Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Barack Obama -- Mystery Man

Mickey Kaus writes of Barack Obama:


It's not the same thing as confronting deeper, bigger, less easily addressed problems: How to structure the health care system, how to pay for entitlements, how to confront the terror threat, the rise of China, the problems of trade and immigration, the increase in income inequality at the top.


Hmmm... makes you kind of wish Obama had written a book outlining his thoughts on these very issues.

Yes, some of those thoughts are a bit sketchy along the lines of, "Republicans are not entirely incorrect when they say X, but that does not change the fundamental truth of Y." And he does seem to come around to the same conclusions that Democrats have been comming to for the past several years. But it is apparent that he has given these issues a good deal of thought that extends beyond his own autobiography.

With Obama, it seems that the music has changed, but the words remain the same. It's liberalism without the mean-spiritedness. We should do these things because they're the right thing to do, not because we have to stop those "powerful forces standing in your way."

Maybe a change of music is enough...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

At this point, it may be fair to observe that Obama represents "liberalism without the mean-spiritedness". It remains to be seen, however, if this simply means "liberalism not yet in the bully pulpit".

JohnMcG said...

"Mean-spiritedness" was probably a poor choice of words.

It seems a hallmark of the Gore and Kerry campaigns was a them of "we have problems because of Those People Over There," (Big Oil, Big Pharma, top 1%) and if we punish them, then things will be OK.

For whatever reason, even though he reaches the same conclusions, it doesn't sound that way coming from Obama. Maybe it's just that he hasn't faced serious opposition yet.

And I'm not saying that conservatives don't play this game either. I think a reason it hasn't worked for liberals is that their bogeymen are instuttions that have helped people (Big Pharma) or that people aspire to become (top 1%) and are uncomfortable blaming them for all that ills the nation.