WILLIAM WARLEY WASN'T IN THIS FAR OVER HIS HEAD:

Barack Obama, Forever Sizing Up (JODI KANTOR, 10/26/08, NY Times)

Just 47 years old and only four years into a national political career, he has never run anything larger than his campaign. He began his run for president while he was still getting lost in Washington, a city he does not yet know well. His promises are as vast as his résumé is short, and some of his pledges are competing ones: progressive rule and centrist red-blue fusion; wholesale transformation and down-to-earth pragmatism.

Mr. Obama’s ambition and confidence have long confounded critics and annoyed rivals. In 2006, the still-new United States senator appeared before Washington’s elite at the spring dinner of the storied Gridiron Club, and as tradition dictated, roasted himself. He ticked off the evidence of his popularity: the Democratic convention speech that had won him national celebrity, the best-selling books, the magazine covers.

“Really, what else is there to do?” he said in mock innocence. “Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.”

Not bloody likely.

Here's another choice bit:

In 2004, Mr. Obama gained sudden fame and fortune: his convention speech drew a nationwide standing ovation, he won a Senate seat, and he signed a multimillion-dollar book contract. Flush with cash for the first time, he made two financial decisions that cast doubt on his reputation as an anti-corruption crusader. He set up a blind trust for his investments, but sloppily so, managing to put thousands of dollars into a biotech company that was developing a drug to treat avian flu just as he pushed for federal financing to battle the disease.

And he allowed Antoin Rezko, a developer and longtime donor, to acquire and sell him land next to the dream house Mr. Obama was buying in Chicago, even though Mr. Rezko’s name was already cropping up in newspaper articles about corruption.

After all, which of us doesn't own anti-avian flu stock?

Or, how about this:

Critics have used the Rezko incident to question Mr. Obama’s reputation as a reformer, to argue he has few core beliefs. They cite a proposal he made in the Senate for stringent reporting requirements concerning nuclear plant leaks, which he then softened after Republican colleagues and energy executives complained. The bill died in committee. Or the time he joined a bipartisan coalition on immigration reform but backed away when labor groups protested. That legislation collapsed, too.

“He folded like a cheap suit,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and a close ally of Senator John McCain, Mr. Obama’s Republican rival.

Most of all, his critics point to his “present” votes in the Illinois Legislature, in which he did not choose sides, avoiding difficult matters like trying juveniles as adults. At least 36 times (out of thousands of votes) Mr. Obama was the only senator to vote “present,” or one of just a few.

Even some of Mr. Obama’s friends call him unusually opaque. After hashing out a question with him, “you may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia and a former adviser to Palestinian diplomatic delegations. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.”

But defenders say that Mr. Obama’s reticence is as intellectual as it is tactical.

Yup, that's what Americans look for in their presidents, opacity and indecision.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 27, 2008 11:44 AM