Scattered Work

Obama in a nutshell

Democracy in America posted a really smart take on what characterizes Obama’s philosophy. I almost want to repost the whole thing, but I’ll satisfy myself with three paragraphs:

So Mr Obama isn’t original in his conception of government (do what works, not more). Nor is he particularly creative in his thinking of “what works”: he’s a relatively orthodox American liberal. So is there anything original to Mr Obama, or is he a lot of sizzle and not a lot of steak?

To my mind, Mr Obama brings not a big theory of government, but he does have one of governance. He sees that America often gets pathologically bad policy because of the way it makes decisions. Many policies, especially economic ones, are captured by self-interested lobbies. Other policies, notably social policy, come out skewed because in an increasingly polarised Congress, the majority railroads the minority, and the majority’s center is never where the country’s is. And many Americans, frustrated by these first two tendencies, switch off, and a switched-off electorate is no effective check that could help government get better again.

It’s a downward spiral Mr Obama seems to recognise, and to be trying hard to break. He moved to curb lobbies with one of his first orders. He has promised to listen to conflicting opinions, and he has no crusader’s zeal when he talks about divisive social issues. With creative uses of technology, not to mention his skilled oratory, he hopes to reconnect the average citizen to government, getting voters to think about what they want and what they don’t, so they can keep government honest.

Let’s hope it works. But this read on Obama’s vision for America also relates to something Kevin Drum posted a few days ago about Obama’s relationship with the media. Check out Drum’s post for the details (and how he thinks Obama should nudge the press to change their approach). It’ll be interesting to see if the new administration really can change the tone of the conversation. They seem, at least, to be genuinely interested in doing so.

Tags: Barack Obama, the media

1 Comment to Obama in a nutshell

1. [...] As I mentioned yesterday, Kevin Drum thinks Obama should try to encourage more substantive discourse in the press by granting access to really smart, penetrating journalists — regardless of the size of their viewership / readership. Now we hear that the president has granted his first full interview since taking office to Al Arabiya. And it was an interesting, substantive interview. What we learned more than anything from this interview, is that Obama isn’t coming to the table with some interesting new solutions to the problem. He’s basically endorsing some sort of vague two-state solution. But his approach to the process is in line with the Democracy in America post I quoted yesterday. [...]
Talking to the Muslim World | Scattered Work on January 27th, 2009

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