Obama Impressions

From Roger Simon upon seeing him in person for the first time.

This is one strange dude — part narcissist, part Chicago ward heeler, part neo-Alinskyite marxist, part talk show host smoothie, part nowhere man. The ideas might be there, traceable back to Ayers, Dohrn, and Reverend Wright, but he has pushed them far away, almost as if he were trying to forget them. They were no longer functional and had to go, but he is left with… what?

It’s hard to tell what he really thinks now because I suspect even he doesn’t know what that is. He is a kind of moving target, not just to us, but to himself. You expect to hate him, then you start to like him, then you start to hate him again. At the end, you don’t really know what you think, although in my case you revert to your previous view — extreme distaste.

My biggest recent impression comes from the Grantland podcast and I concur - the dude is weird.

On a side note, I was thinking yesterday about the Democrats and Republicans. Recently, the Democratic nominees for President - Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Al Gore (pre going environmental crazy), John Kerry - all strike me as fairly center-of-the-road pragmatists in terms of their stated policy goals for being Democrats. On the other hand, we look at the Republican field right now and the only center-of-the road candidate is Romney.

Herein lies a strange paradox...because I think America is basically a center-right country. But whereas the Democrats have loons on the left, they don't play a major role in Democratic politics. Not yet, at least. But the Republicans are highly influenced by marginal quacks on their side, both social/religious and libertarian and suffer from being basically, a white-only party. If the Republicans were able to focus their side on economic issues, inoffensive "family values," and get some moderate candidates with a little bit of charisma, it strikes me they could do pretty well. I imagine they could rope a lot of Asian, Black, and Latino voters as well with the right message, particularly because large segments of those minority populations yearn for strong family values such as two parent homes, good public schools, lots of children, this type of thing. So, I suppose what I'm saying is that Republicans often have, I think, the better "position," but suffer from their own wacky base and bad line up of politicians selling their message. The Dems have less popular positions, except on social issues and a better record historically with respect to minority rights, but tend to nominate smart choices for office.