Article: "Mutts Like Me": A Jewel in Obama's Friday Press Conference

Friday, November 7: I watched Obama's press conference, his first since becoming president elect. For the most part, this stunning orator was no great treat to listen to as he made his preliminary statement, talking about our urgent economic crisis and his gathering economic team blah blah blah. It seemed he was just going through the motions and was eager to get the statement out and done.

Then came the Q & A with reporters, all of which he handled skillfully.

There was one answer, however, that went beyond skillful. It was a small work of art. More important, it was a window into the present state of Obama's soul, and a reassuring one at that.

The question concerned the dog that will soon become part of the Obama family in the White House. This was a subject that Obama himself broached near the beginning of his victory speech Tuesday night, when he publicly told his daughters, "'You have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House." It was a funny, human piece of family business conducted on a public, even global stage.

And, asked at the press conference about what kind of dog they would be getting, Obama began his response by declaring it a "major issue," noting that no topic had gotten as much attention on the Obama website as this. And he then went on to discuss it in the kind of clear conceptual terms he brings to other, more public issues, declaring that the challenge for them was to reconcile two criteria.

The first criterion is that, because one of the Obama girls is allergic, the dog should be hypoallergenic, a goal that can be achieved because there are breeds that are hypoallegenic.

However, the second criterion is that they want to get a "shelter" dog, and most of them are not pure breeds.

The jewel came in a kind of throwaway phrase at just that point: many of the dogs in shelters, Obama said, "are mutts like me."

Two beautiful things I take from this. First, the priority placed on taking a dog from a shelter is in itself a powerful message about how Obama sees the world. He is not looking for a prestige dog for his family; this adoption is also to be intended to rescue an animal from a sad fate. He is looking to the least fortunate, the most vulnerable: "even as you do this unto the least of these, my brethren."

But the real clincher is his self-description, from that proto-presidential stage: a mutt like me. What this shows is that all the glory, all the triumph, all the jubilant and adoring crowds, all the gathering power, have not led Obama to forget where he came from, and what he still knows himself to be.

The vision, found in his DREAMS FROM MY FATHER, based on a deep humility and a compassion for the human struggle of the many who do not enjoy the benefits of privilege and pedigree, has survived the initial temptations of his extraordinary success and rise to power.