Getting Obama Right
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下一篇 2010-03-26 12:09:45 / 天气: 晴朗
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Getting Obama RightGetting Obama RightWho is Barack Obama?
If you ask a conservative Republican, you are likely to hear that Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal.PrintingHe plays by ruthless,Fire hose, #xChicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine.If you ask a liberal Democrat, you are likely to hear that Obama is an inspiring but overly intellectual leader who has trouble making up his mind and fighting for his positions. He has not defined a clear mission. He has allowed the Republicans to dominate debate. He is too quick to compromise and too cerebral to push things through.You’ll notice first that these two viewpoints are diametrically opposed. You’ll, observe, second, that they are entirely predictable. Political partisans always imagine the other side is ruthlessly effective and that the public would be with them if only their side had better messaging. And finally,Printingyou’ll notice that both views distort reality. They tell you more about the information cocoons that partisans live in these days than about Obama himself.The fact is, Obama is as he always has been, a center-left pragmatic reformer.#x Every time he tries to articulate a grand philosophy — from his book “The Audacity of Hope” to his joint-session health care speech last September — he always describes a moderately activist government restrained by a sense of trade-offs. He always uses the same on-the-one-hand-on-the-other sentence structure. Government should address problems without interfering with the dynamism of the market.He has tried to find this balance in a town without an organized center — in a town in which liberals chair the main committees and small-government conservatives lead the opposition. He has tried to do it in a context maximally inhospitable to his aims.But he has done it with tremendous tenacity. Readers of this column know that I’ve been critical on health care and other matters. Obama is four clicks to my left on most issues.#x He is inadequate on the greatest moral challenge of our day: the $9.7 trillion in new debt being created this decade. He has misread the country,Printingimagining a hunger for federal activism that doesn’t exist. But he is still the most realistic and reasonable major player in Washington.相关的主题文章：
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