Obama's pragmatism explained.

[Adelante]

The Empiricist Strikes Back

Obama's pragmatism explained.

Cass R. Sunstein, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, September 10, 2008

In the last few weeks, a number of people on the left have expressed disappointment with Barack Obama. Obama has said that the death penalty may be appropriate for child rape. He has applauded the Supreme Court's recognition of an individual right to own guns. He has voted for wiretapping reform that includes retroactive immunity for telephone companies. Having raised doubts about NAFTA during the primary, Obama recently said that he does not want to reopen negotiations unilaterally.

Perhaps because of Obama's strong and early opposition to the Iraq war, and because he has not been on the national scene long, some people on the left have projected their own views onto him. They think that his recent departures from left-wing orthodoxy are a form of flip-flopping or some kind of betrayal.

These objections miss the mark. Obama has not betrayed anyone. The real problem lies in the assumption, still widespread on both the left and the right, that Obama is a doctrinaire liberal whose positions can be deduced simply by asking what the left thinks.

Of course Obama is a progressive. From health care to assistance for low-income families to education to environmental protection, he emphasizes that Americans have duties to one another, and that government should be taking active steps to provide equal opportunity and to help those who need help. But, by nature, he is also an independent thinker, and he listens to all sides. One of his most distinctive features is that he is a minimalist, not in the sense that he always favors small steps (he doesn't), but because he prefers solutions that can be accepted by people with a wide variety of theoretical inclinations.

When he offers visionary approaches, he does so as a visionary minimalist--that is, as someone who attempts to accommodate, rather than to repudiate, the defining beliefs of most Americans. His reluctance to challenge people's deepest commitments might turn out to be what makes ambitious plans possible--notwithstanding the hopes of the far left and the cartoons of the far right.

-more

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=864f5c8e-e036-473f-8d36-cd09e5ad54f9

[Captain Hilts]

1. The FISA turn...

and the DC gun ban turn stung.

The author is VERY correct in saying that people "projected" onto him all sorts of things that aren't necessarily there.

He's a politician. He's a lot like Bill Clinton. He's a centrist, not a progressive. This might help him be a good president as much as it pains some of us.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Sept 10? I missed my birthday.. Does that mean I didn't get any older? :^D

[PATRICK]

3. Consistent surprises for the best

That is the pattern I have seen in this campaign presentation of Obama so far. I will take that at face value the same way as Bush's persona and appalling record in Texas sadly denoted the tragic downward trajectory of his presidency. Having underestimated him on this count and several others I trust in the upward trajectory, not only of the party in its Dean strategy and resurgence, not just in its sole defense of the people and rational civil society, but in the startling confirmation of Obama as we have seen him so far.

Moving ahead, forward, up and to the best that is needed to undo the worst that stole our country. I am sure there will something to carp about concerning our party, in substance for many years, in trivialities forever, when we get to the point where people again take for granted their rights, their prosperity and hopes. Obama up. McCain down. That has been the way and with his unity with the grass roots resurgence, that alone guarantees a progress Bill Clinton could never have achieved. The large thing besides instinctive trust in Obama is that it is so much larger than Obama. So it is as much up to all of us as to him not to be "disappointing".

We'll all wake up next year and realize we are not gods. Is that disappointment?