A Conversation with Barack Obama;What He's Learned

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By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated May 25, 2009


He did it because he could. Last Wednesday, in the gathering cool of late afternoon, Marine One brought President Barack Obama to the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. As he climbed down the steps of the helicopter, returning the salute of the Marine guard, he was slated to stride straight on to Air Force One, for a flight west to the heat of Arizona. Looking to his right, however, he saw a small crowd of schoolchildren and military personnel gathered with cameras and homemade signs. Abruptly but gracefully, the president broke toward the spectators; gathered journalists and security scurried to follow his lead. He shook every outstretched hand and, reaching the end of the line, deftly avoided eye contact with the gaggle of reporters. As he turned to make the walk back to Air Force One, a breeze blew—and everyone scurried anew, to keep up with him.

It was that kind of day—and it has been that kind of presidency: Barack Obama, moving as he wishes to move, and the world bending itself to him. Four hours later, sitting comfortably in his airborne office, coatless with a crimson tie, his laptop open, his blue Air Force One flight jacket hanging on the back of his swivel chair, the president was, as ever, in control. (He acknowledged that he saw the new Star Trek recently because "everybody was saying I was Spock.&quot After a series of questions about what he has learned in his first months in the White House, I asked him whether he would read over a paragraph from his book, The Audacity of Hope, and react to it.

His eyes falling on the marked passage, he says, "Yes, I remember this." He pauses, and reads a section about the importance of living a good life: "That's what satisfies me now, I think—being useful to my family and the people who elected me, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children's lives more hopeful than our own. Sometimes, working in Washington, I feel I am meeting that goal. At other times, it seems as if the goal recedes from me, and all the activity I engage in—the hearings and speeches and press conferences and position papers—are an exercise in vanity, useful to no one."

<span style="font-weight: bold">Is he susceptible to such pessimism now, in the White House? Is there ever a sense of futility?</span> Closing the book and handing it back across the desk, he says: &quot;<span style="font-style: italic">I confess that I haven't had time to feel that way on the job. One of the extraordinary privileges of not only being president but being president at a time of great difficulty is that your plate is full and the decisions we're making and the policies we're pursuing I absolutely know will make a difference.&quot; </span>In other words, the frustrations of life as a senator, much less those of a community organizer, have given way to a palpable feeling of authority and effectiveness. What he says, what he does, what he decides: it matters, all of it, and he loves that.

<span style="font-style: italic">What he has learned is that he likes, and enjoys, power—the capacity to shape reality in his image and by his lights—and that he finds crisis defining, bracing and useful.</span> That a president feels suited to power is hardly a startling observation, but that Obama so revels in it—in the understated way Obama revels in anything—confounds the competing popular impressions of his persona. Many of his followers see him as the embodiment of a kind of utopian progressive politics in which the brute application of power is passé, a relic of the ruins of the Age of Bush and Cheney. Many of his critics, meanwhile, think him weak, a crypto-socialist one-worlder who wants to offer rogue nations tea and sympathy.

The experience of his first months in office suggests that both camps need to recalibrate in light of new facts on the ground. <span style="font-style: italic">In Obama's universe, strength and subtlety are not mutually exclusive</span>. He may make the wrong call—things could go disastrously awry, at home or abroad, on his watch—but one of the most interesting and underappreciated things to emerge from these early days is how comfortable Obama is in making the call. <span style="font-style: italic">He savors exercising the power of the presidency.</span> Woodrow Wilson described the office as &quot;the vital place of action in the system.&quot; From the financial sector to the automobile industry to terrorism, Obama has personally taken on those institutional characteristics. He is the action.

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Notes Toward a Theory of Obama:What we've learned so far abo

Notes Toward a Theory of Obama
What we've learned so far about the president.
By Jacob Weisberg


Barack ObamaBarack Obama began his presidency with an unusual attribute: that the country already understood him, or thought it did, from his books. The story he told in Dreams From My Father and reinforced in The Audacity of Hope was about a man of multiple worlds who struggles to come to terms with his father's abandonment and a confounding racial identity. Obama resolves his rootlessness and anger by committing himself socially, religiously, and, eventually, politically. He depicts his mature self as unusually grounded, able to see other points of view and to bridge chasms.

The protagonist of these books is a persuasive and appealing character—so much so that he left little demand for alternative explanations. As time goes by, though, Obama's Obama feels less and less satisfying. It's not that the author's projection of himself is distorted in any obvious way, but rather that it leaves too much unexplained—his ambition, his aloofness, his fundamental beliefs, if any. It's too soon to offer an interpretation of our president. But after four months in office, we can see some emerging themes.

He sees the middle ground as high ground. Candidates who talk about bringing people together, being uniters not dividers, or changing the tone in Washington are usually blowing happy smoke. At this point, however, Obama's focus on reconciliation is clearly more than shtick. We saw this impulse at work when he made pre-emptive concessions on his stimulus package in an unsuccessful effort to win Republican support. We saw it in another way when he personally brokered a compromise between the French and Chinese presidents at the G20 summit in London. Every few days, it seems, Obama, tries for a &quot;new beginning&quot;—with Iran, Cuba, the Muslim world, even Paul Krugman. Engaging with opponents animates him more than hanging with friends.

