The pundit doth expect too much

Why, oh why, does President Obama refuse to follow President Bartlet's hallowed script? Why can't his every speech be the Gettysburg Address, preferably set to the theme music of the West Wing? That's basically the crux of Richard Cohen's silly critique of President Obama's remarks at a recent DC memorial for the late Richard Holbrook.

In full handwringing mode, Cohen writes that compared to Obama’s brilliant Tucson speech, this one "was flat, neither eloquent nor moving, nor the least bit personal. It was phoned in by a man who sat patiently on the stage as others praised a beloved figure, a leviathan of ideas and policies and vexing idiosyncrasies whom the president didn't much care about. It was a dutifully flat performance."

I, too, admired the highly problematic Holbrook. But a grand "leviathan of ideas and policies?" You'd think Cohen was describing former WWII Army Chief of Staff, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State and Nobel Peace Prize winner George Marshall. Holbrook was good, but not that good. Obama had the good sense to keep his remarks in proportion to the man being honored. Holbrook was not an Obama intimate (the president doesn't suffer "vexing idiosyncrasies" gladly). Pretending otherwise would have been foolish as even Cohen acknowledged in his piece.

But, alas, this is all a set up to Cohen's real beef: Obama doesn't measure up to what a Democratic president ought to be – Lincoln, FDR and JFK all rolled into one. In other words, Jed Bartlet. So out comes the gratuitous baseball bat swing upside Obama’s head:

"Obama's lack of artifice can be admirable, but it is almost never politic. For a while he even wouldn't wear that kitschy American flag lapel pin, 95 cents worth of patriotism. But blarney is as essential to politics as the evanescent lie is to seduction. I am referring now to convincing strangers that you understand their concerns, feel their pain, so that in the end you actually do. A good politician never speaks to a crowd. It is always a collection of friends. Obama speaks mostly to crowds. His hallmark has been his disconnect, a perplexing standoffishness that has hurt him politically."

Cohen's criticism is overwrought and misplaced. And importantly, he fails to mention that a good politician also knows who's in the audience and why. Obama’s speech before Washington's foreign policy elite was dignified, honest and appropriate. In terms of oratory, it didn't rank with the Tucson speech nor should it. The purpose of this event was remembrance not soul healing. This crowd did not need inspiration or insight into life's cruel ironies. Cohen's criticism, like so many on the elite left, stems from viewing politics through the lens of Aaron Sorkin and not reality. If there is a "disconnect," then it is only with members of the so-called professional left like Cohen. The American people get Obama. Cohen and his emotionally needy clique clearly do not.

Time's Joe Klein put it well today when he wrote, "One thing we should keep in mind in all this: Obama is Obama. He is not a rabble rouser, a big emoter or one who will stoop, for good or ill, to political tricks or postures that he considers cheap or demeaning." As a result, Klein says, "The public likes and respects him now. The Republicans are impressed and daunted by him."

It's time for well-meaning folks like Cohen to grow up and, at long last, behave like the adult they are so quick to criticize. Obama is Obama. Get over it.