Diary – 19 June 2010

Barack Obama seems to have been eating his way around the Gulf of Mexico, munching through a plate of crawfish tails, crab claws and ribs at Tacky Jack’s in Alabama, posing with a super-sized ice cream in Mississippi. The message is, of course, that the Gulf coast is open for business. The wider message is that he ‘gets it’. The Washington media don’t get him. The qualities the President prizes, coolness and detachment, they see as un-American disengagement. In truth it is a little odd sometimes, for someone who got the job partly because of his empathy and ability to identify with the audience. At his final speech at a naval academy in Florida the men in khaki repeatedly holler in powerful unison when he mentions the words ‘marine’. He could have joshed them, name-checked them again or performed any one of a thousand politician’s tricks to cement a bond.