Thursday, February 19, 2009

A Wish That All Presidents Were Graduate School Lecturers

Professor-President Obama is demonstrating that the best leadership works in the classroom as well as the boardroom and as well in the political realm.

See Bob Herbert in the NYT: Obama Riding the Wave
He said that the fact that he’d been rebuffed so far in his quest for bipartisanship would not stop him from reaching out for Republican support.

“Going forward,” he said, “each and every time we’ve got an initiative, I’m going to go to both Democrats and Republicans and I’m going to say, ‘Here’s my best argument for why we need to do this. I want to listen to your counterarguments. If you’ve got better ideas, present them. We will incorporate them into any plans that we make, and we are willing to compromise on certain issues that are important to one side or the other in order to get stuff done.’ ”...

...But beyond his specific policies (and whether one supports them or not), Mr. Obama is emerging as the very model of the type of person one would want in high public office. He is intelligent, mature, thoughtful, calm in the face of crises and, if the nation is lucky, maybe even wise.