WASHINGTON, D.C. Jan. 28 (DPI) – “I hope they invite me back on Air Force One.”

That’s surely what David Remnick was thinking as he toiled over his nuanced and utterly forgiving profile of Barack Obama, published in Monday’s New Yorker magazine.

The 4,000+ word profile simply re-confirmed an old conundrum for journalists: Once you’re pals with your subject, journalistic detachment is almost impossible.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?currentPage=all

And Remnick, the magazine’s editor who is also author of a biography of Obama, pulls a gold-medal balancing act: He constructs his sweeping-sounding-but-not-groundbreaking observations with supreme care. But he exercises enough restraint that he’ll remain on the short list for invitations to presidential pick-up basketball games, White House dinner parties and – yes – jet rides.

Reading “Going The Distance: On and Off the Road with Barack Obama”, you feel a bit as though Remnick is limning an old college roommate with a studious yet affectionate portrait. It’s not so much informative of Obama as it is of Remnick’s relationship with the man. You sense that Remnick serves his subject as much his readers.

Playing bodyguard to one’s subject is an old but often unavoidable sin in journalism. Access counts, and access is only granted to the loyal and the trusted, after all. Obama’s people generously granted access. So now we know Remnick’s Air Force One breakfast was “pumpkin spiced French toast” and the glass on Obama’s SUV is 5 inches thick.

Barack Obama, as most of us know now, is a fine and decent man who in many respects is unsuited for the rough and tumble of national politics, unwilling or unable to engage rivals and other power centers. He also appears to be a sub-par manager who has been a not terribly effective president.  Nothing in Remnick’s narrative seems to contradict any of that – in fact, in a read-between-the-lines sort of way, Remnick reinforces many of those perceptions.

Remnick lets his friend off the hook repeatedly, on multiple issues (Syria intervention, Benghazi, the use of drones, the reach of the NSA, to name a few). Obama defends himself passionately, while taking positions that bear striking resemblance to his GOP predecessor’s.

In recent years, The New Yorker’s many columnists and staffers have criticized and even attacked the president for those and other perceived failures, particularly Obama’s defense of the NSA’s activities.  In this case Remnick lets his subject have the last word.