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After reading both articles, two things pop into my mind right away:
1) If the Wall Street Journal article is trying to repeat the points made in the Blake Gopnick Washington Post article, the author picked on the wrong artists. Kinstler and Shanks, for example, work from life whenever possible and certainly possess the ability to use photographic references while still breathing life into their subjects.
2) I don't see why a presidential portrait (or a portrait of any prominent figure) shouldn't be able to be both a portrait of an approachable human being with readable personality and a symbol of power, authority, etc. with the appropriate symbolism. We don't have to copy the style of a Gilbert Stuart or a John Singelton Copley, or put trappings of 18th Century America in the portrait to use iconography successfully; in fact, it would be preferable not to. I believe that a 21st-century portrait should place the subject in the 21st century.
And by the way, I am a big admirer of both Stuart's and Copley's work.
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