There's something I've been trying to put my finger on for a long time - an essential element that seperates Obama's governing style from that of not only other presidents, but most other politicians in general. It's the thing that's been his greatest source of success and the cause of his most ineffective moments. It's what causes a good number of you to lose hair follicles every time he opens his mouth. And in short, it comes down to this: Barack Obama, really and truly, does not like to fight.
For some of you this may seem obvious and for others, it may sound like an accusation, equivalent to saying the President is weak. But this is looking at the problem all wrong. It is not because he is weak that Obama avoids conflict. In fact, Obama is a pretty steely dude. He has shown a confidence in his own judgment that even Bush might envy.
No that's not it. It's a matter of what brought him into politics in the first place.
For some people, politics is about scorch warfare, ideological battle. We have our ideas, we are right, and our job is to prove the other side is wrong. This can be done in a polite manner, but even civil discourse has at its core the goal of forcing the other side, or at the least a neutral observer, to agree with you.
Not to mention that some people simply enjoy a good battle. They relish the thrill of going into the 'arena' and outsmarting their 'opponents'. They enjoy having their enemy in their sights and going in for the kill.
On all these things, Barack Obama is approaching government from a completely different perspective. He wants to win, but for him, winning does not mean beating the other side or finding the perfect policy, it means reaching what you believe to be the best achievable outcome. In Barack Obama's perfect world, government would be BORING - free of conflict, free of controversy. It would not be a world with no Republicans, but a world in which left and right worked together for the common good, making sacrifices along the way. Where most of you see fighting as your first option and compromise the last resort, for him it is the reverse. Fighting is what you do when you have no room left to talk.
And if you believe in this vision, you start to develop a certain mindset which says that fighting is not only unpleasant, it is actually DETRIMENTAL to the act of governing; a mindset which wants to classify any and all political conflict, anything dramatic, as 'distraction'. This explains not only the sense that many have that he is too quick to cave but also his record on civil liberties and response to things like Wikileaks and Shirley Sherrod.
At the end of the day, Wikileaks is, for Obama, nothing more than another annoying political fire which will distract the public from 'what they should really be focusing on', and must be put out as fast as possible. If it means sacrificing his principles or hurting innocent people along the way, he is going to do it, not because he has been coopted by the power apparatus, but because he believes that he is doing so in service of the greater good. See folks, 'No Drama Obama' was not just a cool nickname, it is his modus operandi, his raison d'etere. Bad news, even if it's not about him but about his opponents or predecessors, is ALWAYS going to be looked down upon. There is no way that he is going to allow the United States to be embarrassed, for whatever reason, as long as it is in his power to prevent it. There's no way that he's going to hand his opponents a political line of attack, no matter how much he may disagree with their ideas.
In short, Barack Obama is not like you. He is not a warrior. When he sets about looking at a problem, avoiding conflict is an end in and of itself.
We are all free to agree or disagree with this approach. I think it has had mixed results. But more than that, it's we all learn to understand it. The sooner we do so, the better we will be able to predict his actions and get our own messages through.