Our political Quote of the Day comes from President Barack Obama’s former speechwriter John Favreau who notes how Obama has often been counted out when he didn’t respond to a crisis the way the national media and political elites wanted him to — and that it proved to be the wise thing to do. Here’s his key quote in his piece on The Daily Beast:.
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.
Barack Obama understands his own limitations and the limitations of his office. He has made mistakes and he will likely make more. But 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 end, those are the qualities that will serve him well—the qualities that will serve us well—in the months and years ahead.
I’ve often said the media and many weblogs speculate about whether Obama will be “another Reagan” or “another Carter.” They have it wrong: he marches to his own drummer, seems comfortable about who he is — and in the future a future President may be described as “another Obama.”
The jury is still out on what that means — and the 24/7 media punditry cycle is not the jury that will decide the judgment on history. It could be good, could be bad — but it’ll be Obama good or bad.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.