rearview mirror.

Message: I Care

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"You cannot be president of the United States if you don't have faith. Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial and the Civil War and all that stuff. You can't be. And we are blessed. So don't feel sorry for — don't cry for me, Argentina. Message: I care."

George H.W. Bush
41st president

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Do you remember when the first President Bush was facing an unexpected challenge within his own party while the Democrats were uniting behind a charismatic Southern governor and a Texas billionaire was urging disgruntled Americans to sign petitions that would get his independent candidacy on the ballot in every state?

It was 1992, and Bush was speaking to some insurance employees in New Hampshire at the time. He had been criticized for seeming detached from the American people, and his advisers, who had been struggling to find a strategy to counter that perception, inserted a cue card in his remarks that said, "Message: I care."

It was intended as a prompt for Bush to ad lib something, tell a story, connect with people and assure them that, yes, he really did care about them and their problems.

But he read the cue card word for word, which only reinforced the public's perception of a detached, elitist president. He lived down to the public's expectation of him.

Now, it isn't my intention to suggest that Barack Obama is as clueless as Bush certainly seemed to be on that occasion. But I still got the feeling as I watched Obama's speech last night that this was his "Message: I care" moment.

Because it seems to me that the lesson of the original "Message: I care" moment — and all the subsequent "Message: I care" moments — is that there are times when a president absolutely must give the public what it needs — even if it isn't what he wants to do. And, yet, he proceeds to give them the opposite of what they need — perhaps because he knows no other way.

In 1992, the public needed a president who clearly cared, but all Bush's gaffe did was confirm for the voters that he really was as out of touch as he appeared to be. He reconfirmed that impression later that year when, during one of his debates with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, the camera caught him looking at his watch while Clinton was answering a question.

And it was over for the elder Bush. Game, set, match.

In many ways, Obama's speech last night was a "Message: I care" moment.

It's been nearly two months since oil started gushing into the Gulf. Over and over, in the last several days, I have heard people speak in anticipation of Obama's speech. We know what happened, and we know who is to blame, people said. We don't need to be told what happened. We see it every night on our TVs. Tell us what the plan is to stop the flow of oil and clean up the oil that's out there.

But Obama insisted on recapping what had happened, anyway.

To his credit, he did spend some time talking about the plan of action. But, as Andrew Malcolm observed in the Los Angeles Times, "that early portion of the address was robotic, lacked real energy, enthusiasm. And worst of all specifics. He was virtually detail–less."

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"Obama was like a Harvard–trained nurse talking vacation to a new patient bleeding all over the ER floor. Hello, could we please stop the blood flow here before we discuss the long–term recovery?"

Andrew Malcolm
Los Angeles Times

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How could that be? The news was full of reports yesterday about how much more oil was being released into the Gulf waters every day than anyone had believed.

It seems clear that BP was, indeed, guilty of reckless behavior. But, as the Boston Herald wrote, there was "convincing evidence" of the absence of "an early coordinated response to protect the coastline." Consequently, "while the president tried to convince a skeptical nation that he was indeed in charge now, this was too little, too late."

OK, a convincing argument can be made that the Herald has never really been in Obama's corner. It was, after all, one of the newspapers that endorsed John McCain in 2008. But the thing about the "Message: I care" moment is that a president isn't just criticized by his foes but also, however offhandedly, by his friends.

And one of Obama's friends, the New York Times, wrote, "We know that the country is eager for reassurance. We're not sure the American people got it from a speech that was short on specifics and devoid of self–criticism."

Maureen Dowd, who writes for the Times, just can't seem to break that tendency to fawn over Obama even when she scolds him.

But scold him she did.

"Of the many exciting things about Barack Obama's election, one was the anticipation of a bracing dose of normality in the White House," she writes. "So it's unnerving now to have yet another president elevating personal quirks into a management style. How can a man who was a dazzling enough politician to become the first black president at age 47 suddenly become so obdurately self–destructive about politics?"

Personally, I would argue that it wasn't as "sudden" as Dowd seems to think. That conclusion seems particularly baffling to me when I read what Dowd observes next — how his "emotional detachment" has "obscured his vision."

Frankly, it astonishes me when I hear people speaking of Obama's detachment as if it is a new thing. I've seen it in his response to the burgeoning epidemic of unemployment that has wrecked millions of lives. The fact that he seems detached when dealing with another catastrophe that threatens millions all along the Gulf coast is not a surprise to me.

What does surprise me is that a bright, articulate, Harvard–educated president doesn't get that there are times when a president must prioritize. We can hold BP accountable after we plug the hole and start cleaning up the mess in the Gulf. We can devote money and manpower to developing better energy sources once this crisis is over.

Until then, this disaster in the Gulf is plenty big enough to keep us busy.

Obama was "not particularly inspiring," said the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, which endorsed Obama in 2008 but can't quite seem to shake that decision, even though it feels compelled to proclaim that Obama "offered more than rhetoric."

Indeed? Well, the St. Petersburg Times also seemed to agree with Malcolm that Obama was short on specifics.

"[A]n anxious American public wanted to know, HOW are you going to accomplish all this?" Malcolm wrote.

But Obama spent half of his address — his first from the Oval Office — lecturing his listeners about the need to explore alternative energy sources.

Is Obama right that this is something America needs to discuss? Yes. Is it something that America has needed to do for a long, long time? Yes. Is it appropriate to be talking about it now? No.

