Barack Obama was reflecting recently on what he’s learned as president. At first, he told CBS, he thought “this job was just about getting the policy right.” But now he realizes that “the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”
Mitt Romney immediately lashed back: “Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading, and President Obama has failed to lead.”
Romney was correct in one sense. Of course “getting the policy right” is a critical part of any presidency. But he was also profoundly wrong. Telling stories is an essential dimension of leadership. That’s how all presidents — or candidates, for that matter — excite enthusiasm and rally support, reveal their character and define their identity.
Writing last year in The New York Times, professor Drew Westen of Emory University made this argument: “The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be and what should be; to the worldviews they hold; and to the values they hold sacred.”
Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan understood this point very well, and as a candidate, so did Obama. He used stories to introduce himself to voters and shape his image as a real American, despite his dark skin, funny name and foreign father. When he talked about his grandfather who fought in Europe, or his mother who struggled on food stamps, Obama was telling voters: I get it; I know what your lives are like.
Four years later, his opponents are still trying to brand him as somehow foreign, alien, not quite “one of us.” They question his birth certificate, his religion (one in six Americans still say Obama is a Muslim), even his patriotism. Romney surrogate John Sununu summed up this insidious message when he said: “I wish this president would learn how to be an American.”
That’s why the president’s response to the horrific shootings in Colorado was so important and instructive. Playing the role of chaplain-in-chief, the president visited the victims and their families and described his purpose in very human terms. “I come to them,” he said, “not so much as president as I do as a father and as a husband.”
