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What kind of a president would Obama be?
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 | Race for the presidency The trips, the speeches, and the moments of Decision ’08. A look at the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain. more photos |
Obama is known for his loyalty, as well as for preferring aides who keep their mind on the work and the attention on the boss. Know much about David Plouffe or Valerie Jarrett or Pete Rouse or Steve Hildebrand or Robert Gibbs or David Axelrod? These campaign masterminds could well soon have offices in the White House, but none has become a celebrity aide in the mold of Bill Clinton's James Carville or Bush's Karl Rove.
Obama's own style combines cool-to-the-point-of-detached bearing with cerebral decision-making and natural charisma.
His Republican rival, John McCain, casts Obama as indecisive, inexperienced, and aloof — a celebrity empty suit. Obama's camp counters that he is a leader who thinks first, decides later and remains calm in a crisis.
Regardless, Zelizer said, Obama will need to guard against abandoning his natural caution to launch a spree of legislative action right off the bat. Going too far to please Democrats excited about finally being in control again of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue could risk a backlash from the public, he said.
With all the attention that is paid to a president's first 100 days in office, candidates themselves often divide their proposals between those with get-it-done-now status and those that will have to wait.
One issue that won't wait even until Inauguration Day is the battered economy.
Obama supports immediate action, in a special post-election congressional session, to spend billions on new economic stimulus measures. His ideas: a moratorium on home foreclosures, tax breaks for job creation and small-business investment, penalty-free withdrawals from retirement accounts, an unemployment benefits extension, support for state and local governments, money for infrastructure construction, and doubled loan guarantees for automakers.
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During 20 months of campaigning, he also has promised that many other things will gain his immediate attention, among them: immigration reform; a strict ethics code; a review of Bush's executive orders, particularly those dealing with warrantless wiretaps, the prison at the Guantanamo Bay Navy base, and interrogation techniques; and a rural policy summit in Iowa with accompanying legislative proposals to Congress.
With an economic emergency at hand, many may have to be postponed.
But for a man whose candidacy got rocket fuel from his opposition to the decision to go into Iraq, the one promise Obama cannot afford to put off is the one to end the war. Obama has promised that ending the war would be a priority not for his first 100 days in office — but for his very first. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will find themselves in the Oval Office on Jan. 21, he says, being handed a new mission from their commander in chief "to end this war, responsibly and deliberately, but decisively."
In all these things, Obama has reached big. That means he would need to spend a fair amount of time early on building bridges to Capitol Hill. Working with a Congress controlled by his own party doesn't guarantee he'd easily get what he wants.
To marshal public support for his agenda, he'll need to draw on his vaunted oratorical skills.
His speeches may be as measured as his "No Drama Obama" demeanor. But with subtle shifts in volume and pacing, Obama can move an audience to thunderous ovation or hushed attention. That's a potent tool, in governing as well as politics.
"The smart thing to do," Zelizer said, "would be to keep that up."
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