By Wes Pedersen
What happened to the bright young man who was going make America proud of itself again? Ego happened. The arrogance of power happened.
But there was sharp evidence of the change on the busy Phoenix tarmac a few days ago.
Just off Air Force One, Barack Obama was blowing his Mr. Cool image as Governor Janice Brewer, there to invite him to a tete-a-tete about immigration, turned instead into a common scold, jabbing a see-here-Buster finger at him. Photographic evidence of the hissy fit flashed around the world.
In earlier days, the image-aware Obama might have tried to finesse away the incident, as he did without success with a teed-off Hilary Clinton early on. This time, the rudeness of his reception jarred a to-hell-with-this response: I don’t have to take any of this in-my-face guff; I’m the president of the United States, damn it!
He was off then on a PR chore, shaking hands with eager spectators.
The back story: Jan Brewer is the author of a book, “Scorpions for Breakfast,” that tells the president” “Do your job. Secure our borders!” He objects to Arizona’s tough new law to root out illegal immigrants.
She claims his abrupt walk-away on the tarmac showed a lack of respect for her, but no, she did nothing to disrespect him.
Let’s get real: she is damned lucky the Secret Service accompanying the president did not grab her when her finger went up. You simply do not point anything at any president without being whisked aside for a chat with a security team.
There are those who suspect that the governor was hoping for a public confrontation as a gimmick to promote sales of her in-the-cellar book. Planned or not, the finger did the job: Sales by Amazon shot up past the International Space Station. The book is now on Amazon’s Best-Seller list.
There are also, of course, those who insist that the president wasn’t just insulting the governor by walking abruptly off, he was insulting all women.
Not likely. Barack Obama is courting women; he needs them in his campaign. Needs them urgently.
So we’ve had a dust up in the desert that smacks of the kind of things PR and political strategists have cooked up in election campaigns going far, far back.
What’s my take? It was a stroke of luck, not scheming, for the Republicans this time, and President Obama rates high marks for
knowing when to walk away and thus keeping the governor from venting her full spleen right then and there.
There is, however, another point I want to make: This incident is but one showing that the president has grown in the job in many ways. His decisions may not always be right, but he is making them now, not shillying and shallying on key issues as he did in his earlier months in the White House.
He has a command presence now that is demonstrated by a far more mature handling of issues. Look at the record: Osama bin Laden, killed the instant the president, watching the capture on TV, gave the order to kill him to our commandos. He has also vetted the records of other terrorist leaders and given his personal kill authority to a string of them.
He has also made decisions at home deliberately circumventing obstructionist members of Congress.
In short, the record shows a president who has become presidential in ways one could not forecast when he took office. That is not to say that he has excelled on all issues and all fronts; indeed, I have made the case against him time after time. But he has grown as a man and as chief executive. None of his opponents has anything bordering his experience in handling tough, unexpected issues. It is something we must consider as we evaluate every contender.
One of them must make America proud again. Barack Obama is trying.
Give him that.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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