http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090426_what_to_make_of_the_ironic_mr_obama/What to Make of the Ironic Mr. Obama
Posted on Apr 26, 2009
By E.J. Dionne
How many ironies can a single presidency engender? Barack Obama is a detached man who has inspired fierce loyalties, and a cool man who has aroused both warm feelings of affection and a fiery opposition.
He loves to engage conservatives, yet few of them have chosen to engage him. He is seen as too moderate by parts of the left, but the right thinks he has a radical statist agenda.
Wall Street’s critics believe Obama’s approach to rescuing the financial system amounts to coddling the bankers and financial scammers who got us into this mess. But many on the Street say Obama doesn’t understand them and fear he is a secret populist who would displace finance as the dominant force in the American economy.
On torture, Obama sought a middle ground: He ended the practice, disclosed what happened, and then proposed we move on. Yet the right opposed disclosure, parts of the left wanted more accountability, and their fight brought back all of the bitterness Obama wants to put behind us.
The man not only defies labels. He hates them. At a briefing for columnists last week to influence the coming 100-day assessments, a senior Obama adviser, struggling to offer a philosophical definition of the 44th president, finally settled on calling him “a devout non-ideologue.”
But the mysteries and paradoxes of these 100 days cannot be unraveled without an understanding that the president is more than a “whatever works” guy.
Obama would not inspire such loyalty if his supporters did not see (correctly) that he has an agenda to move the country to a very different place. He would not inspire such resistance if his opponents did not sense exactly the same thing.snip//
For Obama’s base of progressive and liberal supporters, it is his intellectual side that draws such fierce loyalty and admiration, while his conservative foes mistrust the very part of him that imagines and dreams—because they do not share his dreams.
But Obama’s continued high standing in the polls rests on the great middle of the electorate that doesn’t care if he’s intellectual as long as he is smart enough to fix things. Obama and his aides know this, which is why our intellectually inclined president will continue to sow mystery by casting himself as a mechanic, a problem-solver and “a devout non-ideologue.”
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
