Obama and the People's Letters

Don't think Obama is out of touch with the American people.

Jetting around the world, eating Wagyu beef, becoming one of the world's biggest stars overnight -- none of that has made Obama insensitive to the plight of common Americans.

Obama steps out of his bubble on a daily basis.

He does it by reading 10 handpicked letters a day, letters that come from the masses.

From the New York Times, Ashley Parker:

Tens of thousands of letters, e-mail messages and faxes arrive at the White House every day. A few hundred are culled and end up each weekday afternoon on a round wooden table in the office of Mr. Kelleher, the director of the White House Office of Correspondence.

He chooses 10 letters, which are slipped into a purple folder and put in the daily briefing book that is delivered to President Obama at the White House residence. Designed to offer a sampling of what Americans are thinking, the letters are read by the president, and he sometimes answers them by hand, in black ink on azure paper.

Obama himself writing a letter in black ink on azure paper?

Oh my God. How exciting! AZURE PAPER!!!

“We pick messages that are compelling, things people say that, when you read it, you get a chill,” said Mr. Kelleher, 47. “I send him letters that are uncomfortable messages.”

The ritual offers Mr. Obama a way to move beyond the White House bubble, and occasionally leads to moments when his composure cracks, advisers said. “I remember once he was particularly quiet,” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, “and I asked him what he was thinking about, and he said, ‘These letters just tear you up.’ It was after getting a poignant letter from a struggling family.”

...The White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said Mr. Obama “believes it’s easy in Washington to forget there are real people with real challenges being affected by the debate.” Mr. Emanuel added that he had seen the president turn to policy advisers in meetings and say, “No, no, no. I want to read you a letter that I got. I want you to understand.”

Parker goes on to give examples of some of the poignant letters and the people's reactions to getting a handwritten note from Obama.

The article reads like an Oprah transcript.

Parker writes more on Kelleher, the letter czar:

A graduate of Illinois State University, Mr. Kelleher served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone in the mid-1980s. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Illinois in 2000, which was when he first crossed paths with Mr. Obama, who also was running for Congress. In 2006, Mr. Kelleher became the director of outreach in Mr. Obama’s Senate office in Chicago.

Describing his current job, Mr. Kelleher talks about each letter’s “character,” the pictures and messages in crayon from children, and the postcard-size notes from older people, written on typewriters that still have a cursive font.

Mr. Kelleher’s office has a red box for what he calls “life-and-death constituent case work.”

“So someone says, ‘I’m despondent and I want to commit suicide,’ or ‘I have a life-threatening illness and I need help here,’ ” Mr. Kelleher said. “We immediately respond to those.”

Really? How is that possible?

"Tens of thousands of letters, e-mail messages and faxes" are sent to White House each day. (That's so vague. Is it twenty thousand, fifty thousand, more?)

Of those, how many of the messages relay serious problems? Thousands per day?

How long does it take for an "immediate" response from the White House?

When Kelleher says they respond immediately to despondent, suicidal people, does he mean in 6-8 weeks?

...On the wall of his sparse office, a few blocks from the White House, Mr. Kelleher has two letters from his daughter Carol, 10. She wrote to him once and, when he did not reply, she wrote “a second, meaner letter,” he said. That letter begins, “I have noticed you did not reply to my letter.”

“So I had to reply to her,” he said, sounding less keeper of the gate and more hapless father, impressed by the power of letters.

Before saying anything more, I want to be very clear that I'm not mocking any of the Americans who have written heartfelt letters to Obama, nor am I laughing off how much excitement a personal response from the president of the United States can bring.

I'm commenting on the way this piece is written and the media's treatment of Obama.

He's not the first president to read letters addressed to him, and he's not the first to reply to the senders.

Good grief.

What can reading 10 letters a day, cherry picked by Kelleher, really tell Obama?

Out of tens of thousands that arrive per day, Kelleher's chosen 10 keeps Obama in touch? Ten letters?

I don't think so.

Let's be realistic.