Leadership? Or Showmanship?

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Barack Obama plans to address the nation tomorrow night about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The speech is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. (Central), after Obama returns from a two–day visit to Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, the president's fourth trip to the region since the oil rig exploded in April and triggered the events with which Obama and the government's emergency responders have been trying to deal ever since. It is said Obama will speak for about 15 minutes about the disaster.

This is a pivotal moment in the Obama presidency.

After nearly eight weeks of this, Americans have a general idea what's happening, and they don't want to hear an update. Well, that isn't entirely true, I guess. They'd like it just fine if Obama could tell them exactly how much oil is pouring into the Gulf every day. There seems to be a distinct discrepancy between BP's figures and everyone else's.

Beyond that, though, they've got a pretty good handle on what's happening. What they want to know is the course of action that will be taken.

What sacrifice, if any, will be asked of them?

Personally, I feel that was one of the great failings of the Bush administration. After the attacks of September 11, the country was in a common cause frame of mind and would have been responsive to a presidential call for a shared sacrifice — but Bush told a few Americans to prepare for war, and he told the rest of us to go shopping.

Would it have been necessary for American troops to remain in Afghanistan as long as they have if all Americans, those at home as well as those in uniform, had been urged to make a common sacrifice for a common objective?

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"Americans need to know that Mr. Obama, whose coolness can seem like detachment, is engaged. This is not a mere question of presentation or stagecraft, although the White House could do better at both. (We cringed when he told the 'Today' show that he had spent important time figuring out 'whose ass to kick' about the spill. Everyone knew that answer on Day 2.)"

New York Times

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Perhaps in the early days of his presidency, when Obama's approval rating hovered at astonishing heights — and at a point in his term when, technically, there was nothing (or, at least, very little) of which to approve or disapprove — Americans, many of whom appeared weary after eight years of George W. Bush's mangled syntax, were content to listen in admiration, as they had during the presidential campaign, to Obama's smooth oratory.

But those days are gone. The bloom is off the rose. So, to borrow a phrase from Joe Friday, just give us the facts.

There is a symbolic quality to this that is hard to measure. When a president engages in straight talk with the American people about a particularly vexing problem, he enlists their service in solving it. There is an incalculable value in that, but what it comes down to is this: people like to feel like they are part of the process.

Actually, a character like Joe Friday, from a popular TV series, provides an apt analogy for the Obama administration — in truth, for any administration. Modern Americans see their president on TV every day. For a time, they are enthralled, but there comes a point when they become disenchanted. When that happens, the negative perception begins to harden, and it requires something really dramatic to alter the downward trajectory.

You could say that John F. Kennedy reached a similar point in 1962, the second year of his presidency, when U.S. surveillance revealed that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. When Kennedy addressed the nation, he didn't offer flowery language. He didn't try to impress the voters with his vocabulary and his extensive education. He told the American people how dire the situation was and enlisted their cooperation.

Engage us, Mr. President.

An Instinctive Response

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"May God stand between you and harm, in all the dark places you may travel."

Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty

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Each president carves out his own niche, based on his personality and his individual style.

He is elected to face the next four years as leader of the American people — who expect him to do so in his own way (although there are certain things that are expected of every president).

If the voters approve, the president usually is re–elected. If they don't, he might still be re–elected, but he's going to have to work a lot harder.

Which will be true of Barack Obama?

I don't know. A majority of Americans apparently liked what they saw in 2008 — but that was back in the days when many Americans didn't know nearly as much about him as they will by 2012, when they will have seen him on their TV screens every day for more than three years.

You really get to know someone you see every day, and this constant exposure has been the undoing of some presidents. Familiarity, don't you know, breeds contempt.

And it focuses attention like a laser beam on those traits with which people just aren't terribly comfortable. For example, have you ever been in a relationship in which one of you snored? The one who snored may have possessed several fine and endearing qualities, but the many positives may have been outweighed by the single negative.

Anyway, I realize that those comfort boundaries vary from person to person, but I'm seeing some things from the president in this Gulf oil spill crisis that I find unsettling — and unsettlingly familiar. And I wonder how many other people feel that way, too.

Let's get some perspective first.

Go back a couple of years to the presidential campaign, when Obama frequently spoke of eight years of "failed" Bush policies. Well, that's the kind of thing the opposition is expected to say during the heat of a campaign, and the circumstances surrounding the general election campaign were ideal for that kind of criticism.

And if any presidency in modern times deserved to be labeled a failure, the Bush administration did.

But when you've won the election and you take office, it's time to stop campaigning and start governing.

Oh, and you also take ownership of what has already happened (because the voters chose you to deal with it) — and responsibility for whatever will happen in the next four years (because voters deemed you more capable). It's part of the deal.

Now, I know that, in today's world, the campaign never really ends.

But crude oil started spewing into the Gulf when the offshore rig exploded in April. It is now June. I find it troubling that, when Obama spoke of the subject recently, he placed at least as much emphasis on fixing blame as fixing the problem, saying that he wants to know "whose ass to kick."

Obama won't be running for a second term for two more years, and this is the kind of crisis a president can use to make his case for re–election (if everything works out) — but this president acts like he's thrown in the towel on this problem and is focusing on his case for pointing fingers. I suppose that "ass" remark was his attempt to provide some of that macho swagger that lots of people (even some of his critics) admired about George W. Bush.

