I often thought Eliot’s remark about Henry James came close to being true of Obama—that “he had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it”—but only if “passion” was substituted for “idea.” To be fair, if Obama’s worst character flaw is an indifference that masquerades as courtliness, it’s hardly a capital offense. Most people, especially politicians, who spend a lot of time understanding themselves, are cautious about exposing the depth of that understanding to a public which thinks only in terms of the weapons available to them in a potential competition. Black intellectuals in America, for obvious reasons, have even more reason to keep their distance, and that is doubly true for black politicians. Eloquent black men, like James Baldwin, who insist on being themselves in public, have often found themselves banished to places far less hospitable than France. Obama is a smart guy. He knows that as well as anyone, and I suspect better than most. In a better world, a much better world than we’ve got, we’d maybe prefer Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X, or even Baldwin himself in the place Obama now occupies, but in this world I doubt any black man could ever be President without sounding like President Obama.