Obama: Delusion or change agent?
Mark Paul
McClatchy.com
Moonbats & Wingnuts
With the Iowa caucuses just days away, it's final exam time in the left blogosphere, with the big question posed by the dueling professor/pundit duo Paul Krugman and David Brooks at the New York Times:
Sen. Barack Obama: Is he a political naif or a political saint? Is he tough enough to change America? Discuss in a million words or less.
Obama has been a hard case for the liberal netroots. He's got undeniable liberal credentials: early and consistent opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq; support for civil liberties; far-reaching proposals on global warming. But he's also upset liberal bloggers by echoing conservative talking points on Social Security and attacking the individual mandate to buy insurance in the health plans of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. (Full disclosure: the individual mandate is a signature issue of the New America Foundation, where I have my day job.) Obama speaks comfortably to evangelicals about faith and values while many in the netroots wish to demote God talk from politics.
There remain "liberal doubts that he has what it takes to fight for progressive values," Matthew Yglesias writes at The Atlantic. "Basically, you face the same choice over and over again — is Obama's undeniable ability to win sympathy and praise from the more mild-mannered and open-minded segments of the right evidence of his internal frailty or is it evidence of his ability to build a dominant political coalition?"
At the New Republic, Sean Wilentz, a leading historian of American politics and a Clinton supporter, scorns Brooks and other Obama fans for their "delusional style" of investing him with special powers of "intuition," self-knowledge, and "identity." Such epiphanies, part of "an ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship," remind Wilentz of the George W. Bush of 2000, regularly described as "comfortable in his own skin." "Eight years ago, defiance of reality in favor of delusions about instinct helped bring the incumbent president to the White House. A catastrophic presidency ensued — directed largely on George W. Bush's intuition."
(Continued here.)
McClatchy.com
Moonbats & Wingnuts
With the Iowa caucuses just days away, it's final exam time in the left blogosphere, with the big question posed by the dueling professor/pundit duo Paul Krugman and David Brooks at the New York Times:
Sen. Barack Obama: Is he a political naif or a political saint? Is he tough enough to change America? Discuss in a million words or less.
Obama has been a hard case for the liberal netroots. He's got undeniable liberal credentials: early and consistent opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq; support for civil liberties; far-reaching proposals on global warming. But he's also upset liberal bloggers by echoing conservative talking points on Social Security and attacking the individual mandate to buy insurance in the health plans of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. (Full disclosure: the individual mandate is a signature issue of the New America Foundation, where I have my day job.) Obama speaks comfortably to evangelicals about faith and values while many in the netroots wish to demote God talk from politics.
There remain "liberal doubts that he has what it takes to fight for progressive values," Matthew Yglesias writes at The Atlantic. "Basically, you face the same choice over and over again — is Obama's undeniable ability to win sympathy and praise from the more mild-mannered and open-minded segments of the right evidence of his internal frailty or is it evidence of his ability to build a dominant political coalition?"
At the New Republic, Sean Wilentz, a leading historian of American politics and a Clinton supporter, scorns Brooks and other Obama fans for their "delusional style" of investing him with special powers of "intuition," self-knowledge, and "identity." Such epiphanies, part of "an ever-intensifying cult of celebrity personality-worship," remind Wilentz of the George W. Bush of 2000, regularly described as "comfortable in his own skin." "Eight years ago, defiance of reality in favor of delusions about instinct helped bring the incumbent president to the White House. A catastrophic presidency ensued — directed largely on George W. Bush's intuition."
(Continued here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home