I know it must be frustrating for Obama. Bush certainly deserved to be blamed for much of the mess that was waiting for Obama after he took the oath of office. But he can't be plausibly blamed for something that happened more than a year after he left the presidency.

And that leaves Obama with a different problem. Who can be blamed?

This problem is a big one. Millions of lives and hundreds, if not thousands, of cities and towns hang in the balance. And I agree that, ultimately, at some point, someone's head must roll.

But obsessing about it now indicates to me that Obama does things in reverse order. Maybe that is his instinctive response.

If it is, I can sympathize — sort of. I remember when I was in ninth grade, and my algebra teacher gave me a problem to do. I went up to the board and did it in reverse order. I got the same result as those who did it correctly and in the correct order. I just did mine backwards.

I remember my teacher watching me with a puzzled look on her face, then, when I was done, she asked me, "Why did you do it that way?" I confessed that I did not know. It was just easier for me.

Well, it's one thing to do an algebra problem in reverse when you're 15 years old. It's quite another to be worrying about who to blame for something that could wreak such havoc in so many lives for so many years — when the problem hasn't been resolved.

This, it seems to me, is characteristic of Obama. Before becoming president, he had no experience in executive problem solving. That doesn't make him unique. But that may help to explain some things.

Perhaps, because of the times in which his presidential campaign was waged, Obama got the idea that being president was about two things — blaming someone else when things went wrong and making sure you get credit for showing up when things do go wrong, even if you don't provide a solution or, for that matter, much leadership.

I became accustomed to this approach from the start, when the Democratic Party's congressional lackeys boasted that they were "the jobs squad" after working out a compromise of the economic stimulus package. But when the jobs failed to materialize as advertised, they resorted to the pass–the–buck strategy. That mess we inherited was worse than we thought, they whined.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans who were employed the day Obama was sworn in joined the ranks of the jobless — and statistics suggest that many have remained there. We miscalculated, they said, and then they turned their attention to a Supreme Court nomination that was never in doubt and health care reform that won't begin to go into effect for several years.

I had a hard time swallowing that one. Obama was quite vocal in the fall of 2008 about his concerns for the U.S. economy. We were headed for a second Great Depression if we elected John McCain, voters were warned.

The scare tactics worked. A race that had been close before the economic implosion turned into a borderline landslide.

Now, certainly, there are things that candidates don't know — and won't know until they are approved by the voters and the transition process begins. But it seems to me that it's kind of hard to make a convincing case that you didn't comprehend how bad the economy really was when you used that kind of rhetoric to be elected.

Recent job gains notwithstanding, the stimulus has yet to create jobs at the rate this country needs. Yet, every time that I have heard a congressional Democrat asked in the last 16 months what was being done to create jobs, the response has begun with "Well, this is Bush's fault ..."

I know I can't speak for everyone, but, as one of the unemployed, my (typically mental) response has been "let's fix the problem."

But nearly every word I hear uttered from Obama's defenders is about blame. Not responsibility. Not what is being done to correct the problem. Blame.

Obama doesn't rely on blame as much as his supporters do, but he works his way into that fairly regularly — and subtly — nonetheless. Sometimes it comes in the form of Obama codespeak — "This problem was years in the making" so therefore it will take years to repair.

And sometimes it is implied. Obama doesn't seem to like discussing unemployment. He does it when he has to, like on the first Friday of each month, but not always. Last year, for example, I criticized him on Labor Day for failing to speak publicly about joblessness on that occasion.

I have often thought that Obama simply does not know what to do about unemployment. And I don't fault him for that. It's a daunting problem. There's no doubt it was daunting for FDR. And I suppose, if I were president, I would be tempted to do as Obama has done and quietly hope the problem resolves itself.

But I'm not the president — and FDR knew it was the most urgent problem his administration faced.

And I am certainly not the only one who thinks it is the most urgent problem this administration faces. Obama likes to present himself as proactive, but, truthfully, there is little a president can do to heal an ailing economy. He can encourage policies he believes will help but not much more than that.

I'm sure he feels a sense of outrage that is compounded by the problem in the Gulf, but he may also, as CNN's John Blake writes, be resisting the temptation to be the "angry black man" — because that is an image that many voters find disturbing.

If a president's skilled in the role of Empathizer–in–Chief, which Obama is not, he can address the unemployed in a heartfelt way and assure the voters he is doing everything he can to help them — even if he's really just blowing smoke.

Last week's jobs report gave the administration plenty of smoke to blow, but Bob Herbert of the New York Times saw through it.

"[T]he No. 1 problem facing the U.S. continues to fester," he writes, "and that problem is unemployment."

Whoa, that can't be right, I can hear the Obama defenders saying. Nearly half a million jobs were created in May.

Ah, the deception of numbers. "The government hired 411,000 workers to help with the census," points out Herbert, "but those jobs are temporary and will vanish in a few months." The private sector, meanwhile, turned in a "dismal performance," creating only 41,000 jobs in May.

And oil continues to pour into the waters of the Gulf as it has for more than 50 days.

There was a wonderfully understated — yet, at the same time, so telling — moment in "Thirteen Days," the 2000 big–screen dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In a conversation with presidential assistant Kenny O'Donnell, President Kennedy says, "I thought there'd be more good days."

I don't know if Kennedy actually said that or if it was a piece of manufactured dialogue, but it would be an appropriate thing for the current president to say. I certainly couldn't fault Obama for bemoaning the fact that there haven't been more good days in his presidency.

