THE LED, NOT THE LEADER:

Plus Ça Change We Can Believe In (Richard Cohen, November 25, 2008, Washington Post)

All during the primary campaign, the main difference between Obama and Hillary Clinton was supposedly Iraq. This was the issue that propelled him to victory in Iowa, and this was the issue that stoked his supporters to paroxysms of enthusiasm. One candidate was for peace and the other was for the war -- and that was all there was to it.

Not quite. There was always a synaptic gap between Obama's ethereal image and his more grounded reality, and the sneaking suspicion that he and Clinton were not all that far apart on anything -- Iraq included. He conceded as much before the presidential race began. "I think very highly of Hillary," he told New Yorker editor David Remnick in 2006. "The more I get to know her, the more I admire her." In that same interview, Obama even narrowed the gap on Iraq: "I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test." In other words, who knows?

This is not to suggest that Obama thought the war in Iraq was really a good thing. It does suggest, though, that he recognized that the issue was never an easy one, and had he not represented a dovish Chicago district in the Illinois Senate, he might well have expressed a more nuanced opposition. After all, not a single one of Obama's U.S. Senate rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination voted against authorizing the war.

If the single defining feature of George W. Bush's personality is a stubborn belief in doing what he thinks is right, the defining feature of the Unicorn Rider is a determination to go along to get along. So, while W pushed through tax cuts, NCLB, FBI, etc. even after a narrow victory in 2000 and prosecuted the Iraq War aftermath to victory even after everyone else declared defeat, the UR is unlikely to try anything bold and is certain to see power shift from the Oval to the Hill and overseas.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 25, 2008 8:57 AM