Unsilent Barack

A 19th-century historian called the Middle Ages "a thousand years without a bath." That oversimplified somewhat, but was interestingly suggestive. So is the summation of Obama's opening sprint as 100 days without silence.

Ordinary politicians cannot comprehend that it is possible for the public to see and hear too much of them. In this sense, Obama is very ordinary. A few leaders of democracies have understood the importance of being economical with their demands for the public's attention. Charles de Gaulle believed that remoteness nurtures a mystique that is an essential ingredient of leadership. Ronald Reagan, an actor, knew that the theatrical dimension of politics requires periodic absences of the star from center stage. He spent almost an eighth—a year—of his presidency at his ranch. But when he spoke, people listened. If Obama, constantly flitting here and there, continues to bombard the nation with his presence, he will learn how skillfully Americans wield the basic tool of modern happiness, the TV remote control with its mute button.

Calvin Coolidge, the last president with a proper sense of his office's constitutional proportions, was known, not coincidentally, as Silent Cal. His reticence expressed an institutional modesty: "It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know that he is not a great man."

"Men," Coolidge said, "do what I tell them to do—why, is a great mystery to me." Perhaps it was because he did not ask them to do all that much. Unless today's Congress can legislate that there shall henceforth be 36 hours in a day, and unless it can lengthen the year by four months—some liberals probably think Congress can—Obama will soon learn what happens when government's circuitry becomes overloaded.

Toward the end of his first 100 days, Obama heeded the better angels of his administration regarding free trade: He will not press for renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The long-stalled (by organized labor's opposition) agreements with Colombia and South Korea may now advance. Labor's "card check" plan for abolishing secret ballots in unionization decisions in order to make it easier to herd workers into unions cannot currently be passed. Labor is the big loser of the first 100 days.

The last 10 of those days were dominated by Obama's defensible release of what are accurately called the "torture memos." But then came what looked like a willow bending beneath hot winds from his hyperliberal base, which still luxuriates in loathing the Bush administration. Obama shut the door on possible prosecutions of Bush officials for authorizing torture, then two days later he left the door ajar. But to read the memos is to realize what quicksand the Obama administration would step into if it tried to hold the authors of them legally accountable.