Presidencies can be like that, one crisis after another, irrespective of the president's strengths and weaknesses — which brings me to my reason for opening this post with a quote from the 18th Egyptian dynasty.

More than 1,000 years before the birth of Christ, the 18th dynasty ruled Egypt. It may be the most famous dynasty of all, having included King Tut as one of its pharaohs, but I don't think it was responsible for any great achievement — like the construction of the Egyptian pyramids — of which people continue to speak in hushed tones today.

The 18th dynasty appears to have had some fine intellects, though, one of whom (whose name is lost to antiquity) conceived the blessing that is reproduced at the start of this post.

Obama, too, possesses a fine intellect. And, when he began his quest for the presidency, I'm sure he envisioned something entirely different from what has transpired in his first 16 months as president.

But it's what it is.

Obama may find himself traveling in many dark places in the next couple of years. And, whether he leaves behind an achievement that people are still talking about 3,000 years from now or not, I hope that, as he travels to those dark places, God does, in the words of the Egyptian dynasty's blessing, stand between him and harm.

The C Word

The "C" in "C word" doesn't stand for "color" — although I have no doubt that there are those among the Obama apologists who wish it did because that would be something their hero could blame that is beyond his control.

The "C" doesn't even stand for "conference" — as in "press conference," which is something Obama can control, and it's a good thing he held one on Thursday.

I say that not only because it is essential for a president to keep the country informed when the greatest disaster of its kind is happening in the Gulf of Mexico — which it is — but also because, as Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway reminded readers on Tuesday, the president's last press conference was nearly a year ago.

On that memorable occasion, Obama criticized the Cambridge, Mass., police for responding to a citizen's complaint and arresting a black man, who turned out to be a noted Harvard professor, for breaking into his own home.

It was also held during prime time, whereas Thursday's soiree was in the afternoon (and, presumably, drew a smaller audience). So, like Roger Maris' single–season home run record, I guess an asterisk is needed — because the clock is still running on Obama's streak between prime time press conferences.

Will the streak live for a year? Less than eight weeks to go. Does anyone know the Vegas odds?

The president pledged an open and accessible presidency, and, in fairness, he has been accessible for one–on–one interviews with some members of the press, usually the ones whose employers already have shown themselves to be editorially sympathetic to Obama's agenda.

A president has many ways of communicating with the people — and, since the Kennedy presidency, the televised press conference has been one of the most effective ways of explaining policy. Not all presidents have excelled at the give and take with the press (JFK did set that bar pretty high), but the nine men who succeeded Kennedy (including Obama — because, after all, no matter how many one–on–one interviews a president does, there's nothing more American, more democratic than an open press conference in which a dozen or more people get the chance to ask the president a question in front of a national TV audience) have utilized it.

In spite of his much–publicized oratorical skills, Obama has been reluctant to hold press conferences. He got off to a rather fast start, holding monthly press conferences in the first couple of months, but the pace of his press conferences seemed to taper off after his faux pas about his bowling skills and the Special Olympics — and was nonexistent after the Sotomayor confirmation hearings last summer.

No, the "C" in "C word" clearly doesn't stand for "press conference" — although maybe it does qualify as a word for which this White House has little fondness. After all, Obama could have used the occasion of Labor Day to hold a press conference and reassure unemployed Americans, who saw their ranks swell by nearly 250,000 the month before, but he did not.

Perhaps he didn't hold a press conference on Labor Day because he was too busy putting the finishing touches on the speech he was scheduled to give to America's schoolchildren the next day.

Or maybe he was too tired after traveling to Cincinnati to give a speech on health care reform on Labor Day.

Well, that's ancient history now, I suppose.

I guess the "C" in "C word" could stand for "crude," as in crude oil. Alphabetically, of course, it could — and perhaps that would be appropriate, given that, during Thursday's press conference, Obama told America that "[rapid response] has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred" more than a month ago.

Perhaps it was just coincidental that, as Obama was saying that, in my mind's eye, I saw the mayor from "Jaws" telling the sheriff "it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, 'Huh? What?' You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July."

No, actually, the "C word" is "competence." Sometimes it is expressed directly. Sometimes it is implied.

But that is the buzzword I have been reading and hearing lately. And, upon reflection, it does seem to me that, if it was fair to use that as the standard by which to judge George W. Bush's handling of Hurricane Katrina or Jimmy Carter's handling of Three–Mile Island, it's fair in this case as well.

At first, I guess I tended to brush off criticism as more from the sour grapes crowd. In fact, I think the first article I saw was a double whammy — a column from former Reagan speech writer Peggy Noonan in the Rupert Murdoch–owned Wall Street Journal.

"He was supposed to be competent," moaned the headline on Noonan's column, and I almost didn't bother to read what she had written. But then I did, and I couldn't help admitting there were times when I felt she might be on to something. Like:

• when she started with the observation that "[t]his is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office. And they were all, as they say, unforced errors, meaning they were shaped by the president's political judgment and instincts."


• or when she wrote that Obama "continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen. ... [H]e has not, almost from the day he was inaugurated, been in sync with the center. The heart of the country is thinking each day about A, B and C, and he is thinking about X, Y and Z. They're in one reality, he's in another."
  
  Kind of like that Labor Day thing I mentioned earlier. Seems like an obvious time for a president who is presiding over a nation reeling from an economic crisis to hold a press conference on job creation. And maybe, I mused at the time, that is precisely why he did not hold a press conference. Too obvious. Style would be critiqued with no attention given to substance. The spin would be all about politics.
  
