InfoAnda - Analysis: Campaign traits carry over to presidency

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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Africa Europe Latin America Middle East North America Analysis: Campaign traits carry over to presidency By JENNIFER LOVEN,AP White House Correspondent - Tuesday, January 19 Send IM Story Print WASHINGTON – Turns out Barack Obama is the bill of goods America thought it was buying. Little about Obama in his first year as president has come as a shock. The cautious, cerebral, enigmatic man who sought the White House is largely the same one who occupies it. For all the history-changing wonder of the election of the first black president, most of the surprises have come from events, not his approach to them. From the beginning, with its inaugural excitement, friendlier majorities in Congress than any chief executive since Lyndon Johnson, two wars, a warming planet and economic challenges unrivaled since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to the end, with fractious partisan sniping, a dramatically fallen approval rating and his first major victory still to come _ Obama then is basically Obama now, only grayer and more tired. But 12 months' worth of watching the president put his signature style to work governing, instead of campaigning, provides a crisper picture. So, what have we learned? For one thing, that he's a master of nuance with a "but" in his approach to nearly everything. Ten observations: ___ He hates labels. Obama promised a post-racial, post-partisan, post-ideological presidency. While that theory earned him votes, some seeing it in action, such as the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, now more critically call it the "have it both ways" presidency. Could it be that his "Yes, we can" campaign has morphed into a "When we can" administration? Obama has pursued a radical agenda: fix the economy while attacking long-neglected, related problems such as health care, climate change and education. End one war, overhaul a second and remake America's image in the world, too. His way of getting there, though, is incremental, and hardly purist: _He'll backpedal on positions, as on lobbyists in his administration and money for lawmakers' pet projects, or be inconsistent, such as dealing with the auto industry more sternly than banks and insurers. _He yields ground. He has lectured Palestinians not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good over Jewish settlement expansion, advice he has followed himself _ and given Congress, too. _He threads the needle. He settled on an Afghanistan strategy that combined the muscular (adding 30,000 troops) with the political (setting a withdrawal start date as he ordered the unpopular escalation). _He avoids confrontation, choosing in health care and other cases to outline only broad policy goals and stay hands off on specifics until late in the game. Obama calls it all pragmatic (his own label his only nod to the value of them), a fresh approach in which policy and coalitions are forged on circumstances instead of creed. His critics call it slippery. He may be on the cusp of a potential game-changer success, with a health care bill, that will show his methods can work. But the process has been confusing and draining, disappointing to right and left alike. He also hasn't broken Washington's partisan streak, earning few if any Republican votes on key priorities. ___ His first reaction isn't always his best. When incendiary comments by black minister Jeremiah Wright surfaced during Obama's campaign, he underestimated and mishandled the issue until it threatened his White House chances. He finally calmed the fuss with a speech on race regarded as a slam dunk. That pattern of near-failure followed by 11th-hour rescue has repeated itself in the White House. Think economic stimulus. Think health care. Or beer summit _ another racial tempest gone wrong and then right. Just recently came another demonstration of Obama's iffy first instincts. The bombing plot to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day drew no appearance by the vacationing president for three days, in hopes that a low-profile wouldn't overly elevate the incident and encourage other would-be terrorists. When he did talk to the public, he was notably flat. It took him a couple more tries to display the urgency and anger the near-disaster seemed to demand. ___ He'd much prefer not to react immediately in the first place. Ever the risk-averse, studious lawyer, Obama doesn't act on his gut but on information _ reams of it. He collects all the facts and pokes holes in all the angles. Asked early in the year why his outrage at exorbitant bonuses at bailed-out insurer American International Group was so long in coming, Obama snapped at the reporter: "I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak." Ever scripted, he has been known to use a teleprompter even in news conferences. He's the king of reviews. On the Guantanamo Bay military prison, war, the Fort Hood shootings, a new missile defense system, cybersecurity, urban policy, the White House gate-crashers and more, a thorough review is his preferred out-of-the-gate response. He'll fire people; he's no loyalty hound. But when controversy comes calling, don't look for a hair-trigger scapegoat. Many in the U.S. and around the world were encouraged at the shift from the instinct-driven style of George W. Bush. But Obama also now faces questions about whether he is a decisive leader _ or a wavering one. ___ He has a bit of a cold-fish problem. He can sometimes appear aloof, cool, emotionally distant. He's warm in private settings _ approachable and funny. But standing before the public on a critical topic, whether it's corporate bonuses or Somali pirates, he can display a tin ear for the tone people want. Sometimes even when he says he's mad, he doesn't look