When can you start, Barack? (or...respectfully, president, sir, can you get some empathy now?)

Craig Ferguson's joke, relating to Obama's visit to Baghdad and the Iraqi leaders asking him this question, made me laugh. It's good to have an occasional laugh when reading the newspaper. Dad gets upset a lot. He's not really very optimistic about either of the two presidential candidates. I understand political malaise, and in general, would listen to him and nod in agreement. But this year I happen to be very excited about one candidate, and I'm hoping to help dad join in. (I'm trying to not rant about politics. Kelly has suggested that this isn't the most effective way to communicate one's view, and I think he could be on to something...)

There was another thing in the newspaper today that was not very funny. "Bush uncensored: 'Wall Street got drunk'" (originally reported in the Houson Chronicle). I read the sad piece and then, really feeling more sad than angry, considered the stark lack of empathy than our current president appears to possess. We talk about empathy a lot in education. We talk about how to teach it, understanding that, for many, it is not an inborn trait. Certainly, some children appear to have lots of it, and they grow up to be sensitive, nurturing and often emotionally healthy adults.

Some adults didn't learn empathy from their parents or their teachers or their life experiences or any other way. President Bush clearly falls into this category. How can a leader, charged with leading a proud people, make jokes about the economy or the housing slump when vast numbers of his people are suffering under said unfortunate conditions?

"And then we got a housing issue, not in Houston, and evidently, not in Dallas, because Laura was over there trying to buy a house today." Said our humble leader.

"Before friendly audiences, especially in Texas, Bush tends to be more relaxed and candid than he appears at the White House."

So we can expect that when our president is "candid," he feels comfortable enough to show how insensitive and uncaring and lacking in empathy he truly is? It is possible that these comments were taken completely out of context. Given his position, however, and the current financial woes of the ever-growing middle class, how could jokes such as these ever be appropriate? We have certainly had more than enough proof that he really isn't "a man of the people" like so many of the citizens who voted for him (twice) wanted to believe. We wanted to believe that being inarticulate and smug equaled being "one of us."

Problem is, we don't make the issue of empathy central to how we evaluate our potential leaders. We ought to look at their lives, their experiences, the reading they engage in and how they treat others (among many other things) to determine how they might empathize with our need and pain in troubled times.

Problem is, it probably won't be an important issue this time around, either. One could argue that both Obama and McCain possess certain amounts of empathy. But right now the bar isn't very high. Obama has already been called aloof and "out of touch" with the average working class American. Is that because we can't imagine him sitting down and having a beer with us? We need to learn, as a country, to distinguish true and sincere empathy from other "qualities" that we might often confuse with empathy.

I'm going to be watching Mr. Obama, and studying his life, for signals that he can "walk in our shoes," including the shoes of the most disenfranchised among us. I'm going to hope that he'll build policy that will reflect this.

For the time being, Mr. Bush, look up "empathy" in the dictionary, and figure out how to get some for yourself.