The first Catholic and the first African-American in the White House were a couple of cool customers—young, witty, eloquent, self-deprecating, and married to sensational women. Their elusiveness—whatever about them was not quite in focus—helped deepen their mystique.
On that $64,000 question, Obama is no longer getting the benefit of the doubt. Perceptions of him are undergoing a sea change, and beyond the headlines and opinion polls that say so are conversations I’ve had with Obama loyalists who are fed up. Despite years of lead time, he failed to prime the public for Obamacare and Obamacare for the country, negligence that undermines the argument that his diffident response to other issues (chemical weapons in Syria, for example) reflects prudence and wisdom rather than dithering. Even the recent blundering Republican attempt to destroy Obamacare regardless of whether the world economy went down with it has had an ironic aftershock: the more nihilistic and downright ignorant Obama’s enemies prove themselves to be, the more bewildering it is to Obama’s supporters that he hasn’t rolled over them.
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Those books are out there doing whatever they do. But so are other books written by notable authors and reviewed in important places. Alter’s book was one of those, and when he wrote of Obama, “The uncomfortable truth was that he didn’t much like politics and didn’t enjoy the company of other politicians,” he was solemnizing between hard covers something a lot of people were already having a tough time trying to construe as a virtue. Snark is now in fashion, and some of the noteworthy books take a tone that suggests boys shy of their teens tearing the wings off flies. Kennedy was hated as Obama is hated, but he wasn’t worked over by cynics who think all Washington, D.C., is good for is a few laughs.
The latest book on the Obama White House is Double Down: Game Change 2012, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. I know it by its reviews—particularly the Times review by Michiko Kakutani, who calls it “buzzy” and “breezy” and chock-full of “scooplets” and “insider glimpses” into last year’s presidential campaigns that are tasty even if they suffer from “fuzzy sourcing.” Kakutani says the book “sheds light” on the struggle between the White House and the Republicans mainly by “underscoring the pettiness and self-serving spin engaged in by both sides.”
