Beschloss: Presidents evolve and learn

WASHINGTON — In his first Inaugural Address, President Obama stirred liberals by proclaiming that “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.”

Five years in, the presidency has taught Mr. Obama that the choice he rejected is not so false after all. Ever since the disclosures about the extent of National Security Agency surveillance, leading to the changes that Mr. Obama plans to announce in a speech on Friday, a chastened president has embraced “balance” between competing imperatives of security and civil liberties.

History shows that is what the Oval Office does to everyone who occupies it. The grinding reality of governing the country nearly always gives the lie to the facile, I-can-square-the-circle formulations that winning candidates carry with them into the White House....

“Presidents are always going to grow and evolve because of what they learn,” said the presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “A president who does not do that is someone you probably don’t want as president.”