This is a wonderful instinct that is bettering America's image and making domestic politics more civil. But listening is not a moral stance, and elevating it to one only highlights the question of what Obama really stands for. The consensus-seeker repudiates torture but doesn't want to investigate it; he endorses gay equality but not in marriage or the military; he thinks government's role is to do whatever works. I continue to suspect him of harboring deeper convictions.

He's the decider for real. Accounts of Obama's decision-making depict him driving process as well as result. Faced with a tough call about whether to declassify additional Bush administration torture memos, Obama called a debate, listened intently, and finished by dictating the next day's press release announcing the release of the documents. Another insider ticktock has him personally directing the futures of GM and Chrysler. Advisers who play what are supposed to be honest-broker, facilitating roles at the White House either play different roles (Larry Summers) or don't play much role at all (Jim Jones). Obama sees himself as ringmaster as well as star performer.

The president's knack for deep dives into policy questions is undeniably impressive. But as quick a study as he is, his supreme self-confidence may shade into overconfidence. He shows signs of suffering from the arrogance that often accompanies brilliance. It's unlikely, for instance, that Obama can function as his own grand strategy guru on foreign policy. But he doesn't seem inclined to give that job to anyone else.

He likes it hot. If you have a friendly conversation with someone close to Obama, he or she is likely to marvel at the president's comfort level with crisis. This is a man who plays it cool at all times but has never liked standing still. He ran for Congress prematurely and lost, then ran for the Senate prematurely and got lucky. He was quickly bored in the Senate, where it took too long to get things done. When he was thinking about running for president, his question was whether the moment would be ripe for a great leader.

He needn't have worried. Obama has more troubles to deal with, foreign and domestic, than any president since FDR. One day last month, he faced decisions about the fate of the auto industry, a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, a North Korean missile threat, and a flood in Fargo, N.D. &quot;What is this, a West Wing episode?&quot; David Axelrod quipped, according to the New York Times. The question here is capacity, not capability. Can any one person simultaneously manage so many issues in the hands-on way Obama insists on managing them?

He's ruthless. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Obama described his economic policy as &quot;ruthless pragmatism.&quot; Interesting choice of modifiers. Obama has a healthy disdain for the overrated virtue of political loyalty. Around the nomination process, this has been slightly chilling to watch. If you're useful, you can hang around with him. If you start to look like a liability, enjoy your time with the wolves. Before the inauguration, Christopher Hitchens described Obama as feline in his demeanor. The president is catlike also in his lack of evident affection for the people who take care of him. His cracks at the White House Correspondents' Dinner about Hillary Clinton being an envious loser, Larry Summers' woman problem, and training his dog not to pee on Tim Geithner skirted cruelty. Obama's jokes about himself were about how great everyone thinks he is.
<span style="font-style: italic">Jacob Weisberg is chairman and editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">A version of this article also appears in this week's issue of Newsweek.</span>

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Barack Obama: Dating My Daughters &quot;Will Be an Issue&quot;

Barack Obama: Dating My Daughters &quot;Will Be an Issue&quot;
Monday May 18, 2009

Obama might be the president, but -- with daughters Sasha, 7, and Malia, 10, growing up before his eyes -- he's still a worried dad.

&quot;Now, I worry about them when they're teenagers where, you know, you're already embarrassed about your parents and even more embarrassed on TV all the time,&quot; he told Newsweek.

He's equally concerned about when his pre-teen girls start going out with boys.


&quot;And dating I think will be an issue because I have men with guns surrounding them at all times,&quot; he said, laughing, &quot;which I'm perfectly happy with, but they may feel differently about it.&quot;

Still, Obama said he is lucky that they are so well-adjusted despite being catapulted into the public eye this year.


&quot;The nice thing is that, partly because of temperament, partly because of Michelle [Obama]'s unbelievable parenting skills, I've just got some happy, normal kids,&quot; he said. &quot;And all that stuff that's going on around them, they just kind of miss. We have not seen any effects, any fishbowl effects, yet on them.&quot;

He added: &quot;The truth of the matter is that the campaign was the equivalent of me being the frog in the saucepan of water and the temperature slowly being turned up. By the time the inauguration had taken place, we had pretty much gotten accustomed to it.&quot;

In addition to making time for his family -- he said that he has dinner with his family and hangs out with the kids until he puts them to bed at 8:30 p.m. -- he budgets time for movies, too.

&quot;It turns out we got this nice theater on the ground floor of my house… So Star Trek, we saw this weekend, which I thought was good,&quot; he said, making the Vulcan hand salute. &quot;Everybody was saying I was Spock, so I figured I should check it out.&quot;