The Oprah President

Ellen Goodman, who is a good liberal writer but seems absent from the internet these days, writes:

For me, the real Obama moment of this back-to-work season wasn’t the speech
before Congress or Wall Street. It was in the Virginia schoolhouse when a
ninth-grader asked him a question that had nothing and everything to do with his
presidency: “And if you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would
it be?”

The president was not about to choose Lindsay Lohan. Nor did he pick
Abe Lincoln. His answer was Gandhi. Yes, that Gandhi.

“It would probably be a really small meal because he didn’t eat a lot,”
he added with humor. But the icon of nonviolent leadership was his inspiration
because “he ended up doing so much and changing the world just by the power of
his ethics.”

As I heard this, I imagined a huge groan emanating skyward from a
frustrated phalanx of his supporters. “Gandhi? Did he say Gandhi?”

This is the Obama story. Right from the get-go, Americans were attracted to
a man who was more collaborative than combative. Hillary was the tough guy in
the primaries. McCain was the warrior in the election. Obama was the Oprah
candidate who believed we could talk with anyone, even our enemies.

At times, supporters urged him into trench warfare with Sen.
Clinton. He didn’t go, and he won. At times, advisers wanted him to duke it out
with Sen. McCain. He didn’t, and he won.

The country liked a man who fashioned himself as a healer. And yet
there has always been this underlying anxiety. Can you be a healer and a
politician? If you try to mediate an ideological divide, do you just end up in
the crossfire?

Clearly, Obama knows this. But it’s equally clear that he wants to do this
leadership thing his own way. As his would-be dinner companion would say, “Be
the change you wish to see in the world.”