Harry Reid has a gift

Apparently, Reid has some smart people around him who advise him when he's about to put his foot into his mouth. But then he goes ahead and does it anyway, while calling attention to the fact that he was warned not to say what he's about to say. Remember when, at the opening of the Capitol Hill Visitors Center when he ignored the advice of his staff to let loose this blooper.

"My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway," said Reid in his remarks. "In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true."

Apparently, he never realized how commenting on the smell of the hoi polloi coming to see the "world's most deliberative body" would come off as snide and arrogant.

And now he's come out with a paperback version of his book, The Good Fight, that I'm sure there are fully dozens of people looking forward to reading. And he included a new chapter on "The Obama Era." In the book he includes this anecdote about Barack Obama that he seems to really like, but his wife warned him not to include it.

Reid said he was impressed when Obama, then a freshman senator from Illinois, delivered a speech about President George W. Bush's war policy.

Reid, D-Nev., writes: "'That speech was phenomenal, Barack,' I told him. And I will never forget his response. Without the barest hint of braggadocio or conceit, and with what I would describe as deep humility, he said quietly: 'I have a gift, Harry.'"

A copy of the book's 15-page epilogue was provided to The Associated Press. Reid said in an interview he hesitated about citing Obama's comment because he knew it could be interpreted as bragging.

"To be honest, my wife, she said, 'don't tell people that,'" Reid recalled. "She's afraid it could be taken the wrong way. But she's heard me tell lots of people that, and everytime she goes 'don't do that.' Now it's there for thousands of people to read."

Either Reid didn't realize how arrogantly confident this made Barack Obama seem or he enjoyed telling a story that would strike many people as displaying a less than perfect image of the President.

Perhaps one day Harry Reid will learn to listen to his advisers when they tell him not to say something stupid. But I sure hope not.

Speaking of what particular gift Barack Obama has, I think that Noemie Emery summed it up pretty well a month ago when she wrote that it was the "ideal" of Obama that people were drawn to rather than the actual person.

The idea of Obama has taken on a life of its own that exists quite apart from the actual man, and that has always been bigger, and much more alluring, than he. It is not what he does, but what he is and implies that has been so compelling, and one thing he is is not-white. Or he is half-white--a black man, who was brought up and raised by his mother's white family--which makes him still better: as a genetic mixture of Kenya and Kansas, he emerged as the literal symbol of national union, the two racial strains merged as one.

Anyone--your Colin Powell, your Michael Steele, your Condi Rice (who had a boomlet around 2006 in
Republican circles)--could break barriers (as John Kennedy did with religion some 40 years earlier), but only Obama could appear in this role of a tangible symbol, the word, or the ideal, made flesh. Penumbrae of mangers and bulrushes lurked in the background, sensed, if not said in the open.

People liked the idea of having the first mixed race president. They liked the idea of having someone who came out of the Ivy League and seems cool and hip so that reporters are now writing articles about how "hip" the guy is. And so the nation's elites were drawn to him. Because he has, well, a gift. A gift not like Harry Reid of making people recoil in distaste, but of making, as Emery writes, people feel better about themselves. First of all, you've proven how non-racist you are by supporting a nonwhite guy and also his coolness reflects your coolness.

He is, in effect, themselves only better, which explains his attraction for New York Times bloggers, and for their soulmates at Newsweek and Time. "These are people for whom the Obamas are not just a beacon .  .  . but .  .  . a kind of mirror," as Warner writes. "This is the first president I've known who looks, talks, and acts like a peer," as one man told her. "I feel like I understand what he's like and where's he coming from. .  .  . If you stopped the clock in 2004 .  .  . he'd feel roughly like a peer in terms of accomplishments. .  .  . Despite his incredible achievements, he still seems like a lot of people I know."

Believing the right is made up of dorks and bigots, liberals find the idea of Obama a tonic and twofer, allowing them to think well of themselves on two different levels--as the wonderful people who backed and elected our first nonwhite president; and as the wonderful people who set style everywhere, the ultimate last word in cool. Either would do, but the two put together--the messiah and model in one lissome package--was enough to make them go bonkers, and bonkers they went. "As a nation, we're shedding our childlike, rural innocence and becoming more mature, urban, urbane  .  .  .  dare I say it, sophisticated?" Joe Klein enthused, and went on to declare the Obama administration an astonishing triumph before it had started, and well in advance of the fact. So did Jonathan Alter, in spite of the fact that the stock market had only gone down with Obama's accession. "Chin up, everyone. This president is well poised to bring us back from the brink," he declared, just before Obama embarked on his first speech before Congress. How did Alter know this? Well, he just knew. Obama was so "naturally confident," so bold, and yet humble, so brainy (in the same way as Alter), so much the "smart, cool instructor, trusted by the class to explain."

Poor Harry Reid will never be cool. But he can say things that let us know what he really he thinks. And I suspect that, by including this little throwaway anecdote in his book, he's telling us that the thinks Obama is a mite bit too arrogant about his "gift" and that Reid knows it.