it. ___ He wears the job easily. For all his youth and governing inexperience, Obama stepped almost seamlessly into the most powerful post in the world. Outsiders could not detect rookie jitters. Insiders reported him unfazed by the office. "I feel surprisingly comfortable in the job," said the 44th president a mere two weeks in. "I'm good at this," he told People magazine just over a week ago. What could appear arrogant in the campaign looked surefooted in office. Still, there are times when he seems not to understand _ or purposely not to harness _ the vast power he has assumed. He's ubiquitous, leading to questions about overexposure. But is he using the presidential bully pulpit to maximum effect? He gives perhaps too much rope at critical times to others, such as to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner amid the unpopular bank bailout. ___ He favors candor and contrition over sunny optimism. No Reaganesque "Morning in America" here. Remember Obama's "I screwed up" acknowledgment after the felling of former Sen. Tom Daschle's nomination to be health secretary over tax problems, perhaps the most memorable utterance of his first year? It came from the president who had to be persuaded to start talking rosier about the economy to give Americans a little hope. Or the one who said "the buck stops with me" for intelligence failures that led to the attempted airline bombing on Christmas. And from the leader who told Europe, on European soil no less, that America "may not always have the best answer" or that "all parties have to compromise, and that includes us." This humility on the world stage _ welcome abroad and often at home, too _ has been a hallmark, part of Obama's goal to emphasize collaboration with allies over orders to them. ___ He likes to teach. The constitutional scholar and law professor, a son of a cultural anthropologist, was known as an impressive orator during the campaign. He has turned into something more like a guest lecturer in the White House _ the wonkish professor-president. Laying out his policies, say terrorist interrogations at the National Archives, the economic collapse at Wall Street's Federal Hall, his Afghanistan approach at West Point or the U.S intelligence apparatus in the State Dining Room, he often seems more interested in educating than persuading. Skilled rhetorically, he still glides through speeches. But there can be a sense that the inspirational element is missing, perhaps a nod to the much trickier task of governing over campaigning. Though the policies may be well thought-out, they sometimes leave people scratching their heads, looking in the carefully reasoned briefs for the red meat lines or the part that makes it simple _ and relevant to their lives. ___ He relishes the art of the deal. Who knew? Obama has proved an enthusiastic and adept mediator, at home and overseas. The president conducted shuttle diplomacy between France and China at a London economic summit, overcoming a dispute over tax havens. In Strasbourg, France, he helped settle a dispute over the next NATO secretary-general. In Istanbul, he worked on the sidelines to normalize Turkish-Armenian relations. His seat-of-the-pants diplomacy helped produce a limited accord at the climate change meeting in Copenhagen. As the health care inches toward completion, Obama has presided over marathon White House negotiating sessions to wrangle over sticky provisions. ___ He's both hawk and dove. He ditched a new missile defense system that was threatening Russia's cooperation in critical areas. He seemed to give more than he got in a much-watched November visit to China. His administration is trying the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind and others in civilian New York courts. He banned torture and launched a criminal investigation into harsh questioning of detainees under the Bush administration. He has mostly abandoned the phrase "war on terror." Former Vice President Dick Cheney calls him weak on security. But there's a tough side of the ledger, too. Obama is ramping up the war in Afghanistan, increasing unmanned drone strikes against suspected terrorists inside Pakistan, and battling Russia over a new arms-reduction treaty. He's crafting a tough new package of penalties against Iran and continuing a variety of Bush-era terrorism policies opposed by the left. ___ "The bubble" bothers him greatly. Obama has called it the "weird fishbowl," the nitpicking media scrutiny and 24-7 company that come with every presidency, and particularly his. There are Secret Service protectors who go everywhere he does. The ever-present entourage. The news cycle that never sleeps and has tentacles in every corner of the Internet. The unique global phenomenon of his and his family's popularity. The criticism for whisking his wife to New York for a dinner-theater date promised during the campaign. In Obama's book, it adds up to a lack of normalcy, almost no chance for spontaneous living. He gripes about reporters' in-the-moment mindsets. He compensates some by keeping his Blackberry, taking his two best friends from Chicago on every trip he can and playing weekend golf. He also readily admits a huge upside of the home office that former President Harry Truman called a "glamorous prison." There's more time with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, than since he entered politics a dozen years ago. That is, when he's not traveling, as he's jetted overseas more than any other first-year president. There's always a "but" in Obama's world. ___ Associated Press writers Charles Babington, Jesse Washington, Tom Raum, Ben Feller, Cal Woodward, Anne Gearan, Nancy Benac, Ron Fournier, and Liz Sidoti contributed to this story. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE _ Jennifer Loven has covered the White House for The Associated Press since 2002. 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