Obama and the Empathy Trap

Barack Obama at the CBS News town hall meetingPresidents must show empathy during difficult economic times. It's in the office handbook. There's only so much any one president can do though about the immediate condition of the economy, and he must be careful not to exaggerate his impact. So he emphasizes that he understands the plight of regular Americans. The problem with empathy, however, is not just that there's never enough of it to go around. It's that by offering it, presidents raise unrealistic expectations of a different sort.

The empathy tactic is most associated with Bill Clinton, who famously said, "I feel your pain" during the 1992 campaign, but the phrase actually dates to Jimmy Carter, who promised to be "a president who's not isolated from the people, but who feels...

Related Topics: Obama administration

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/05/12/obama_and_the_empathy_trap_255365.html

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