“It kinda redefined ‘cool, calm and collected,’ didn’t it?”

For Obama, last year’s correspondents’ dinner is tough to top
By Niall Stanage - 04/28/12 07:00 AM ET


Whatever happens at Saturday evening’s White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner, it is a surefire bet that it will not reach the heights of drama scaled by last year’s event.

Only a handful of people, including President Obama, were aware of the drama at the time. As he delivered a jovial address to the annual gathering of press corps and celebrities, final preparations for the mission that would kill Osama bin Laden were already underway.

Even from a year’s distance, Obama’s performance seems remarkable to all but his most unrelenting critics.

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“It kinda redefined ‘cool, calm and collected,’ didn’t it?” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and a veteran of the Clinton administration.

Lehane asserted that Obama’s performance that night, and in the period immediately surrounding it, was important for deeper reasons too.

“I think those 24 or 48 hours in many ways became the defining moment of his presidency,” he told The Hill. “It definitively answered the questions that people always want to have answered about their presidents: Do they have what it takes? Are they up to the job? Can I trust them to make the right decision for our country in difficult circumstances?”

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http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/224355-for-obama-last-years-white-house-correspondents-dinner-is-tough-to-top