Barack Obama, Fashionista

I dreamed that I was alternately watching on TV and present at a meeting of Barack Obama and his advisers. They were meeting with lobbyists from disadvantaged groups in education. There were two black women, a couple of white men, an Asian woman, and a rabbi (in the dream, I was pretty sure the rabbi was a woman dressed as a man). Each group of lobbyists was arguing for its own position, which was that the government needed to pay more attention to the disadvantaged group they were representing. Obama was sitting at the center of the table looking thoughtful as they argued.

The rabbi was talking about how disadvantaged Jewish kids are and managed to imply that s/he (the rabbi) *could* be racist against African Americans (i.e. Obama himself) if s/he wanted to, but that s/he should be commended because s/he wasn't going to play that way. I was certain that Obama was sharp enough to understand the implication in the rabbi's speech, but one of the white women at the meeting felt like she had to explain it, by spelling it out and hoping to shame the rabbi for making that implication.

Obama was gracious enough to just nod his head, but I could tell he was trying to figure out a way to get all these people to work together instead of just fighting each other. At that point, the camera (or my perspective) shifted under the table, where I discovered that Obama was wearing a pair of slip-on, black and white wingtip shoes (1940s zoot suit style) with bright pink, pointed toes.

I was just feeling impressed by his fashion-forward shoes when he called a break in the meeting because he wanted to visit his family. He went to see his children and the younger one hugged him and whispered something in his ear that triggered him to think of the solution to the problem of the meeting. She whispered, "The devil's in the details." He jumped up, elated that he had figured this out, and went back to the meeting.

As part of getting these warring factions to work together, he had them all get up to dance. They formed two long lines facing each other, kind of like 18th century European dances. Some of them were willing to go along, but some of the hardbitten politicians were clearly dubious that this could work. They were dancing very stiffly, doing a lot of eye-rolling. One very tall woman in particular was making it clear that she disapproved.