Wednesday, February 18

Simple competence, ctd.

A Daily Beast correspondent, aboard Air Force One:
Obama, wearing white shirt and tie, again greeted us with yet another round of smiles and handshakes. At this point, I have lost count. We took our seats around the table—alpha dog positioning as one might expect—got out our notebooks, pens and tape recorders and…

“How are we going to run this thing?”

Eh? The president was asking us how we wanted to proceed. For the record, this is very un-Bush. At several meetings with the former president, including a one-on-one interview aboard Air Force One, there was never any question about how we would proceed. Bush ran all shows. Either Obama hasn’t figured out yet that he’s the boss or, possibly, he doesn’t care. As a veteran White House correspondent suggested to me later, “Maybe he knows he can handle whatever we toss his way.”
I didn't live in the U.S. during the Clinton years, so I'm left wondering: when will the reality of an intelligent president stop feeling novel?

I'm not gushing over Obama himself so much as marveling over the contrast with Bush.

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