BP Oil Spill: Obama's True Test of Leadership

“It’s unreasonable to expect Barack Obama to be Aquaman and dive to the bottom of the sea to plug the oil leak, right?” says Jonathan Alter.

Well, right — but lots of folks sure wish he would.

As oil continues gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, the commander in chief is under increasing pressure to “plug the damn hole” and show that he’s in charge of BP’s efforts to stop the leak.  Jonathan Alter, seasoned journalist, bestselling author and political columnist for nearly 30 years, is in a unique position to offer insight on how the president operates. His new book, already a national bestseller, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, is a penetrating account of how a young, ambitious President in his first year handled health care, the Washington elite, the press, the markets, the pressure and more. Here are excerpts from our interview:

The Fiscal Times:  What surprised you most about the president?

Jonathan Alter:  We expected him to ace communications and struggle in executive leadership. He turned out to struggle framing a message and finding the right vocabulary, as Valerie Jarrett and others have put it, to talk about health care and other subjects. But he’s a very natural president in terms of making crisp, sensible decisions. And he had no experience. So the ease with which he settled into the job was a big surprise for me.

TFT:  How successful has he been so far in handling the BP oil crisis?

JA:  It’s more of what I just mentioned. On the private side, he’s on top of a crisis, understanding the details and consulting widely with experts. There, he’s done fine. I mean, it’s unreasonable to expect that he’s going to be Aquaman and dive to the bottom of the sea and plug the leak, right? No one in the government can do that. But the public part of it, the theatrical part — the part that relates to communications and showing the American people that he’s really there, emotionally, for the people of that region — I think early on he’s fallen short. He made a mistake [during his second visit to the Gulf] in not spending time with the fishermen in that region. But the president always has time to reinvent himself and do something else that puts him in a better position. [Obama has now made three visits to the Gulf and just announced a fourth visit for next week.]

TFT:  Is he a self-correcting individual, in your eyes?

JA:  I think he is. And he’s willing to admit mistakes, which is refreshing. Recently he said, “I was wrong,” when talking about some of the early analysis of the oil spill. He’s self-aware and self-confident without neglecting the need to be self-critical. He can also be defensive sometimes. He needs to watch that latter trait and stay focused on self-improvement. But he’s not heedless, the way some of his predecessors have been.

TFT:  Describe the access you had in order to do this book.

JA:  I’ve known Obama for nearly a decade, and I knew some of the Chicagoans going back 25 years. And I just worked at it. If they canceled interviews when they were too busy, I would not let them off the hook. I kept pressing for new information. I was determined to avoid rehashing events that people already knew. I wanted to deliver something you’ve not read before. And I guess my 27 years at Newsweek also helped. Also, I think people felt I was going to be fair. Not uncritical, but fair.

TFT:  Is this book — whose subtitle, after all, is President Obama, Year One — a natural setup for a second book? 

JA:  It’s a little early for me to know. I’m just happy people seem to like this one.

TFT:  What else stands out for you about this president?

JA:  He hasn’t changed since I first met him when he was a state senator. He’s very relaxed and easygoing when you talk to him. He neither talks down to you intellectually, nor gives a sense that your relationship with him has to change because he’s president. There are a lot of other people who I talked to in the Cabinet and in Congress and on his staff who said the same thing. Father and son in the Bush family were known to say, “Why? Because I’m president.” Obama doesn’t do that. He does give very unambiguous orders to the military as commander in chief. He will sometimes say, “And that’s an order.” But when talking to a journalist or a staff member, there’s an easy, bantering quality to his conversation. This is very interesting to me. His small talk is always contained. It’ll go maybe two and a half minutes, max. Then he’ll say, “Okay.” And you know: His time is short. Time to get down to business.

TFT:  Share one story of how he demonstrated that to you.

JA:  While interviewing him once in the Oval Office, we had a minute or so for small talk. I told him that my son, Tommy, was now a college student. Obama had met Tommy back in 2004, when my son was just 13. He said to me, “Your son, the one I met? He’s in college?” After meeting Obama back in 2004, my son had said to me, “Dad, that guy’s gonna be president in 2008.” I told my then-13-year-old son in a very patronizing way, “Tommy, if you’ve covered politics as long as I have, there’s no way Barack Obama is going to be president in 2008 — probably not even in 2016.” So I told the president this. And after understanding that my son was now in college, Obama said, “You tell Tommy two things. Say hello to him for me — and tell him he should’ve talked me out of it.”

From a chapter entitled “The Un-Bubba,” in The Promise: President Obama, Year One, by Jonathan Alter:

“Where [Bill] Clinton would saunter into National Security Council meetings and sit in the middle of the table in the Situation Room, listening to the NSC advisor call on various subject experts, Obama would purposely stride in and run the meeting from the head of the table. It was as if he had consciously decided to inhabit the role of leader. To do so, he had to project not just great confidence but enough knowledge of the nuances of national security issues to justify that confidence in a room full of smart and experienced advisors. In that, he unquestionably succeeded.”

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