CUT THE PRESIDENT SOME SLACK: DEFINING AN AMERICAN PRESIDENCY

By Jerry D. Rose

Two days after Barack Obama was sworn in as President, he made a “surprise” visit to the White House press corps lounge to do a bit of schmoozing with the press. As reporters will sometimes do, one of them asked him a question about public policy and, as presidents sometimes do, he avoided answering it, saying instead: “I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can’t end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I’m going to get grilled every time I come down here.”

On September 15, 2009, the President was interviewed after his Wall Street speech and, in exchange with an interviewer which he thought was off-tape, he commented on rapper Kanye West’s boorish behavior at an MTV awards program, calling West a “jackass.” When it became apparent that not only was his comment taped but that it was being “twittered” abroad, he said (apparently hoping to enlist interviewer’s aid in limiting the remark’s distribution): “Come on guys. Cut the president some slack. I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my plate.”

Trivial as these two incidents may be, they go a ways, I think, toward defining an overall style of an Obama presidency, as well as maybe some failures of substantive policy in his administration. They betray, in the first instance, an attitude toward the press of an outward chumminess (what other U.S. President ever referred to the White House press corps as “you guys?”) masking an underlying fear of what a critical press could do to his presidency. I’d not be the first to note that the mainstream news media (and much of the alternative progressive media) cut the President a great deal of slack when it comes to criticism. It was said even during the presidential campaign that there was some doubt whether Obama could “take a punch” from an overly critical question delivered in a presidential debate. While these debates were almost case studies in non-confrontational questions addressed to candidates, one could see some instances of that reluctance of Obama to stand up under critical questioning, sloughing off a tough question with an irrelevant “joke” if he were uncomfortable with answering it. Since the American people are almost entirely dependent on the men and women of the press corps to pose any “tough” question of their president about any matters of public policy, this tendency bodes poorly for the ability of the citizens of a democracy to engage in criticism will be heard as opposed to being deflected.

I find as well in these episodes as in so much of the Obama presidency an assertion, however “jokingly,” of the prerogatives of privileged elite social status. Ordinary mortals might be accosted with difficult questions but powerful people must not be so bothered because “they have so much on their plates” and can’t be bothered if others do not exactly approve of their “table manners.” This attitude can lead to some reckless behavior that we might not want in a leader; the kind of behavior of which the Kennedy clan, including JFK, has been noted for their Ivy League attitudes of personal entitlement and exemption from the standards applied to other people. JFK and his brothers could have their “affairs,” Barack Obama could play golf with the CEO of UBS Bank at the very time that the bank was making a big settlement with the U.S. government on charges of helping U.S. citizens to evade income taxes. Even lesser gods like Eliot Spitzer, the Governor of New York, have been brought down in “scandals” that involve men and women in office acting like….well, men and women. The privileged of the world are excused from doing things on no more morally sturdy ground than both Bill Clinton and John Edwards used in explaining their sexual escapades: they did it because “they could.”

So, I fear, we are seeing with the Obama administration the evolution of yet another situation of Obama (and other officials) doing what their positions of power enable them to do, the enablement accomplished largely by a lap dog press which (except for the mad bloodhounds of Fox and other right wing media) cuts the President all the slack he can wish to do whatever he may do, all because he has “so much on his plate” and they shouldn’t bother the over-burdened President who, after all, has to give a “major speech” 2 or 3 times a week and has to stop to comment on every passing act of “jackass” behavior of every American celebrity (now there’s a lot to put on one’s plate.)

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Jerry D. Rose is editor of The Sun State Activist