Jonathan Alter on "The Obama Dividend"

Full text at http://www.newsweek.com/id/128548

"The Presidency," Franklin D. Roosevelt told a reporter shortly after he was elected in 1932, "is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership." We don't know yet whether Barack Obama can get himself elected president, much less prove a success in office. He could get swamped by unanticipated problems or suffer from crippling flaws we haven't seen yet. All presidents are blind dates. But Obama is showing signs that he could project his voice in the theater of the American presidency. Even if his legislative agenda founders, he might be able to help the nation raise its sights in new ways. You might think of it as the Obama Dividend.

As the afterglow of last week's landmark Philadelphia speech on race fades, even many conservatives agree with liberal editorial writers that Obama's approach was brilliant. I'm skeptical of that adjective and reluctant to hazard a guess about the political impact of the speech on blue-collar whites. Until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, we won't know if they even heard about the story of his white grandmother, or how he gave voice to white frustration about affirmative action and busing. But I do know that the speech was "presidential" in the best sense of that word, and for reasons beyond a tone of gravitas and a backdrop of American flags. To succeed in a crisis (and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s inflammatory sermons were at least a mini-crisis for Obama), presidents must do more than rally the country enough to win backing in polls for a course of action. That's relatively easy. The hard part is using the bully pulpit to instruct and illuminate and rearrange our mental furniture. Every great president has been a captivating teacher. By talking honestly and intelligently about a subject that most Americans would rather ignore, Obama offered a preview of how he would perform as educator-in-chief.