Obama's an Elitist, Intellectual Progressive. Where's the Downside? We don't know Barack Obama, so his comments in S.F. about bitter working people are highly revealing. He's an intellectual, a progressive, and yes probably an arrogant elitist, too. Not a bad mix.
For the last eight years we've had a president with the common touch. He cries with the family of the Medal of Honor winner; his greatest moment was when he put his arm around that firefighter at Ground Zero. I loved that in Bush. Enough. We can't have someone with the common touch making policy in the Middle East. We need someone of Obama's analytical gifts. The overwhelming evidence is that he will surround himself with intelligent people like Ambassador Kurtzer and Samantha Power who understand that Israel's 60-year war with Arabs is not our war, and that he will come up with a creative strategy to deal with Hezbollah and Iran and Iraq. The neocons were arrogant elitists, but they didn't know how to think about Islam or the Middle East. "Victory or Holocaust," wrote Frum and Perle; they got both.
The fact that Hillary is working this so hard is a sign of her desperation and her mendacity. The jobs aren't coming back, and she's not a protectionist, that's a grand deception.
And let McCain work this one in the general. He's a brittle old man, he truly doesn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shias. He doesn't know how to think.
Did Obama reveal his dark side? Yes. I think he's cold and arrogant at heart, hard to love close up. Great with a giant audiences, horrible with ordinary people. The other day Chris Matthews landed on the fact that he didn't know how to work a diner in Pennsylvania. Seemed stiff, asked for orange juice when the owner brought him coffee. I don't think Reagan or Kennedy was that good in a diner either. There's a word for someone who doesn't pander, doesn't mix with the crowd, but tries to figure out where the country needs to go--a leader.