Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, June 6, 2007
In mythic tales from “Superman” to “Star Wars” to “Spider-Man,” there comes a moment when the young superhero has to learn to harness his powers. That’s the challenge Barack Obama faces now.
Clearly, the 45-year-old senator is blessed with many gifts. He can write and talk, think and walk, with exceptional grace and agility.
When he wants to, Mr. Obama can rouse the crowd to multiple ovations, as he did yesterday when he talked with a preacher’s passion about the “quiet riot” of frustration of blacks in this country, on issues like Katrina, in a speech before black clergy at Hampton University in Virginia.
But often he reverts to Obambi, tentative about commanding the stage and consistently channeling the excitement he engenders. At times, he seems to be actively resisting his phenom status and easy appeals to emotion. When he should fire up, he dampens. When he should dominate, he’s deferential. When he should lacerate, he’s languid.
Futilely, he chafes at the notion that debates and forums are rituals for showing a sense of command with a forceful one-liner, a witty takedown or a “shining city on a hill” moment. He keeps trying to treat them as places where he can riff, improvise, soothe, extrapolate or find common ground. He skitters away from the subtext of political contests, the need to use your force to slay your opponents.
In the first two Democratic debates and Monday night’s forum on faith, Hillary Clinton commanded the stage, just like a great squash player dominates the T. The woman radiated more authority than the glamour boys flanking her — and she did it despite the pressure of having a few new books published with salacious and unflattering nuggets about her.
In the South Carolina debate, Senator Obama was — absurdly — taken by surprise when Brian Williams asked the requisite Dukakis question designed to elicit manly passion: How would he respond if Al Qaeda hit two American cities? The senator ignored the visceral nature of the question and rambled on cerebrally about natural disasters, working with the international community and about how he would have to see if there was “any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network.”
He was already told that it was Al Qaeda in the question, and “potentially,” “some” and “dismantle” are not the sort of fast-and-furious words the moment required. A bit later, he doubled back to say he would hunt down terrorists, but it was too late.