There's lots of good stuff in Ryan Lizza's New
Yorker
profile of Barack Obama's years in Chicago that has been
overshadowed by the cover art. Many conservative bloggers have
noted Obama's absurdly naïve response to 9/11, as well as
his
unbridled political ambition and high self regard. But I found
the following bit, in which Obama describes his days as a community
organizer, as the most telling:
"When I started organizing, I understood the idea
of social change in a very abstract way," Obama told me last year.
"It was to some extent informed by my years in Indonesia, seeing
extreme poverty and disparities of wealth and understanding sort of
in a dim way that life wasn't fair and government had something to
do with it. I understood the role that issues like race played and
took inspiration from the civil-rights movement and what the
student sit-ins had accomplished and the freedom rides.
"But I didn't come out of a political family, didn't have a
history of activism in my family. So I understood these things in
the abstract. When I went to Chicago, it was the first time that I
had the opportunity to test out my ideas. And for the most part I
would say I wasn't wildly successful. The victories that we
achieved were extraordinarily modest: you know, getting a
job-training site set up or getting an after-school program for
young people put in place."
It's hard to think of any Obama quote that tells you more than you
need to know about the man. He talks a big game about abstract
ideas and theories and he's adept at ruminating about the failures
of others, but when given the chance, he has never accomplished
anything tangible himself. It's the difference between a critic and
an artist, a sports writer and a star athlete, or a business
professor and a CEO.
Of course, from a conservative perspective, this is comforting.
If there is going to be a President Obama, I'd like for him to
accomplish as little as possible.
topics:
Barack Obama, Business, Sports
