Reply #136: Think you hit the nail on the head, GTurck! [View All]

[Moonwalk]

The one thing Obama is, that we know he is, is a pragmatist. It's the position he took on drilling for oil. He didn't agree with it, but if some drilling has to be done, then he's pragmatic, let it be done. So long as the bigger picture, the one where we're running on alternative fuels, gets underway. Likewise, his objection to the Iraq war, on which he would not budge, wasn't just, I believe, principle. He also was aware of the long-term damage it would do and that it wasn't practical.

I don't have enough data on why Obama wants Emanuel in this position, or how this guy in this position will play out. Until I do, I'm not going to try and guess whether Obama is moving Dem's to the right, or is, alternately, trying to lure the Republicans onboard his ship before he sails them all Left. What I do know is that this isn't a Revolution where the common folk storm the castle, put the aristocrats to death and institute a whole new government running on a different philosophy. Everyone who was there yesterday is there today, and nearly half the population of the U.S. did not vote for Obama and is not behind him. Whichever way the ship is sailing, these people have to be lured onboard before you weigh anchor...because you can't sail the ship anywhere without them.

That's reality. If Emanuel is the sort of person who can get them onboard, then that's who a pragmatist appoints.

I don't expect to agree with everything Obama does. And I fully expect that he will make mistakes. But I voted for him because he can motivate and lead people into actually getting things done. He can, I believe, change things. I am trusting that he knows what battles are worth fighting and how best to win them. In any case, I'm not ready to predict the outcome of this new race on his first step. As we know from the story of the tortoise and the hare, those first steps can give us wrong perceptions and make us predict wrong. And Obama is most certainly a tortoise, not a hare. His method of running this race might be very different from what we or anyone else has seen before or expects.