One of the bigger questions asked about presidents regards their decision making styles and how much they make themselves open to outside viewpoints. The NYT reports that Obama likes to make phone calls to a wide variety of people (apparently including W. Bush).
He commented on one of the advantages of being a senator:
“Everybody takes your phone calls,” Mr. Obama told me. “If there is a topic I’m interested in, I can call the smartest people in the world on that topic and talk to them about it. Sometimes they’ll come into my office and that is just a huge luxury.
“If I’m interested in finance, I can call Warren Buffet. If I’m interested in health care, I can call the top administrators or health-care experts in the country. If I’m interested in foreign policy, I can not only call experts here, but I can call experts overseas,” Mr. Obama added. “That’s fun.”
Its too soon to determine whether this strategy will be an asset or a liability for him. Clinton was criticized for being too open to outside opinions, which made him indecisive and prone to be mostly influenced by the last person he spoke to, and W. Bush, Nixon and LBJ were argued to be too limited in the range of people they spoke to which turned the White House into an echo chamber, prone to groupthink.