  Well, I mused that at the time. But I never really believed it.
  
  Anyway, the days after Labor Day turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months. At some point, it became obvious that the press conference on joblessness — which, for months, has been getting the top spot in polls about Americans' No. 1 concern — wasn't coming, that Obama hadn't merely been playing pre–emptive politics by not addressing the issue on Labor Day.


• or when Noonan complained that Obama "repeatedly took refuge in factual minutiae," observing that his professorial demeanor "made him seem like someone who won't see the big picture."
  
  His tendency to lecture isn't too appealing, either.


• or the thing that seems so incredible to so many people — "the way both BP and the government, 40 days in, continue to act shocked, shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If you're drilling for oil in the deep sea, of course something terrible can happen, so you have a plan on what to do when it does.
  
  "How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc, so inadequate, so embarrassing? We're plugging it now with tires, mud and golf balls?"

Peter Wehner also has ties to previous Republican administrations, so you've got to consider the source, but I am compelled to admit that he puts his finger on a problem I have seen in not only Obama but also his most strident supporters.

"Obama is among the most thin–skinned presidents we have had," Wehner writes for Politics Daily. "In Obama's eyes, he is always the aggrieved, always the violated, always the victim of some injustice. He is America's virtuous and valorous hero, a man of unusually pure motives and uncommon wisdom, under assault by the forces of darkness."

It all has a Nixonian feel to it, doesn't it? And, in a telling observation, Wehner writes, "When arrogant men lose control of events it can easily lead to feelings of isolation, to striking out at critics, to bullying opponents, and to straying across lines that should not be crossed."

Shades of Watergate, for sure.

Then Wehner makes another point: "With Obama there is also the compulsive need to admonish others, to point fingers, to say that the problems he faces are not of his doing." He's been president for 16 months now, and he continues to blame his predecessor for everything. I gather, from what I see in the polls and in the primaries that have been held so far, that it's wearing thin, even with those who bent over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Last week, Obama spoke in the Rose Garden of the "cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill." Wasn't 16 months enough time to do something — or at least get started on something — about that cozy relationship?

Wehner concludes that Obama "was as unprepared to be president as any man in our lifetime" and he is "overmatched by events."

As I said, you can make a case for disregarding such thoughts from Noonan and Wehner. They have reputations as being among Obama's loyal opposition.

It isn't so easy to overlook what Charles Blow of the New York Times writes.

"People needed to be assured that Obama possessed three basic presidential traits: being informed, engaged and empathetic," says Blow.

• "As for the first trait, he was superb as always. I think amassing facts is his idea of being warm and fuzzy."


• "On the second, he was a bit wobbly."


• "On the third point, empathy, Obama came up short."

And empathy is one of those things Americans want to see in their presidents. Even if there isn't a damn thing the president can do — and there often isn't — people like to know that a president, in Bill Clinton's famous words, feels their pain.

Obama often seems to be above their pain.

The Things With Feathers

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"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops — at all

"And sweetest — in the Gale — is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm

"I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb — of Me."

Emily Dickinson

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I've had many thoughts as the enormity of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico has become apparent.

Some of my thoughts are relevant, and, I suppose, others are tangential.

• One thought I have been having pertains to religious conversations I had with an acquaintance in college.
  
  Now, when it comes to matters of faith, I suppose I'm like a lot of people. There are some things that I believe, and there are other things of which I'm not so sure. And that, I suppose, is what keeps bringing me back to my church, even if I have been away for awhile — a desire to sort them out.
  
  At this stage of my life, there are many things of which I am not certain. But when I was in college, I believed I knew most of the answers. I didn't, of course, but I thought I did.
  
  And this acquaintance was convinced that he, too, had all the answers — about God and the afterlife and the existence of hell and the certainty of the end times as described in the Book of Revelation. His answers weren't like mine, though, and he apparently decided it was his obligation to "save" me.
  
  Problem was, I didn't think I needed to be saved. The mean and vengeful God he kept describing sounded nothing like what my parents had always told me about God. So I defended my image of a loving and compassionate God. And he defended his image of fire and brimstone and eternal damnation. Neither of us budged an inch.
  
  Ultimately, I suppose, we decided to agree to disagree, and we went our separate ways. He probably thought I was a lost cause, doomed to hell, and maybe he was right.
  
  I know I'm not as convinced about some things now as I was then, but one thing that I still believe that I believed in my college days is that humans are obliged to be good stewards of this planet.
  
  We are so obliged because, of all the creatures on earth, we are the smart ones. Every other creature on this planet does things to satisfy its needs without giving any thought to the consequences to others. But only man's activities can completely alter an ecosystem.
  
  And man knows it.
  
  We aren't necessarily superior. But it is humans' ability to think and to reason that sets them apart from all the other creatures."[W]hy did God plague us with the power to think?" asked Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind." "What other merit have we? The elephant is larger, the horse is swifter and stronger, the butterfly is more beautiful, the mosquito is more prolific, even the simple sponge is more durable. Or does a sponge think?"
  
  Like Matthew Harrison Brady, I do not know if a sponge thinks. I doubt it. But, if it does, its reasoning cannot possibly be worse than the reasoning of those who found ways to cut corners — and allow man's lust for oil to jeopardize the Gulf of Mexico and all the wildlife who live in and around it.
  
