Messy Desks

What warms me to Obama in this instance isn’t just his messy desk. It’s that when he was asked a human question (”What’s your greatest weakness”), he answered like a human being. … As Obama pointed out today on NPR, Edwards and Clinton both gave almost freakishly political answers. (Edwards: my greatest weakness is that I care too much. Clinton: I get impatient with people who don’t care enough about the children!) Come on, if you were interviewing someone for a job, and you asked ye olden “greatest weakness” chestnut, what would you think of the kinds of answers that Clinton and Edwards gave? I’d immediately think I was talking with someone who was both phony and unimaginative.

Timothy Burke

NewMexiKen has always admired people with messy desks, being congenitally unable to live like that myself (e.g., God forbid the pen be placed with its clip facing left rather than right).

One thought on “Messy Desks”

  1. More on the messy desk:

    “Because I’m like, an ordinary person, I thought that they meant what’s your biggest weakness?” Mr. Obama said. “So I said, ‘Well, I don’t handle paper that well. You know, my desk is a mess. I need somebody to help me file and stuff all the time.’ So the other two they say uh, they say well my biggest weakness is ‘I’m just too passionate about helping poor people. I am just too impatient to bring about change in America.”

    As the room erupts in laughter, he continues: “If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. I could have said, ‘Well you know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don’t want to be helped. It’s terrible.’”

    The Caucus – Politics – New York Times Blog

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