The Take on Obama

Aaron Miller of the Wilson Center’s take on President Obama is interesting and worth reading and I agree with much of it. However, I think I disagree with him on this critical observation:

Finally, on character, Obama has had a Jekyll and Hyde problem. Part pragmatist, part believer, but always capable of seeing all sides of an argument, the president has seemed too often at war with himself on how ambitious he wants to be, whether on climate change, tax reform or the size of the stimulus. And that personal conflict has made it too hard for him to make peace with his public. By nature, Obama is not a partisan, a populist or a revolutionary. Instead, he finds his comfort zone in conciliation and accommodation, and in the empirical world of rational policy analysis. Those can be useful qualities in many circumstances, but they won’t make you a transformative president.

I think there’s very little evidence for that other than resume and anyone who’s had a lot of resumes cross their desks knows that it ain’t necessarily so. On the contrary, I see President Obama as a man of very rigid and not particularly well-informed opinions who believes that his opinions should be heeded uncritically and has a very limited political repertoire and no relish for the ordinary things that politicians and presidents do.

As to Mr. Miller’s comparison with Bill Clinton:

Obama more likely has been closest to Bill Clinton, a comparison that historian David Greenberg took note of a year into his presidency. Both men were elected with similar numbers in the electoral college, though not in the popular vote. Both faced strong opposition from Republicans who imagined the president to be far more radical than he was, and both concentrated on the economy.

I think that is true only with respect to the circumstances in which the two men found themselves and not in actions or character. Clinton was and is a policy wonk. And he genuinely enjoys politics, something for which I see no evidence in President Obama.