Among Jonathan Alter's yeomanly "Five myths about Barack Obama," I found #3, "Obama is an effective public speaker," to be both aggressively true and wildly inaccurate:
[T]here are few examples of Obama’s speeches actually moving popular opinion. That’s because he speaks in impressive paragraphs, not memorable sentences. He is allergic to sound bites, and that keeps him from effectively framing his goals and achievements.
The roots of this allergy may lie in his famous Philadelphia speech on race in 2008.... The speech lacked memorable lines, but it was a big hit. I believe it convinced Obama that the public could absorb complex ideas without bumper sticker lines. He was wrong.
The truthful strain of Alter's critique seems to me manifest, so I wont rehash that portion. What I find inaccurate, though -- and granted, my critique is as subjective as Alter's, hence little effort is needed to find me as wildly inaccurate as I find him -- is his conjecture that Obama's allergy to sound bites and bumper stickers lay, or was at least reinforced, in his Philadelphia race speech. I should think it goes much deeper than that; indeed, the allergy is probably congenital, in that it lies in natural harmony with Obama's natural intelligence.
Which is to say, Obama appears to govern -- perhaps too habitually for an often low-information democracy -- from his own intellectual environment. He perceives the problem, he examines his options, he decides, he announces his decision, he acts, and then he moves on. Why would he belabor his actions? He said what he would do, and he did it. Next item.
Implicit in this modus operandi is the operational thinking: If you people can't keep up, that's your problem; this isn't "Governance for Dummies." There's too damn much to accomplish at the moment for me to also conduct remedial courses in "How the Hell We Got in This Mess 101" and "How the Hell Do We Get Out of It 102." Isn't it rather obvious? And if, to you, whoever you are, it isn't obvious, then you're hopeless, so why would I waste my infinitely precious time?
The Obamian method of governance brushes against the Kantian school of pedagogy: The really smart students (citizens) don't require personal attention and endless explanations -- they'll do nicely on their own, thank you very much -- while the truly dumb ones -- hello, red states -- are beyond all educational effort. Just be direct with the bulging and average middle, tell them to study and to eat their peas, and then move on.
In short, Obama respects -- and takes for granted -- the electorate's intelligence, because of his own intelligence.
Again, there's always the danger that this could prove politically calamitous in a low-information, study-unskilled democracy. But it seems quite natural -- and a hard habit to break -- to a leader of Obama's intellect.