The Paperboy
Times Square
From ABC's Political Punch Blog:
What may be most interesting in Leon Wieseltier's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in The New Republic are the concerns to which he gives voice.
"For all his articulateness," he writes of Obama, "I still do not know what most moves Obama--what are the two or three grand proposals that he would put before the Congress and the country in the early months of his administration, which is all the respite from the madness of politics that any administration will ever get; and I cannot shirk the feeling, as I watch him rise, that I am witnessing not so much the triumph of a cause as the success of a plan."
He admits, "I must say that the Ayers affair rankles me, because I would not shake the man's dirty hand; and the fact that Obama was eight years old at the time of the Weather Underground is no more pertinent to his moral and historical awareness than the fact that he was six years old at the time of the King assassination."
"Obama's passionlessness spooks me," says the literary critic. "His friends tell me that my impression is wrong, but I long ago gave up on personal assurances about politicians."
Of the success of the surge, he writes, "the grudging way Obama treats the reversal in Iraq, when he treats it at all, is disgraceful. Tyrants and génocidaires would sleep less soundly during a McCain presidency. And yet it is impossible any longer to ignore the contradiction between the nobility of his past and the ignobility of his present..."
Of international affairs, Wieseltier writes, "What a time for a novice! I dread the prospect of Obama's West Wing education in foreign policy: even when he spoke well about these matters in the debates, it all sounded so new to him, so light. He must not mistake the global adulation of his person with the end of anti-Americanism. And he must not mistake his hope for the world with his analysis of the world."
These are just the reservations, of course. But quite an interesting read.
Link here
What may be most interesting in Leon Wieseltier's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in The New Republic are the concerns to which he gives voice.
"For all his articulateness," he writes of Obama, "I still do not know what most moves Obama--what are the two or three grand proposals that he would put before the Congress and the country in the early months of his administration, which is all the respite from the madness of politics that any administration will ever get; and I cannot shirk the feeling, as I watch him rise, that I am witnessing not so much the triumph of a cause as the success of a plan."
He admits, "I must say that the Ayers affair rankles me, because I would not shake the man's dirty hand; and the fact that Obama was eight years old at the time of the Weather Underground is no more pertinent to his moral and historical awareness than the fact that he was six years old at the time of the King assassination."
"Obama's passionlessness spooks me," says the literary critic. "His friends tell me that my impression is wrong, but I long ago gave up on personal assurances about politicians."
Of the success of the surge, he writes, "the grudging way Obama treats the reversal in Iraq, when he treats it at all, is disgraceful. Tyrants and génocidaires would sleep less soundly during a McCain presidency. And yet it is impossible any longer to ignore the contradiction between the nobility of his past and the ignobility of his present..."
Of international affairs, Wieseltier writes, "What a time for a novice! I dread the prospect of Obama's West Wing education in foreign policy: even when he spoke well about these matters in the debates, it all sounded so new to him, so light. He must not mistake the global adulation of his person with the end of anti-Americanism. And he must not mistake his hope for the world with his analysis of the world."
These are just the reservations, of course. But quite an interesting read.
Link here
