The sum wisdom of the political pundits I have seen, heard and read over the last week reacting to Obama’s trip to Europe and the Middle East seems to be that it was a wash. Yeah, he got to look presidential in front of all kinds of adoring Germans (though leave it Charles Krauthammer to make a Hitler comparison) and those pictures of him with Olmert, al-Maliki, Sarkozy and the fighting men and women he played basketball with will make for nice photos in a campaign montage come September. But meanwhile, back in the states, people were still freaking out about the economy and McCain was mocking his every move. It’s like coming back from a long vacation, only to have your resentful coworkers dump everything they can on your desk. 

John Kerry could be the first to tell him that people don’t care what they think of you in France. (The fact that Kerry was fluent in French was something some voters actually held against him, and I noted with interest Obama’s admission that he doesn’t speak any foreign language.) And that Brother from Another Planet routine that some people (like me) find so compelling may be too cool for school. One of the reasons I was drawn to the candidate was because he is cool under pressure; he makes me think of Joe Montana or Michael Jordan, great athletes who kept their heads while all about them were headed for the exits. I want a president who’s cool under pressure, and so should you; but voters also want one with a pulse. I suspect his resting heart rate is better than Lance Armstrong’s.

The danger of playing the wise extraterrestrial is that voters may confuse him with Mr. Spock. By remaining rational and unflappable, they’ll start to think he’s…different than them, with all the code implied by that adjective. It doesn’t concern me when polls suggest that voters can’t relate to his personal history: who the hell could? But he does need to find a way to keep consistently reminding people of his common bonds with them: his faith, his family, his struggles, and his losses (his father’s disappearance, his mother’s death). Because as popular as the character was, nobody wanted Spock to run the Enterprise. They wanted Capt. Kirk: flawed, human, but right most of the time. 

Of course, if Obama’s Spock then McCain has got to be Bones: always blowing a gasket over something, imagining slights and assumptions at every turn (“Dammit, Jim, I’m a senator not an economist!”). Personally, I think Obama is missing an opportunity not appearing on stage with McCain now, before the conventions. Network news and the major newspapers seem to be giving the Arizona senator a free ride, ignoring his daily gaffes and occasional outbursts. Seeing him go off like a string of firecrackers on a national stage might make some undecided voters think twice about how hot they want their next president to be.

Maybe Obama will bury the hatchet with Bill Clinton before the race is through and get some pointers; now there’s a man who could do empathy! There was a moment in one of the ’92 presidential debates that historians point to when discussing his rise to the White House: a woman asks a question about the recession and the national debt and Bush I says something about stimulating the economy. Clinton walked to the edge of crowd and asks her, “Tell me how it’s affected you, again?” He looked like the soul of compassion next to Pappy, just as Obama still might when reaching out to some mortal while standing next to a sputtering roman candle.