  If there is a hell, surely there is a place in it that is being held for those who allowed this catastrophe to occur.


• I also have been thinking of times I spent on the Gulf coast. I was thinking of one year in particular — which year it was escapes me at the moment, but I'm guessing that I was about 14 or 15 at the time — when our family went to South Padre Island for Christmas, then drove north by northeast until we got to New Orleans and went to the Sugar Bowl.
  
  In those days, my family had one of those tent trailers, and we often slept in it when we went on trips, but, for some reason, as we made our way along the Louisiana coast, we stayed overnight in a very basic travel lodge. The rooms weren't very fancy, but they were roomy enough for a family of four, and they had their own stoves so we could cook our meals there.
  
  I can remember the seawater smell of the harbor that was a short walk from the place where we stayed, and I can remember tasting that smell in the fresh (and dirt cheap) shrimp we bought from the local fishermen. I always loved my mother's cooking — but what she was able to do with that fresh shrimp, some rice and some canned vegetables (plus a few well–chosen spices) simply defied belief.
  
  And I wonder what this oil spill is going to mean to fresh Gulf seafood.
  
  Will future generations be able to enjoy the pleasure of fresh Gulf shrimp?


• Several years later, I went on a trip with my mother to Biloxi, Miss. She loved to jump the waves in the ocean — no matter how old she got, she became almost childlike when she was near the sea — and for some reason the two of us decided to go to Biloxi one summer. I was living in Arkansas, and Mom was living in Texas. We saw each other so rarely that I guess we just decided to take a little trip together.
  
  So we got a motel room on the beach and spent a few days breathing the Gulf air and jumping the waves. At night, we dined on fresh seafood and gazed at the water. From time to time, we saw birds that had been perched on the roof take flight over the water.
  
  It was a memorable trip, a memory that I will always cherish. But I wonder how many such memories will be made in the coming years if the oil slick turns out to be only as bad as — and not worse than — the experts predict.


• Then, a couple of years later, when I was working on the copy desk for a daily newspaper, we began to get word of an oil tanker that had hit a reef in Alaska and spilled a quarter of a million barrels of crude oil into the water.
  
  I am speaking, of course, of the Exxon Valdez disaster. That happened more than 20 years ago. You don't hear much about it anymore, but they are still struggling to clean up the mess.
  
  Granted, it is pretty remote — and relatively confined — but it is not terribly comforting to know that it is far easier to access the Gulf of Mexico than Prince William Sound — nor is it reassuring to think of how vast is the Gulf's area by comparison.
  
  In fact, if the worst–case scenario that I have heard (so far) is correct, the spill in the Gulf exceeded the volume that was spilled into the waters of Prince William Sound sometime on the third day — and crude has been gushing into the Gulf for more than a month now with no indication that man has found a solution.

I know that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was panned — and deservedly so — for delivering an, at best, tepid and, at worst, vapid response to Barack Obama's address on the financial crisis in February 2009.

But I have to give the man credit for taking the lead for his state, which is still recovering from the damage left by Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago.

"We've been frustrated with the disjointed effort to date that has too often meant too little, too late for the oil hitting our coast," Jindal said.

Well, somebody has to stand up for Louisiana. And that's what citizens elect governors for, isn't it?

I guess it's also what presidents are elected to do. But, as Bob Herbert observes in the New York Times, "after more than a month of BP's demonstrated incompetence, the administration continues to dither."

I know there are budget problems out the hoo–ha today. But the oil spill in the Gulf calls for bold leadership now, not dithering. The cost should not be a factor. Nor should anything else other than stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf and devoting all available resources to cleaning up the oil that has been spilled there so far.

And whatever needs be done to rescue the wildlife of the region must be done. The creatures of the Gulf of Mexico are the innocent victims of human greed. No one would mistake me for an environmental activist, but BP must pay a heavy price for what it has done, and the federal government must shoulder the responsibility for repairing the damage.

Blame can be assigned later. The wildlife — and the livelihoods — of the Gulf need to be rescued now.

Sacrifice isn't the sort of thing politicians — especially politicians who belong to the party that is at risk in the upcoming election — want to talk about with their constituents.

But they must be candid with the American people — and they must be insistent about finding answers — whether or not this turns out to be an unusually active hurricane season.

To live up to the lofty promises of hope and change, Obama must be a true agent of change at a time when it is particularly challenging. Obama promised hope and change, but, with health care reform not kicking in for another four years and until unemployment starts making noticeable movement in the right direction, the average voter can look around and say things aren't noticeably better than they were the last time they went to the polls.

By law, a president is elected to a four–year term. But the actual "windows" for tangible achievements are two years and four years. The four–year window is for the president himself, but the two–year window — leading up to the aptly named midterms (because of the resemblance to mid–semester exams in college) — is an assessment time frame with which Obama has no experience, although it will produce the congressional lineup that will affect the president's next two years in office.

Bill Clinton understands it, though. Until the mid–1980s, Arkansas elected its governor every two years, and Clinton understood the psychology that is necessary to be successful in an office that was on the ballot every other year. It didn't help him prevent the tsunami of 1994, but I think he had regained his balance by 1998.

Anyway, I believe most House members (and any governors who live in states that still choose their governor every two years — if there are any) would tell you that the campaign never really ends. Neither do the expectations.

"Hope" made a nice campaign slogan in 2008.

