As we all know there has been a lot of hit diaries and flame wars lately. I think that this is unfortunate and distracts from the fact that we have a great slate of candidates to choose from. I came across this article about Barack Obama from the New Yorker which I think nicely explains why and how Obama is different from a candidate like John Edwards. I like Edwards and I can certainly understand why some people prefer his combative rhetoric to Obama's dispassionate talk about 'unity' and purpose. It seems that some people feel let down by Obama, because they thought that he would be something he has never been. Obama has not changed, he has been this way and talked this way all his life. At least that is what I think after reading this profile.
Some choice quotes (it's a very long article):
Despite the criticism he has received for being all inspiration and no policy, Obama has so far stuck to what appears to be an instinct that white papers belong on Web sites, not in speeches. It is surprising, given the recent electoral record of Democratic policy wonks, that he is not given more credit for the astuteness of this approach, but it's true that it's not just strategy--it's who he is. "He doesn't have the handicap that a lot of smart people have, which is that they come across as `You're not smart enough to talk to me,' " George Haywood, a private investor and a friend of Obama's, says. "Adlai Stevenson, another Illinois guy, had that--he came across as an egghead and it was off-putting to people. Barack is the opposite." Probably one of the reasons for this is that Obama seems not to attach much value to cleverness as such....
Obama's detachment, his calm, in such small venues, is less professorial than medical--like that of a doctor who, by listening to a patient's story without emotional reaction, reassures the patient that the symptoms are familiar to him. It is also doctorly in the sense that Obama thinks about the body politic as a whole thing. If you are presenting a problem as something that they have perpetrated on us, then whipping up outrage is natural enough; but if you take unity seriously, as Obama does, then outrage does not make sense, any more than it would make sense for a doctor to express outrage that a patient's kidney is causing pain in his back. There is also, of course, a racial aspect to this. "If you're a black male, you don't have to try hard to impress people with your aggression," Haywood says.
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Obama's calm is also a matter of temperament. The first thing almost everybody who knows Obama says about him is how extremely comfortable he is with himself. "He was almost freakishly self-possessed and centered," Christopher Edley, Jr., one of Obama's professors at Harvard Law School, who is now a dean at Berkeley, says. There is something freakish about Obama's self-possession--it's conspicuous, it draws attention to itself, like the unnatural stillness of someone able to lower his blood pressure at will.
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Obama encourages his crossover appeal. He doesn't often criticize the Bush Administration directly; in New Hampshire recently, he told his audience, "I'm a Democrat. I'm considered a progressive Democrat. But if a Republican or a Conservative or a libertarian or a free-marketer has a better idea, I am happy to steal ideas from anybody and in that sense I'm agnostic." "The number of conservatives who've called me--roommates of mine, relatives who are Republicans--who've said, `He's the one Democrat I could support, not because he agrees with me, because he doesn't, but because I at least think he'll take my point of view into account,' " Michael Froman, a law-school friend who worked in the Clinton Administration and is now involved in Obama's campaign, says. "That's a big thing, mainstream Americans feeling like Northeast liberals look down on them."
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Obama is always disappointing people who feel that he gives too much respect or yields too much ground to the other side, rather than fighting aggressively for his principles. "In law school, we had a seminar together and Charles Fried, who is very conservative, was one of our speakers," Cassandra Butts says. "The issue of the Second Amendment came up and Fried is pretty much a Second Amendment absolutist. One of our classmates was in favor of gun control--he'd come from an urban environment where guns were a big issue. And, while Barack agreed with our classmate, he was much more willing to hear Fried out--he was very moved by the fact that Fried grew up in the Soviet bloc, where they didn't have those freedoms. After the class, our classmate was still challenging Fried and Barack was just not as passionate and I didn't understand that."
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In the state senate, this skill served him well--he was unusually dexterous with opponents, and passed bills that at first were judged too liberal to have a chance, such as one that mandated the videotaping of police interviews with suspects arrested for capital crimes. "In our seminar, whether we were arguing about labor or religion or politics, he would sit back like a resource person and then he would say, I hear Jane saying such and such, and Tom seems to disagree on that, but then Tom and Jane both agree on this," Robert Putnam says. (For a couple of years, Obama participated in a seminar about rebuilding community, inspired by Putnam's article "Bowling Alone.") "I don't mean he makes all conflicts go away--that would be crazy. But his natural instinct is not dividing the baby in half--it's looking for areas of convergence".
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This is not Obama's style at all. He doesn't seem hungry. He seems to like people but not to need them. When most politicians speak to a crowd, they give the impression that that is what they live for; Obama at town-hall meetings appears engaged but not fervently so, as if there were several other things that he would be equally happy doing that day. He still has the speechmaking power that he displayed at the 2004 Convention, but for the most part he keeps it in reserve. Even at large rallies these days he doesn't try to overwhelm--his eyes don't flame, his hands remain unclenched and below his shoulders, he doesn't go for a sudden conversion experience.
There is real differences between Edwards and Obama, not so much on policy but on how they speak and how they think about the issues. Both are excellent persons, and candidates. We could have a civil debate about the merits of their differing approaches and attitudes once we acknowledge that. I urge everone to read this article - whether you love, like or hate Barack Obama. You will be rewarded with a better understanding of him.
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