This is a very well written piece that addresses the "disappointment" many on the left feel regarding Obama. She says far more cogently than I ever could: those who are disappointed with Obama have not been paying attention. This is the crux of my thesis as well: I believe people who were attracted to him based on actually listening to him, reading his works, following his career path and good works along the way, are not suddenly "disappointed" with him. We know that he is a pragmatic, no-drama person who does not believe in taking futile stances for the sake of taking a stand (important as that may be) and will work with the best that is feasible at any given point in time.
A few choice excerpts from Gail Collins in the NYT and my own comments below...
We have to have a talk about Barack Obama.
I love that start. It is a fitting tribute by imitation of the man and his method she is writing about :-)
Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats.
Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field?
I don't particularly agree with this left field/right field business, especially in the current FISA context (seems to me that the far right should have been on our libertarian side of the argument -- this issue is so far left that it is also equally far right, really). But it does have a certain rhetorical flourish and I love rhetorical flourishes :-)
When an extremely intelligent politician tells you over and over and over that he is tired of the take-no-prisoners politics of the last several decades, that he is going to get things done and build a "new consensus," he is trying to explain that he is all about compromise. Even if he says it in that great Baracky way.
Again, I love the "Baracky way", hence this particular excerpt. But also because it makes the most important point of the piece: LISTEN to the man.
She follows this up with a delightful little story about how a prospective spouse introduces himself to the prospective spouse (neither knows that at that time, of course) saying that he is off to the south pole soon to research penguins, she just does not hear that, they get married and sure enough, he is off to the south pole soon enough -- Collins leaves us hanging there, without finishing the story with the gripes that surely must have followed and that is sure enough ensuing in Obama's case.
Even though this next paragraph that I excerpt is not the end, the ending of the paragraph to me is the most important point about Obama: at each juncture, he will only opt for that which he perceives to be the least dumb (I include futile stances that are guaranteed to fail in this category) course:
A year and a half of campaigning and we still haven’t heard Obama’s penguins, either. It’s not his fault that we missed the message — although to be fair, he did make it sound as if getting rid of the "old politics" involved driving out the oil and pharmaceutical lobbyists rather than splitting the difference on federal wiretapping legislation. But if you look at the political fights he’s picked throughout his political career, the main theme is not any ideology. It’s that he hates stupidity. "I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war," he said in 2002 in his big speech against the invasion of Iraq. He did not, you will notice, say he was against unilateral military action or pre-emptive attacks or nation-building. He was antidumb.
Most of the things Obama’s taken heat for saying this summer fall into these two familiar patterns — attempts to find a rational common ground on controversial issues and dumb-avoidance.
The rest of essay is terrific too. Read it and come tell me what you think...