Now, the folks who rode that slogan to victory need to realize that, in the words of Emily Dickinson, hope is the things with feathers.

Mount St. Helens, Three Decades Later

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I have heard relatively little said about the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, perhaps because so much attention is currently being given to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

At the moment, of course, no one knows the dimensions of the catastrophe in the Gulf. When all is said and done, it may well make Mount St. Helens seem tiny, if not completely insignificant, by comparison.

But on the Sunday morning 30 years ago today when the mountain erupted, it didn't seem so insignificant.

Oh, there were other things vying for public attention at the time. President Carter was fending off a challenge from Ted Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination. The long–awaited sequel to the 1977 blockbuster movie "Star Wars" — "The Empire Strikes Back" — was about to be released to the nation's theaters. And Cable News Network was two weeks away from launching the 24–hour network news era.

And, frankly, Mount St. Helens struck some as being old news. After being dormant for more than a century, a series of earthquakes began in March 1980, indicating that the mountain's slumber was nearly over.

Two months later, the volcano erupted.

Fifty–seven people died, including an elderly innkeeper named Harry Truman (no known relation to the former president of the same name), a geologist named David Johnston, who perished while manning an observation post that was within the direct blast zone, and a photographer named Reid Blackburn, whose photograph of his car following the eruption can be seen at the right.

Johnston, it is worth noting, was the first to report the eruption, but, more importantly, his work (and the work of his colleagues) was what persuaded authorities to close Mount St. Helens to the public and keep it closed in spite of intense pressure to reopen in the weeks following the onset of the March earthquakes. There is no telling how many lives were saved as a result.

Volcanic eruptions are rare in North America. And, while the damage was extensive, the eruption of Mount St. Helens may be having unexpectedly positive consequences 30 years later. As Linda Mapes of the Seattle Times felt compelled to remind readers, "an entirely new ecosystem" was created — "[m]ore than 130 new ponds and two new lakes were birthed at the foot of the volcano," Mapes writes, and a new habitat is being assembled there. Apparently, the species that live there are thriving.

Maybe that is the lesson of the Mount St. Helens eruption. And, perhaps, it will prove to be the lesson of the oil spill in the Gulf in 2010 as well.

Granted, it is hard today to anticipate what good may come from the constant pouring of oil into the Gulf, especially as we approach the start of what some have predicted will be a particularly turbulent hurricane season.

But history has shown that nature adapts and evolves.

What came from the belly of the mountain three decades ago changed the landscape, killed every living thing within a certain radius and caused billions of dollars in damage. Yet nature adjusted.

Wasn't that the moral of "Jurassic Park," in which Dr. Malcolm, the scientist with the devotion to the chaos theory, said, "Life finds a way?"

In the short term, we may see hurricanes in the coming months that suck up oil–laden water in the Gulf that is later deposited on land as black rain, causing untold problems of catastrophic proportions.

But, until the "experts" find a way to secure the leak that continues to spew its oil into the water, we will have to hope that, eventually, life will find a way in the Gulf of Mexico.

Perception and Reality

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There was a point in the storyline of The West Wing when one of the president's daughters was kidnapped by terrorists.

The president selflessly chose to invoke the 25th Amendment, temporarily relieving himself of his duties and elevating the speaker of the House, who belonged to the opposition party, to the role of acting president until the situation was resolved — thus sparing the nation the spectacle of a distraught father making decisions that should be made with the best interests of the country in mind.

The acting president took some hardline positions during the crisis, during which some Americans were killed, and he had to call their families to express his condolences and his appreciation for their sacrifices.

The president's secretary found him sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, and he asked her, "When do I get to the fun part of being president?" She asked him to clarify, and he said he was referring to riding on Air Force One and getting preferred tee times at the best golf courses.

(Later in that same episode was an exchange that I thought was profound. It may have no relevance to what I'm writing about today, but it's worth repeating.

(Anyway, the actual president — who had recused himself — was reflecting on his own actions that had led to the kidnapping of his daughter in retaliation. He quoted Martin Luther King, who said that violence was a "descending spiral" that contributed to a "deeper darkness."

("I'm a part of that darkness now," he said. "When did that happen?"

("Dr. King wasn't wrong," his chief of staff said. "He just didn't have your job.")

My guess is that a lot of people — including many of the people who seek the office — look at the presidency, and all they see is the glamorous side. They see the trips on Air Force One, the band playing "Hail to the Chief" when the president walks into a room, the First Family rubbing elbows with the rich and famous, the president getting preferential treatment at Hilton Head, etc.

They don't see the agonizing decisions that must be made, often in solitude. They don't experience the pressures of the office, pressures the Constitution places on only one person at a time.

Some presidents handle those pressures better than others. They are the ones who are typically rewarded with a second term.

Those who don't handle the pressures too well are denied a second term. And those who don't handle them in an appropriately constitutional manner may leave themselves open to impeachment. It's a matter of interpretation.

Those times of being tested come at different points — and for different reasons — in each president's tenure. But the random, chaotic nature of the world and its people makes it all but certain that a president — especially, it seems, in these times with an unprecedented global population making its demands on the planet and its resources — will face at least one test (if not more) of his/her leadership ability.

Frankly, it ought to be a given that a president can expect some choppy waters at some point. Since George Washington first took the oath of office 221 years ago on Friday, I can think of no four–year presidential term that has been serene and tranquil.

