Obama’s Last Tango

WASHINGTON — BARACK OBAMA is tangoing into history, and there’s something perfect about that.

The tango has been described as vertical solitude. And this president is all about vertical solitude.

Republicans are frothing and comics are tweaking about the baseball diplomacy in Cuba and the tango diplomacy in Argentina, juxtaposed with the terrorist attack and manhunt in Brussels.

Comedy Central’s Larry Wilmore mocked Obama’s “spring break world tour.” He chided the president for doing the wave with Raúl Castro and remarked on Obama’s sinuous, take-charge tango partner. “O.K., Republicans, now he’s leading from behind,” Wilmore said. Rush Limbaugh accused the president of flamenco dancing and “doing the tango with women not even his wife.”

Yes, that outrageous sin of being polite to your foreign hosts at a state dinner.

Barack Obama started off as a man self-consciously alone on stage and that’s how he is exiting. He is, for better and worse, too cool for school. His identity is defined by his desire to rise above the fray. Unfortunately, he is in politics, which is the fray.

Obama shot to prominence at the 2004 Democratic National Convention with a rousing speech about boldly moving past our barriers — red and blue, black and white. But those divisions are more pronounced than ever. So now he brings people together and gets things done when he can, like importing modernity to Cuba and inveigling China on climate change.

The president has a bristling resistance to what he sees as cheap emotion. (See: flag pin, 2008.) That has led him, time after time, to respond belatedly or bloodlessly in moments when Americans are alarmed, wanting solace and solutions.