Obama's Governing Philosophy

Obama and Medvedev meeting
There have been many stories about Obama's governing philosophy, which has confounded the left and the right, but this one by George Packer at the New Yorker nails it: Make government run better instead of remaking it or destroying it. 

To liberals such as Robert Kuttner, of the American Prospect, and Paul Krugman, of the Times, these self-imposed limitations are unnecessary concessions to a free-market ideology that has been thoroughly discredited. In this reading, Obama lacks the courage of his activist impulses, and his hesitations will play right into the hands of his enemies. The usual reply to such criticism is that Obama is basically a pragmatist, who will do what he thinks can work. But pragmatism is a description of a temperament, not an explanation of a world view.
What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than remake them altogether. Allowing the auto industry to die would create social havoc in communities around the country, and anything less than de-facto government control seems inadequate. So the President has risked a good deal of his political capital on the largest federal intervention in a sector of the economy since at least 1952, when President Truman seized the steel industry to avert a strike during wartime. Obama, announcing his plan last week, said, “We cannot, and we must not, and we will not let our auto industry simply vanish. This industry is like no other—it’s an emblem of the American spirit. . . . It’s what helped build the middle class and sustained it throughout the twentieth century.” Obama may not see a similar need to put the government in charge of the big banks, but he has also shown that he has no taste for such a disruption of the system—even if it were politically possible, and perhaps even if it were the most direct route back to financial health.

Another excerpt:

This is not the rigid mentality of an engineer of human souls; it’s the attitude of a community organizer.
It’s also a pretty good description of what used to pass for conservatism—a sense that social relations and institutions are fragile things, and that, while government can’t create wealth or impose equality, at moments like this it has to establish a new equilibrium between individuals and huge economic forces, so that society doesn’t crumble. But modern conservatism has grown into exactly the opposite of its origins, in Burke’s respect for tradition and Madison’s promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power. Instead, like any revolutionary creed, it is abstract, hard-edged, and indifferent to experience and existing conditions.

Packer reaches a simple yet dead-on conclusion. Check out the whole story--just a one pager--here.

Ken Adelman Voting Obama

This pic, one of my favorites, sums up Obama

I have no idea who Ken Adelman is but apparently he's a conservative conservative type. This is so reassuring because it says no matter what you're political leaning, intelligence is still valued. Hip hooray for that.

The more republicans on board, the less backlash if Obama wins. You know there are folks who are going to be mighty irrational.

WaPo: Adelman is the latest Republican foreign-policy heavyweight to endorse Sen. Barack Obama, telling the New Yorker's George Packer that he intends to vote for the Democrat in two weeks.

"When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird," Adelman wrote, according to Packer. "Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I've concluded that that's no way a president can act under pressure."

Adelman was a key part of George Bush's defense agency and has held senior policy positions under Presidents Reagan, Ford and even Nixon. He's a staunch conservative, though he has broken with Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the handling of the Iraq war.

But he told Packer that Sen. John McCain's pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate was the last straw.

"That decision showed appalling lack of judgment," he wrote in an e-mail, according to Packer. "Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office -- I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection
contradicted McCain's main two, and best two, themes for his campaign -- Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick."

Some background on Adelman:

NYorker: Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.