‘There’s no doubt that when I’m with a black audience I slip into a slightly different dialect.’

This isn’t an expiration date so much as Obama acknowledging what many of us have long observed.

Remnick writes that as a political neophyte in Chicago, Obama had no problem becoming “multilingual” — learning to speak in different ways to different groups. He “subtly shifted accent and cadences depending on the audience,” Remnick writes: “a more straight-up delivery for a luncheon of businesspeople in the Loop; a folksier approach at a downstate VFW; echoes of the pastors of the black church when he is in one.”

Obama cops to this. “The fact that I conjugate my verbs and speak in a typical Midwestern newscaster’s voice — there’s no doubt that this helps ease communication between myself and white audiences,” he tells Remnick. “And there’s no doubt that when I’m with a black audience I slip into a slightly different dialect. But the point is, I don’t feel the need to speak a certain way in front of a black audience. There’s a level of self-consciousness about these issues the previous generation had to negotiate that I don’t feel I have to.”

He doesn’t need to speak differently in front of black and white audiences; he just chooses to do so. How reassuring.

Why is this necessary? Why is the “Midwestern newscaster’s voice” not appropriate for a black audience?  I understand that different circumstances and audiences will require different texts and a different tone, but why does the president, whose election so many thought would be helpful to race relations, think he needs to have a separate “white voice” and “black voice”?

And how does he speak before a mixed audience?

UPDATE: I’m not enamored with Gwen Ifill for having written an Obama book before moderating a vice-presidential debate, but credit her for the good sense in these paragraphs of her review of Remnick’s book:

Remnick mentions frequently how easily Obama can get bored. He was bored at Occidental, the first college he attended; bored at the University of Chicago, where as a teacher he focused on writing his first book; bored in the Illinois Senate; and even bored in the U.S. Senate, where he was more interested in writing his second book.
Remnick obviously admires the president, so he does not interpret such lofty boredom as peevish or self-absorbed, as critics might. Perhaps it is that generosity to Obama — gushy praise, Nobel Peace Prizes — that drives his political competitors nuts.

I would also note that Obama spent enormous amounts of time in all of those positions angling for the next job instead of focusing on what he was elected/hired to do. In the ten years before November 2008, Obama spent more time running for higher office than any other individual in America.

Campaigning is easy, governing is hard. His defenders will point to the health-care bill as successful governing. I disagree, obviously, and note that if you gave Pat Paulsen 59 senators from his party, 256 members of the House from his party, and a couple dozen House members willing to commit career suicide for the president’s agenda, he would get a big bill passed, too.