On March 22nd I wrote that The Real Problem Obama Faces is
America's instant gratification culture. Heaven forbid if a complex problem requires thought and time (to both determine a solution and understand whether that solution is good or bad) -- that is just unAmerican and we wont tolerate it!
And I included this apropos cartoon:
Apparently, the President agrees with me as you can tell by his truly-profound-for-Washington answer to CNN's Ed Henry last night:
He then reinforced the message (in a less snarky, more positive way) at the end of the press conference when he talked about how important persistance is to him (at the 8:00 minute mark)
and that he's trying to improve the direction of a big ocean liner not a speed boat (at 2:00 minutes):
Of almost all the changes Obama is trying to bring to Washington, the media and our larger society, in many ways the most important is a change in mind set:
* Smart, effective decisions aren't made instantly (and they require facts & science not opinions & faith)
* Short term thinking rarely leads to good long term solutions
* Policies designed to address fundamental, complex problems can't necessarily be explained in 15 second sound bites.
It was amusing to see how in the post press conference commentary, all the media talking heads didn't seem to realize that his tart reply to Ed Henry was really directed at them. And all the pundits who insist on treating Americans as morons (Obama was too wonky, his answers were too long, he was boring) should take a lesson from Obama's poll numbers (here and here): he clearly is doing something right by treating us as adults.
I was first attracted to Barack Obama because I felt he could be a transformative, progressive President. I just never realized that one of the most important transformations he might make would be on our nanosecond attention span, instant gratification culture.