This is the kind of diary for which I might take a lot of grief so I'll make an effort to word it very carefully.
One thing I've noticed about President Obama since the day he took office has been his very mature approach toward dealing with the opposition. At first I thought this motivation rested solely on the desire for bipartisanship, but I think an underlying force behind that is his opinion of what the Office of the Presidency means. I think it is his ongoing consideration for his legacy that drives a lot of his behavior. And by that, I do not mean to use the word "legacy" in the way that Bush has bastardized it with revisionist history, spin and perception.
Sometimes I think we have all found ourselves frustrated by the President's focus on process, at how he extends courtesies to his opponents which they surely would not extend back to him. Many of us have called this a weakness, and sadly it does mimic patterns of co-dependance. In many ways, though, Obama's bipartisanship came out of a position of strength. He won an historical victory, and held both chambers of Congress. We can all be sure that he had people around him advising him to push the envelope and capture as much ground as possible in these first two years. I myself would have liked to have seen that - a President who acted as if he'd decided to risk becoming a one-term President: Unafraid to make enemies or let the press beat him up.
But that's not the route that he chose to take. He took the long view, for which he may end up being well served, even though not many of us can see that possibility. What he has done is taken himself outside of the fight. Or I should say, he's taken his "self" outside of the fight.
And that's what I've concluded about President Obama ... that he takes the long view in his perspective. In a way, it's very admirable. A zen-like pilot who won't allow himself to become frustrated or distracted by the pugnacious passengers.
Would anyone else have done the same? They say power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but what we've gotten from Obama in a time when he had unsurpassed power was ... compromise. I think this speaks to the idealism that he campaigned on. Call it a fulfilled campaign promise.
But at the heart of this humility, could there be a grain of fear? Has the burden of being the nation's first black President weighed too heavily on his values? Obama is visibly different from every other President we've ever had. He also behaves differently than today's political climate would dictate. Is it possible that these two are so intertwined that they've been overlooked?