“He is being the kind of leader that people need — at least in tone, today and yesterday — that people need and want and yearn for in times of crisis and uncertainty,” said Dana Bash of CNN, not one of this president’s favorite news sources. She said Trump “used the bully pulpit in the way presidents are supposed to.”
In 2010, by which time President Barack Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently simply for saying during his 2008 campaign, “America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons,” Jonathan Alter, then with Newsweek, wrote a sycophantic book about Obama entitled “The Promise.”
In fact, the Obama the public came to know was a president whose eloquence usually depended on the presence of a teleprompter. Trump the anti-Obama, by contrast, obviously burns up the phone lines and wears out TV screens watching the cable coverage disdained as worthless by his predecessor.’
In 2010, by which time President Barack Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently simply for saying during his 2008 campaign, “America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons,” Jonathan Alter, then with Newsweek, wrote a sycophantic book about Obama entitled “The Promise.”
In fact, the Obama the public came to know was a president whose eloquence usually depended on the presence of a teleprompter. Trump the anti-Obama, by contrast, obviously burns up the phone lines and wears out TV screens watching the cable coverage disdained as worthless by his predecessor.’
Democrats Might Find It Better To Concede 2020 To Trump
I&I Editorial Board
Have you seen the “Reelect Trump” commercials appearing daily on your TV? No, not those produced by the president’s campaign. They’re the marathon press conferences he’s been having in the White House briefing room, standing aside members of the administration’s coronavirus task force.
There has never been anything like them. A lot of Americans may be put off by the gruff, in-your-face, even braggadocious manner of leadership exercised by President Donald Trump. They may not believe everything they hear this president say. But seeing a 73-year-old tycoon with a reputation for self-promotion, who could be doing any kind of work or leisure he likes, yet instead pressing his nose to the grindstone in public service, day after day – actually hour after hour, apparently – amidst much ridicule, can assuage any and all reservations, probably even for many who voted against him.
“He is being the kind of leader that people need — at least in tone, today and yesterday — that people need and want and yearn for in times of crisis and uncertainty,” said Dana Bash of CNN, not one of this president’s favorite news sources. She said Trump “used the bully pulpit in the way presidents are supposed to.”
In 2010, by which time President Barack Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize, apparently simply for saying during his 2008 campaign, “America seeks a world with no nuclear weapons,” Jonathan Alter, then with Newsweek, wrote a sycophantic book about Obama entitled “The Promise.” In it, he told of a genius chief executive who wowed everyone around him: “Nobody could think of a time when he hadn’t absorbed the briefing material before a meeting.”
He handled politics “like a Rubik’s Cube,” Alter quoted 2008 Obama campaign treasurer and current Barack Obama Foundation chairman Marty Nesbitt. “Before everyone else, he’s already calculated the relative probability of several different outcomes, so when one of them happens – even though it may be a surprise to others – he’s never really surprised.”
Yet Alter also admitted that important leaders “complained that they didn’t hear from him or, worse, had their calls returned by junior aides,” that Obama (unlike his successor) “avoided cable news chatter (‘WWF wrestling,’ he called it) because he didn’t think he could learn much from even the friendly shows.”
According to Alter, “his metier was the meeting … people who knew Obama were struck by his ability to ask probing questions, listen politely to competing views, summarize those views better than those who expressed them, and render a logical and dispassionate decision … Obama had somewhere acquired what the military calls ‘the habit of command.’”
In fact, the Obama the public came to know was a president whose eloquence usually depended on the presence of a teleprompter. (Something one admirer claimed was “because he’s too smart for his own damn good.”)
Trump the anti-Obama, by contrast, obviously burns up the phone lines and wears out TV screens watching the cable coverage disdained as worthless by his predecessor. Alter marveled that Obama “frequently called aides around 10 p.m. to frame the day’s events in terms of what came next.” But is that as mentally engaged as Trump’s “41 tweets an hour between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m.”?
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