I was in Vermont this weekend, birthplace of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream and home to the tree-covered Green Mountains, part of the vast Appalachian range that spans the eastern US. Unfortunately, on Saturday, the state was also home to thermometers reading minus twenty degrees, which seemed a good enough reason to stay indoors and catch up on President Obama’s virtuoso Q&A session with House Republicans last week.
It really is worth watching. This was the first time a President had attended a Congressional retreat of the opposition party and, following Obama’s masterful performance, it may be the last invite for a while. If you’re still accustomed to Obama the inspirer, welcome to Obama the plain. Responding to strong questioning from his Republican audience, the President’s rhetoric was not grand or lyrical. The language has come thumping down to earth. The State of the Union road-tested this new, less elevated style, but watching this session really brings it home.
It was great politics not just because it reminded us what a brilliant – and adaptable – speaker Obama is, but because it so perfectly addressed growing anxieties about the President. His frank and sometimes snappy responses to antagonistic Republican questions wove a perfect balance of GOP-bashing and open-minded offers of collaboration (prompting Reuters to run the brilliantly Onion-esque headline: ‘Obama assails Republican foes, urges bipartisan effort’).
As Ros Douthat points out at the NYT, the performance was not dissimilar to Blair’s before the Iraq enquiry. One hopes that both are examples of a new level of conversational frankness that will come to typify political communication this decade. Judging by the positive response Obama has received, UK party leaders would be well-advised to adopt the same frank tone in the three election debates later this year.