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Showing Original Post only (View all)"the president thinks you're shallow. And you know that he is right. And you hate him for it." [View all]
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/5/26/102114/680He Dislikes You Right Back
by BooMan
Sun May 26th, 2013 at 10:21:14 AM EST
Sometimes, I wonder why I so frequently see disparaging remarks in the press about the president's disposition or mien. He's aloof, arrogant, detached, above-it-all, distant, dismissive. The thing is, he doesn't strike me as any of those things. Maybe every once in a while I get a brief hint that he's impatient or frustrated with the stupidity that surrounds him. But, to me, it seems like he hides it well. Watch him console grieving parents or enter into a little child's world or work a rope line, and he's compassionate, intimate, wholly-there.
snip//
The day-to-day clutter of manufactured controversy and faux-scandal is ultimately unimportant to the president. What does he care of critics who want to know why gay rights have not yet been addressed, when he knows he will have laid down the most progress in history on that front by the end of his first term? He's working from a vision. When a Code Pink protester rails against him for the situation as it stands, he can afford to be magnanimous because he's in the process of laying out where we're going.
This is what the press sees as being detached and above-it-all. But, in the context of effective governance, those attributes are virtues. How could he not feel at least some disdain for those who are so absorbed in the now that they can do nothing but quibble and nitpick, attacking him with a million pinpricks while never sensing that his vision is too big to be stymied by such trivialities?
Of course, he pays a price for being unloved by the press. He pays a price for not tending to the narrative of the day with the same intensity with which he tends to the long game. But he's only one man and he can't have every skill that one might want. If you want someone to arouse populist passions, you probably don't pick the guy who excels at keeping everyone calm in a crisis. And if you could look at all the thronging crowds at all those Obama rallies and still argue that the man lacks warmth or is detached or can't arouse populist passions, then maybe your standards are too high.
Or, maybe, you have just enough depth to realize that the president thinks you're shallow. And you know that he is right. And you hate him for it.
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"the president thinks you're shallow. And you know that he is right. And you hate him for it." [View all]
babylonsister
May 2013
OP
I've never understood this supposed "detached, aloof, arrogant" demeanor at all. To me,
whathehell
May 2013
#2
The public doesn't like politicos like Christie-only the media does because his personality
Boomerproud
May 2013
#22
That's an interesting point and you're right, in that he does give them drama and "confrontation".
whathehell
May 2013
#27
Sadly, yes. So awful to think that some (many?) people still think that way.
whathehell
May 2013
#29
Being able to go home each night to his highly smart, intelligent and wise wife surely helps
lunatica
May 2013
#4
I think the "aloof" comments come from him standing proud as he's waiting
Frustratedlady
May 2013
#7
I think part of it is that they can't figure out how the son of a single mother
Frustratedlady
May 2013
#17
The say "aloof, arrogant, detached, distant and dismissive" because they can't say "uppity"
Scuba
May 2013
#8
A cottage industry of explainations of our Presidents behavior, basically it's us, not him.
Safetykitten
May 2013
#31