Why I Would Never Be Obama's 'White Friend'

Image by BL1961 via Flickr

Because I really don't think he suffers fools gladly -- which comes out a little harsher than I intended (in relation to myself), but you get my drift.

Loved this moment from tonight's news conference.

Q (from CNN's Ed Henry?) It seems like the action is coming out of New York in the attorney general's office. It took you days to come public with Secretary Geithner and say, look, we're outraged. Why did it take so long?

OBAMA: Well, it took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak. (Laughter.) All right?

I'm not the best person to compare Obama's public manner with that of Bush because I don't suffer fools at all when they happen to the President of the United States, so I could never stand to look and listen to Forty Three for more than a few minutes. I was not, as they say, dispassionate, disinterested -- if I can for a moment revive that fine old word in its fine old meaning.

But my impression is that Bush was a combination of belligerence and insecurity, simmering with a kind of bullying camaraderie designed primarily to put lesser beings in their place. The stink of privilege and his confusion about how and why he was entitled to it seeped out of every pore, malformed every sentence.

Obama, on the other hand, seems to always be in a bit of a struggle with the sense that he's the smartest person in the room, and it would be impolitic to assert it but inauthentic to disguise it.

I like that quality of his just fine, but I'm not sure I could personally keep his interest being a little short of dazzle, you know, with ample room for improvement. Heck, that's why I got married, to be a good woman's project.

Oh, I'm not saying it always has to come down to being about me, just that it's a lot more interesting when it does.