the president as movie screen

Next time you're reading an analysis of Obama's character, bear this astute insight in mind (via Brendan Nyhan):

Or consider Ronald Reagan. He's remembered as the so-called "Great Communicator," but that's after the economy picked up late in his first term and he won a landslide victory over Walter Mondale. However, Reagan was not always viewed that way -- he suffered through a recession early in his term that damaged his political standing (his approval trajectory was very similar to Obama's). The political scientist Jonathan Bernstein reviewed press accounts of Reagan from January 1982, and concluded that "Reagan's manner [was portrayed as moving] from amiable and clear on the big picture to clueless and oblivious to the important details of governing -- and indifferent to suffering -- when things were going bad."

The larger point is, as Bernstein notes, that "character traits are perceived by the press in light of how the president is doing in the polls and in Washington, not the other way around." In other words, the perception that Obama isn't "connecting" is a symptom of his declining political status, not the cause.

The comparison above is very apt. This president shares with Reagan a kind of iconic minimalism, as a public persona, that encourages everyone to fill the blankness with their hopes, wishes, and fears (icons are always mysterious). Obama himself has long understood how this works. In The Audacity of Hope, he wrote, "I serve as a blank screen, on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." As a candidate, the movie projected on to that screen was a feel-good entertainment about a better future. The reel has changed. Now playing: the horror movie of current America's economic and political problems.

(h/t: Andrew Sullivan)