This is the week Obama made the surprise announcement that he's running for president in 2012. It's also the week another campaign promise withered away, at the behest of the Pentagon and Michael Bloomberg.
I'm sure that if the Obama 2012 team ever do seek advice from outsiders, which of course they won't, then Mark Penn would be some way down the list. Like, below me. And this column is mostly bog standard instapunditry. But I think Penn does hit on something interesting here:
President Obama actually appears at his best when he is campaigning. It's almost as though he sees the presidency as coming with a restraining bolt that holds him back rather than serving as a pedestal that puts him above the rest. He wants to again be the wily challenger, and I think he and his team seem to relish the campaign trail that has been so successful for them.
On the 2008 campaign trail, Obama seemed - at key moments, anyway - fabulously alive and alert to the currents of energy that circled him. He defined the contest, and knew how to force the game in his direction. As a president he has more often seemed constrained and reactive, and somewhat distant from the voters; ever present and strangely absent at the same time.
This isn't to say that he hasn't succeeded in getting through a fair amount of his agenda. It's just that, in the White House, he has never really seemed in his element - except on those occasions when he's been permitted to 'rise above' politics and preach to the nation. Perhaps in the eighteen months to come he will be able to visibly transfer some of the energy of his campaigning to governing.
It will be harder, of course, to generate energy for the campaign this time. It's telling that the Republican parody of his announcement video has been watched many more times than the thing itself. (Having said that, the Obama video is exemplary as a piece of communication, while the GOP parody, though fun, is a reminder that they haven't come close to settling on a line of attack.)
It will soon be time for the country to decide whether the 'O' of that familiar logo chimes with a newly emergent sense of Optimism - or whether it stands for a zero.
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