Obama 0, World's Press ZZZZZZZ

He is here, can't you feel him? Barack Obama is amongst us. After touching down at Stansted last night (Air Force One taking precedence over the budget airlines) he appeared before us, in corporeal form this morning, his presence a blessing on his good friend Gordon and a gift to all the world.

So how is it going? Well, quietly.

The Obama style on show at the Gordon-Barack news conference was at the dull end of the laid back spectrum. He opened with bromide about the lovely weather, looked momentarily stumped by Nick Robinson's opening question on who is to blame for the economic melt down, but then prevaricated so effectively that one had quite lost track by the time he reached the end of his answer... something along the lines of let's look forward, not back (what else).

But that is the thing with Obama, he takes his time. Before his election, indeed before he began campaigning, it was an integral part of his appeal. He would take a question, reflect, apparently giving it real thought, and then respond. The interlocutor would be flattered: this is a guy taking my concerns seriously. The candidate, having created the right impression, would glide away.

I have likened him to a class athlete, a top footballer, a Zinedine Zidane or a Kenny Dalglish, who, in the pell mell midst of a match would receive the ball and appear to stop the clock. All around them would be transfixed, spellbound as ZZ or Kenny would choose the perfect touch, or pass, or shot. The great players seem to make time. Obama, by any measure a great candidate, is the same.

The obverse of this is that Obama may also be accused of using this contemplative talent to avoid a subject, to stall. That is what has happened occasionally in his 70 days in the White House. What the president's supporters see as his cool intellect his detractors have interpreted as a classic politician's avoidance tactic. For example, he took a political age, over 24 hours, to condemn the bonus pay-outs to executives of AIG, a company bailed out with tax dollars.

When asked why he had been so slow to speak he said he liked to know what he was talking about before opening his mouth. It was a cool answer, one intended to draw a sharp distinction with his predecessor. But it didn't wash with the critics.

Obama may be habitually unflustered, but even his supporters are getting fretful at the absence of key appointees to his economic team. He has been taking his time, and so has Congress in approving his nominees.

As for his introductory performance at the Foreign Office, those unused to the Obama show were saying he seemed "tired". He is often that way, it is part of his style, relaxed.

Perhaps he overdid it today, to the extent that Gordon Brown looked like the leader with charisma, but then Obama was on foreign soil.

As Kenny Dalglish or Zinedine Zidane would tell you, in the first leg, away from home, the priority is to avoid errors, not to concede and to keep the crowd quiet.

On that basis President Obama can consider today's press conference a success.

Some of the crowd were nodding off.

• Bookmark with:
• del.icio.us |
• Digg |
• Newsvine |
• NowPublic |
• Reddit
• - What's this?