A while back I discussed the unwitting lesson that some of President Obama’s cheerleaders in the media and academia provide in how to be mevatel oneself before true greatness.  Another worthwhile lesson from the same group is the almost limitless capacity we have to be dan l’kaf zchus to see even the most glaring flaws of those we adore through a positive lens.

Example One courtesy of Los Angeles Times writer Meghan Daum:

Apparently a lot of people consider President Barack Obama to be bumblingly inarticulate. “The guy can’t talk his way out of a paper bag!” a reader wrote to me recently.… It’s not just my readers nor is it exclusively conservatives who hold this view.… Admittedly the president is given to a lot of pauses “uhs” and sputtering starts to his sentences

But consider this: It’s not that Obama can’t speak clearly. It’s that he employs the intellectual stammer. Not to be confused with a stutter … the intellectual stammer signals a brain that is moving so fast that the mouth can’t keep up. The stammer is commonly found among university professors … and public thinkers…. 

Moving right along Example Two comes from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank who was “seeking a template to understand the enigmatic president … [and] consulted three leading academics…. “Uh-oh thought I this is trouble … he’s heading straight for William F. Buckley’s proverbial first 1 000 names on the Harvard faculty roster.”

I wasn’t wrong. In reaching the conclusion that Mr. Obama’s problem is that there’s just “too much going on in the poor guy’s head” Milbank first quotes University of Virginia psychology professor Jonathan Haidt’s view that what “distinguishes Obama particularly is the depth and carefulness of his thinking which renders him somewhat unfit for politics … He is a brilliant social and political analyst which makes it harder for him to play hardball or to bluff.”

This led the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto to remark: “It’s as if Milbank and his experts are advising Obama on how to answer a job-interview question about his biggest flaw. ‘Sometimes I put too much thought into things.’ ”

Next up is Wharton psychology professor Phillip Tetlock to inform that Mr. Obama like other politicians “on the center-left” has a “high degree of ‘integrative complexity’ — his ability to keep multiple variables and trade-offs in mind simultaneously” and sadly such a complex thinker “can suffer from ‘analysis paralysis’ and confusion” and “can be perceived as unprincipled.…”

Happily the good professor opines such complexity also has many advantages. Among these are “the ability to … update his beliefs after finding evidence that disproves his preconceptions and to predict probable outcomes with accuracy.” The kind of abilities perhaps that would enable a leader to say acknowledge being deeply mistaken about theIraqsurge and realize from the outset the American people would reject healthcare reform?

Professor Tetlock hastens to assure us that one “type of thinker isn’t necessarily better or smarter than the other; it depends on the circumstances. A simple thinker like Winston Churchill … was a better answer to Adolph Hitler than the complex Neville Chamberlain” of “Peace in our time” renown. Thank you professor for that comforting thought in the Age of Ahmadinejad. 

Mr. Obama’s “cool rationality” is apparently another potential liability. Robert Frank a Cornell economist explains that politics “often rewards the emotional over the rational. Nuclear deterrence for example works only if your enemy thinks you are crazy enough to destroy the world.” Well actually no — throughout the Cold War neither side thought the other “crazy enough to destroy the world.” Deterrence works when the following two factors are present: a) your enemy isn’t crazy enough to destroy himself and the world along with him and b) he knows you have both the resolve and ability to obliterate him after his first strike.  That both factors may be absent in the case of Iran’s apocalyptic march toward the bomb is what without Avinu She’baShoamayim to rely on would make our current predicament so absolutely terrifying.

Dr. Frank elaborates:

”If your opponent thinks you really might do something crazy … then you have more power to bluff.… But because Obama is unfailingly rational opponents aren’t afraid of him doing something crazy.”

Can I just say “no comment”?  

Professor Haidt sums up: Obama’s complexity and rationality make the president seem ”ambiguous without toughness or principles. It isn’t because he lacks a moral compass — it’s because he understands there are a lot of moral forces at play…. The more of a partisan you are the more simple-minded you are.” 

 But what if you’re “cursed” to have Mr. Obama’s gifts of temperament brainpower and reason? “It is important” says Haidt “for the president not to be rational and fully honest.”

Now there’s a line that explains a great deal.

Right about now you may be checking the front cover of this magazine to be sure this is the 5^th of Nisan issue not the one that appeared on the 13^th of Adar. But rest assured the aforementioned articles did appear in print and the people quoted do exist and did say those things.

In fact external confirmation that two of the objective scholars to whom Mr. Milbank turned Professors Haidt and Frank do exist can be had from the government records of their campaign contributions: Haidt twice gave $200 to Obama forAmericain 2008 and Frank gave $2 200 to the same group as well as another $875 to MoveOn.org.

But my intention in citing all this was not simply to give some readers the oneg Shabbos of a good belly laugh although bringing simchah to Yidden is always a worthy endeavor. Rather as I noted at the outset I actually find that items like these bring home very powerfully the deep reservoirs of good will that we all have for those in whom we are emotionally invested.

The essence of the mitzvah — d’Oraysa no less — to be dan l’kaf zchus is not to engage in far-fetched mental gymnastics to avoid criticizing our fellow in thought or word. First as Rebbetzin Yehudis Samet’s outstanding work The Other Side of the Story demonstrates what we often  think of as highly improbable explanations for others’ actions are often the honest-to-goodness truth of the matter.

But more: someone who really takes the message of this mitzvah to heart won’t see it as involving anything far-fetched at all. That’s because an essential aspect of the mitzvah is to feel enough love for another Jew that you begin to look at him as “yours” and will thus be inclined to reinterpret justify or at least reserve judgment on his questionable behavior in the same way that you do so effortlessly for all the rest of “your” people — family and friends and most of all yourself. It is in short about using for the good our innate proclivity for shochad for allowing our emotions to shmear us into becoming subjective and intellectually creative on behalf of ourselves and those we love. 

And for providing us with a model of how that’s done I can honestly say thank you professor.

HAVE A HEART  I came across an item this week which gives some hope that the acrimonious tone of the American political scene is not necessarily irreversible. It was a news story on a reliably liberal website about former Vice President Dick Cheney’s successful heart transplant after enduring decades of heart trouble.

I decided to see how readers at this site had reacted to the article and began scrolling through the comments section. One after another the responders had only good wishes for Mr. Cheney and his family. Some of them were his admirers but many perhaps most of them said they disagreed with almost everything he stood for but saw no reason to let their political opinions stand in the way of their concern for him on a simple human level. The more conservative commentors for their part responded by praising the liberals for setting politics aside and focusing on Mr. Cheney as a person. 

I ended up looking at all of the close to 500 comments and save for a handful that came close to but didn’t cross the line into negativity they all struck this positive tone. This recalled those few weeks following September 11 2001 when an amazing spirit of unity and goodwill swept our shell-shocked country.

Back then it wasn’t just the patriotic sentiment voiced in the most unlikely quarters that was astonishing albeit short-lived. There was also a sudden disappearance of the underlying tone of cynicism the bratty rebelliousness typified by the “Question Authority” bumper-sticker which had until then made straightforward professions of love for country an embarrassment.

The contrast couldn’t be more striking between the respectful atmosphere in the Cheney comments section and the frequent calls we hear for civility in politics which usually end in failure and a descent into charges and counter-charges of hypocrisy. The difference? The latter are usually focused on how the other guy needs to adopt a more civil tone whereas those commenting on the Cheney article didn’t sermonize about the need for civility. Nor did they tell anyone else what to do; they just went ahead and did it themselves.

 It’s the difference between emor m’at v’asei harbei and its opposite.