If you could ask him about it, I imagine Barack Obama would say that he feels he has been tested — almost continuously — since January 20 of last year, and that isn't entirely an exaggeration. Nor is it an unreasonable stance to take. He assumed office in the midst of the worst recession this country has faced since the end of World War II, and his dedicated supporters probably would argue that he has, so far, fulfilled his constitutional obligations (while, most would further argue, achieving a legislative victory that eluded other Democratic presidents).

All of that may be true. But here are a few more things that happen to be true:

• For openers, there is a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico.
  
  Experts are speaking of it as a potential, even probable, catastrophe. CNN quoted an environmentalist who warned that the effects of this oil slick may be felt for decades.
  
  It is being compared to Hurricane Katrina, which is an understandably sensitive comparison for the folks on the Gulf. And Obama, nearly two weeks after the explosion that triggered the situation, is finally in Louisiana to see the disaster up close.
  
  No doubt someone within his administration has warned him that the last thing he and his fellow Democrats need in an election year is a widespread impression that Obama's handling of this crisis resembles George W. Bush's mishandling of the hurricane.
  
  But how can one stop an oil spill? his defenders may ask. Fair point. And how can one stop a hurricane? See, that isn't the relevant debate, although there are sure to be those who will argue it. Obama can't stop the oil spill until he knows what caused it. Bush couldn't change the conditions that spawned the hurricane. Stopping the threat is not what this is about.
  
  The point is that both presidents had many days to anticipate a worst–case scenario and take whatever steps were deemed necessary to prepare for it yet neither one did.
  
  Until it was, in essence, too late.


• Meanwhile, there's been a terrorist scare in a place that is as sensitive to that as New Orleans is to the subject of hurricanes.
  
  In New York, federal agents are helping in the search for suspects who could be connected to an SUV that appears to have been designed to detonate, but failed to do so, in Times Square.
  
  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — who is probably somewhat sensitive to criticism after her handling of the attempted airplane bombing on Christmas Day — insists they are treating this as a "potential terrorist attack."
  
  I wonder how long it will be before many loyal Democrats in New York begin clamoring for Obama to visit the Big Apple and reassure skittish New Yorkers that their government is working for them.
  
  New York is a diehard Democratic state — but wasn't Massachusetts regarded as such, until Scott Brown won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat? And no one had to park a car bomb in Government Center to achieve that.


• Back in Washington, there are at least two issues that appear capable of generating some unpredictable momentum on their own.
  
  For one, there is that immigration law in Arizona. It's got immigration activists — both pro and con — all worked up. We even had a massive demonstration on that subject here in Dallas yesterday. It wasn't as big as some had predicted, but, in a state like Texas where roughly one–third of the residents are Hispanic, the potential is there for that powder keg to go off in a big way.
  
  Immediately, immigration may affect a few states disproportionately, but it's an issue that won't just go away. Ultimately, it affects all states, even though most are not located along our borders. A fair and equitable solution is required.
  
  For another, there is that issue of financial reform. I don't think significant declines in the unemployment rate are likely in the near future, and neither, it seems, do economic experts — or, for that matter, the folks in the administration. But the economic meltdown is fresh on voters' minds, and, while the incumbents in Washington may say that the indicators suggest the recession is over and the recovery is beginning, rank–and–file voters are justifiably skeptical. "These are the same indicators," they ask, "that failed to adequately warn us of what was coming back in 2007?"
  
  They want reassurance. Regulation in general may not be any more popular than it has ever been, but financial regulation is hip again, at least in some quarters. If Obama wants a bipartisan achievement to show the voters during the campaign in the fall, financial reform may be it. Republicans tend to have a knee–jerk reaction against regulation, but some of them might be persuaded to go along on financial regulation, provided it is done appropriately.
  
  Now, before an Obama defender comes back with an argument about how the recession began under Bush, let me say that I am aware of the timeline. But the perspectives of many voters will be shaped by what they see in 2010.
  
  Those voters had a pretty extensive to–do list for the folks who were elected in 2008. And if they think two years is too long to wait for meaningful financial reform — or anything else — to be enacted, that's going to be bad news for incumbents.
  
  If you need further proof of how ornery voters can get during midterm elections, may I refer you to Bill Clinton? Or, since Ronald Reagan is deceased, how about someone from his administration who is still living?

Well, there are several issues that could become important — at any time. It can seem, at times, that people want a president to be in several places at once.

And there are always going to be those who insist that their issue is more important than all the rest. I haven't even mentioned the unemployed — remember them? — who will be watching Friday's jobs report to see if last month's good news really was a sign that the recovery had begun.

If the numbers indicate that the economy is retreating, I sense some frustration that might be on the verge of boiling over. Arguing that all this started under Bush won't be enough to placate the unemployed then.

On the other hand, the news might be good. More jobs may have been added to the economy in April. But that can be a double–edged sword, raising false expectations. Suppose the economy shows tentative signs of life in the spring, then goes into a nosedive this summer and/or fall? What effect will that have on the morale of the displaced workers? And, perhaps more importantly from Obama's perspective, what effect will it have on their votes?

You see, most of what the Democrats and the Obama defenders have been offering, aside from a health care reform package that grows less popular by the day, are arguments that are best suited for a constitutional debate.

But most Americans, like Barney Fife in the attached video clip, know little about the Constitution.

For them, perception is reality.

And God help the politician(s) who fail(s) to give their issue adequate attention.