Obama on 60 Minutes

It was refreshing, heartening to watch and listen to President Obama last night on 60 Minutes, speaking intelligently, knowledgeably, seriously, articulately in full sentences and paragraphs about his decision to take out Osama bin Laden in a risky special forces mission. It was, in a word, presidential, and it had to remind all of us who voted for him in November 2008 why we had done so. There have been moments – too many – when I’ve questioned the wisdom of my vote – his caving in on a health care plan that included single payer before the negotiations even began, his fumbling arms-length participation in that debate for most all of 2009, his reversals on Guantanamo, his diddling on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” his weak stimulus program, and his apparent inattention if not indifference to jobs. His ability to speak has consistently been impressive, though we mostly see him in scripted and teleprompted appearances or semi-scripted press conferences. What we saw last night was a lengthy interview that went beyond his speaking ability to reveal much about his thought, his decision-making process, his concerns, his doubts, and most important, his ability to take a military and political risk (55-45, he put it) that I don’t know how many others, particularly his many detractors, would have taken. There’s an obvious comparison that could be made here, probably in a humorous way, between Obama’s performance in both the raid and the interview and our previous president’s performance in attempts at both thought and speaking the English language, but I’ll let it go with this apophatic sentence (you can look it up). But I only hope that this becomes a turning point and that it’s followed in the next 18 months by similarly resolved, risky, and persuasive action, in both foreign and domestic policy. I do so want to vote for him again.

War Room Photo

In the infinity of analysis following Sunday’s killing of Osama bin Laden, one thing I find interesting is the interpretation of this now-famous photo of President Obama and his security staff watching in real time the attack on bin Laden’s compound:

Most commented on about this photo is the expression of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her hand over her mouth – is she about to gasp? cry? barf? The usually more level-headed Joan Walsh describes her in Salon as “beyond anguished; her hand is over her mouth, her eyes red-rimmed.” She describes Obama as “grim” and Biden as “stricken,” the military leaders (I only see one, and he’s looking at his laptop screen) as “granite-faced,” and the civilian leaders “grimacing.” This kind of psychological analysis of photographs is silly at best (and Walsh is not at all the only one), particularly the attempt to ascribe different thought or demeanor to each of the individuals. To me, the most that can be said is that everyone in that room is (thankfully for us all) serious, grim, focused. I certainly don’t see Clinton as “beyond anguished.” Her posture, her hand over her mouth, is much like mine in any number of department meetings over the years where little more than the distribution of travel money or the recycling of paper is at issue, not the killing of the world’s #1 terrorist. And maybe my computer doesn’t have the resolution of Walsh’s, but I can’t at all make out her “red-rimmed” eyes (any more than Robert Gates’ on her left (arms crossed in anguish?)). This projection of one’s own desires and biases as interpretation is much too common in today’s media. The cliché that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is just that, a cliché. Sometimes – maybe most often – a picture is just a picture. And any words can only distort it.