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. He just ignores the interruption.

It’s this struggle that is at the root of the recent transatlantic misunderstanding. Those in Britain who accuse Barack Obama of aggressive anti-British rhetoric seem to have missed the build-up to his ‘kick ass’ comments. For weeks, in daily briefing after daily briefing, the President’s spokesman has had to defend his boss against charges that he is insufficiently angry. ‘Have you seen rage?’ the White House press corps asks with a straight face. The spokesman Robert Gibbs replies that he has, indeed, seen some presidential rage. He is pressed for evidence. Does the president shout, for instance? Gibbs had to answer, like a poker player throwing a couple of clubs on the table, that he’d seen Mr Obama clench his jaw. The president dislikes doing anger, but he has the political nous to hold his nose and do some anyway. So the harsh language has nothing to do with a desire to blame Britain and everything to do with satisfying an American media that want an empathiser-in-chief, not Professor Cool.