SHERYL GAY STOLBERG - ESSAY


WASHINGTON - President Obama rarely, if ever, uses the phrase“war on terror.”Like presidents before him, Mr.Obama has a top-secret intelligence briefing every day, yet it is not necessarily first on his schedule. And when he sent 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, he announced the news in a written statement, not a public address.

As he heads toward his next big decision as commander in chief - a new strategy for Afghanistan - Mr. Obama, by necessity and temperament, is wearing the role in ways distinctly different from former President George W.Bush.

Mr.Obama, of course, leads in very different times. Mr.Bush forged his identity as commander in chief during the crucible of the September 11 attacks. Mr.Obama faces not only two wars but also a crumbling world economy that his homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, has described as a threat to the United States.

But while Mr.Bush often called himself“a war president,”that phrase seems to be missing from Mr.Obama’s lexicon.

The shift is evident in their schedules.

The first person Mr.Bush saw in the Oval Office each morning was his national security adviser, Stephen J.Hadley, for a discussion, among other things, about what had happened overnight in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the top-secret intelligence briefing, the“president’s daily brief,”had a sacrosanct place in the presidential schedule: 8 a.m.

By contrast, Mr.Obama has added a briefing on the economy, and the timing of his Oval Office intelligence sessions varies each morning. Occasionally, the economics briefing comes first.

And while Mr.Bush had routine secure video exchanges with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr.Obama has less personal contact with those heads of state, his aides say.

“The president believes that we’ve got multiple means of communication,”said his senior adviser, David Axelrod.

Mr.Obama’s style of decision-making is also different. He“is somewhat more analytical, and he makes sure he hears from everybody in the room on an issue,”Defense Secretary Robert M.Gates, who has worked for both presidents, said this month on“Meet the Press,”a political talk show.

Mr.Gates added that Mr.Bush“was interested in hearing different points of view but didn’t go out of his way to make sure everybody spoke.”

Mr.Bush often said he relied on his military commanders to determine troop levels; his last step before making such decisions was typically to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a process set up by Mr.Gates. But Mr.Obama has made clear he wants to hear from his entire national security team, including his secretary of state, before making major military decisions.

Mr.Obama’s critics accuse him of trying to minimize the role of commander in chief. Several former Bush advisers said they were shocked that he had sent additional troops to Afghanistan without a formal public explanation.

But Mr.Obama is too young to have faced the draft and is unencumbered by the ghosts of the Vietnam War - an accident of birth that his advisers believe gives him a certain freedom in cultivating relationships with the military, a core constituency for Mr.Bush. “He’s been able to shift the paradigm a little bit,”said Mark Lippert, a top foreign policy adviser.