How Obama Handles Crisis [View all]

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by Jon Favreau (former Obama speechwriter)


Honestly, they act like it’s his first crisis . . .

By and large, the president’s most difficult moments—the true crises he’s confronted—haven’t been the political ones. At least not in his view. I was reminded of this by an anecdote in Peter Baker’s New York Times story from Thursday: “As he was traveling on Marine One on Monday, Mr. Obama took note of news reports describing last Friday as a terrible day. ‘You know what was actually a terrible day?’ an aide recalled him saying. ‘The day Benghazi actually happened.’”

A biracial, freshman senator named Barack Hussein Obama wouldn’t be president if he didn’t possess ample political talent. But to say that his decisions are driven primarily by politics is to fundamentally misunderstand the man who occupies the Oval Office . . .

This is a president who has seen the nation through many serious and consequential crises, and he has done so without losing the core of who he is or why he ran for this job in the first place.

. . . in the case of the IRS, the president must have been furious when he learned the news. I can remember how angry he was during the GSA debacle (parties in Vegas; think there were clowns and jugglers involved? Wow). He was angry because he knows that a progressive vision of government requires faith that government is efficient, and responsive, and trustworthy—and the handful of morons who break that trust sully the reputation of all the federal employees who uphold those values every day.

But the president was not willing to fire a bunch of people before knowing all the relevant facts. He was not willing to go on a witch hunt before the investigation of the independent Inspector General was complete. That was more important to him than his short-term political standing in the eyes of the Washington press corps.

That is who he is. The handwringers and bed wetters in the D.C. punditocracy should know that Barack Obama will never be on their timeline. He does not value being first over being right. He will not spend his presidency chasing news cycles. He will not shake up his White House staff just because of some offhand advice offered to Politico by a longtime Washingtonian or a nameless Democrat who’s desperately trying to stay relevant. And if that means Dana Milbank thinks he’s too passive; if it means that Jim VandeHei will keep calling him arrogant and petulant; if it means that Chris Matthews will whine about him not enjoying the presidency, then so be it. He’ll live . . .


read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/20/how-obama-handles-crisis.html


Barack Obama and Jon Favreau in the Oval Office