The Oh!bama moment

- President compliments attorney-general, then apologises

K.P. NAYAR

Kamala Harris

Washington, April 6: For all those who have been waiting for Barack Obama's "woman problem" ever since he entered public life 16 years ago as an Illinois state legislator, the answer has finally come in the form of a fellow Democrat with Indian blood, who is also an aspirant for high office.

America's 44th President, who has often been criticised for keeping his emotions to himself, allowed a rare peek into his feelings for female beauty this week when he praised California's half-Indian attorney-general, Kamala Harris, for her good looks.

Obama's human side got the better of his public persona at a garden party at the home of John Goldman, heir to the Levi Strauss jeans company fortune, where he was raising money for Democrats for the mid-term Congressional elections in 2014, for which early preparations are already under way.

It is widely anticipated that Harris will be the Democratic Party's candidate for the post of California's governor in that election. If that happens, she is certain to win in the overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning state, making her the third governor of Indian origin in the US. In that case, Harris will become the first Indian American governor from among Democrats.

"She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney-general in the country — Kamala Harris is here," Obama said at the fund-raiser in Atherton, California, while recognising Goldman's guests. He began by praising the professional attributes of the attorney-general, who has been a rising star in the party for some time.

"You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you would want in anybody who is administering the law and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake," the President said of Harris.

There were gasps of surprise when Obama went on to praise Harris for her beauty. Quickly these gasps were covered up by applause. So Obama paused to make sure that his audience had heard him right. "It is true. Come on," he said. This time the President was greeted with laughter, some of it with a tinge of embarrassment in an environment of political correctness.

As soon as word got out of Obama's personal remarks about Harris, he was in trouble. Social media websites and political blogs were quickly alight with opinions about Obama's praise, with feminists and liberals expectedly calling his remarks "sexist".

Some bloggers demanded that Obama must be given "gender-sensitivity training" while others argued that the President's comments represented a troubling pattern of a woman's success being linked to her appearance.

The conventional media was more balanced. Jonathan Capeheart of The Washington Post, for instance, urged critics to "lighten up," pointing out that the arguably sexist comments were not the only things the President said about California's attorney-general.

"In fact, it was the last part of what he said." The President "spoke the God's honest truth," wrote Capeheart. "Judging by some of the comments I have seen on Twitter you would swear the President was guilty of luridly cat-calling a woman he doesn't know… Obama and Harris are long-time friends."

Soon enough, however, the White House decided that it needed to put the controversy behind and move on. So, Jay Carney, the President's spokesperson, said yesterday that Obama telephoned Harris on Thursday night to apologise.

"He called her to apologise for the distraction created by his comments. And they are old friends and good friends and he did not want in any way to diminish the attorney-general's professional accomplishments and her capabilities… He fully recognises the challenge women continue to face in the workplace and that they should not be judged based on appearance."

When the dust has settled over the episode, Harris may be the beneficiary of the uproar over Obama's remarks. Before the dust-up, not many people outside California recognised the name Kamala Harris. But now she is in the spotlight in her quest for bigger office.

Harris's name has also been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court Justice before the end of Obama's current term in the White House as a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has twice been diagnosed with cancer.

For Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, Harris served as a national co-chair along with actress Eva Longoria and actor Kalpen Modi. She was a speaker at last summer's Democratic National Convention in Charlotte which re-nominated Obama as the party's presidential candidate. But Harris failed to rise to expectations among party strategists that she would be a "female Barack Obama" on the convention floor.

Harris is born to an Indian mother — Shyamala Gopalan, who is from Tamil Nadu — and a Jamaican father. Before becoming attorney-general in 2011, Harris served two terms as the district attorney of San Francisco.

Obama nearly got into similar trouble last year when he told a Republican member of the New York state assembly, Nicole Malliotakis,

that she "did not look a day over 23." Malliotakis is 32. But that effort by feminists did not gain traction because it happened during Hurricane Sandy and people had more serious issues to worry about.

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