The Amazing Obama

It is exactly one week since Barack Obama was sworn in as president. For all he has done, it seems it should be at least a month.

The Amazing Obama is juggling so many balls in the air that you would think he couldn't possibly have time for any more. Apparently he's not overly taxed by the all-consuming economic negotiating, getting his cabinet members confirmed, meeting with his defense team about Iraq and Afghanistan, defining a new policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, meeting with increasingly hostile Republican congressmen to ask for their support on the recovery bill, overturning dozens of bush regulations and restrictions, as well as planning his budget and legislative initiatives. And he does it all while seeming totally cool and utterly competent.

Yesterday the theme seemed to be "reach out to Muslims" day. First, it was announced that we will have direct diplomatic discussions with Iran, a first since 1979 and something for which his opponents scorned him during the campaign. He held a news conference to announce that George Mitchell, his special envoy to the Middle East, will be heading there to help secure the cease fire. Then his first formal interview as president was given to the Dubai based Arabic Network Al-Arabiya. As reported by Sam Stein on HuffingtonPost:

Much of the interview was spent defining the new approach that the United States would implement in that region: respectfulness over divisiveness, listening over dictating, engagement over militarism. But the president drew the line when it came to terrorist organizations.

"Their ideas are bankrupt," he told host Hisham Melhem. . . . There's no actions that they've taken that say a child in the Muslim world is getting a better education because of them, or has better health care because of them."

Pressed later in the interview to comment on Bush's use of the term 'War On Terror,' and the implications that the phrase held, Obama once again distanced himself from his White House predecessor.

"I think that you're making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters," he said, according to a transcript provided by the White House. "We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down. But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship."

If Obama's discussion on terrorism were marked by tones of firmness, his positions on other Middle East issues seemed defined by fresh thinking and inclusiveness. At one point he did something that would have been anathema on the campaign trail: he touted his hereditary and biographical links to the Muslim world.

"I have Muslim members of my family," said the president. "I have lived in Muslim countries."

Later on, Obama pledged to engage Iran as one of several means of preventing that country from developing a nuclear weapon. He promised to follow through on his campaign commitment "to address the Muslim world from a Muslim capital," and said that George Mitchell, his recently appointed Middle East envoy, was going to the region to "listen" because "all too often the United States starts by dictating."

There will be those who will scream that they knew it all the time. Obama is a secret Muslim who will appease the terrorists and lead us into an even worse disaster as he gives away our freedom.

You know what? We tried the other approach: bombs, insults, and refusal to talk. And it only made things worse, increasing recruits for terrorist organizations faster than we could kill them.

I think Obama is exactly right, and I am simply in awe of his courage and his acumen.

His ability to handle so many things at once is amazing. Remember when McCain suspended his campaign and made a big to-do about going to Washington to make a lot of sound and fury about the economic crisis? And Obama just coolly kept going on the campaign trail, consulting with appropriate leaders in Congress about the economy -- and explaining that he thought the American people expected presidents to be able to handle more than one thing at the time.

Yes, indeed.

Ralph