NYT's Front Page Obama Profile: "The Ultimate Pragmatist"

New York Times:

In August 1999, Barack Obama strolled amid the floats and bands making their way down Martin Luther King Drive on Chicago's South Side. Billed as the largest African-American parade in the country, the summer rite was a draw over the years to boxing heroes like Muhammad Ali and jazz greats like Duke Ellington. It was also a must-stop for the city's top politicians.

Back then, Mr. Obama, a state senator who was contemplating a run for Congress, was so little-known in the community's black neighborhoods that it was hard to find more than a few dozen people to walk with him, recalled Al Kindle, one of his advisers at the time. Mr. Obama was trounced a year later in the Congressional race -- branded as an aloof outsider more at home in the halls of Harvard than in the rough wards of Chicago politics.

But by 2006, Mr. Obama had remade his political fortunes. He was a freshman United States senator on the cusp of deciding to take on the formidable Hillary Rodham Clinton and embark on a long-shot White House run. When the parade wound its way through the South Side that summer, Mr. Obama was its grand marshal.

The secret of his transformation, which has brought him to the brink of claiming the Democratic presidential nomination, can be described as the politics of maximum unity.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[cmrinc]

I am so moved, I think my heart stopped for a second, I may not be able to sleep tonight. What about you guys?

[MPeter]

He is the whizkid that beat the big Blue Machine. And they said he did not stand a chance.

[olivia]

When I saw thousands of people standing in the dark in freezing rain to caucus for him in Kansas, while party people scrambled to accommodate the ten times normal crowd, I knew whoever won that caucus would be our next president. Obama won with 74%. The Republican primary was a snoozer.

[Gma11]

How fascinating!!

Though they came from such different beginnings, this story reminds me politically so much of JFK.

[pupbayer]

It really shouldn't.

[LeeinJax]

It is laughable - we have been hearing from Hillary that Obama is too pie-in-the-sky, ie not enough of a tough politician like she is, so we should not support him.

Now we will hear he is a politician, so we should not support him.

Actually, politicians have a horrible reputation because of the way many of them behave, not because of the term. Obama's conduct has been what I am looking for in a leader, in a politician, and in a president.

[Jason357]

I think a high school SCA president could run a better campaign than Hillary Clinton. I'm pretty sure she's not nearly as smart as she's had her people tell us. She's behaves sort of like a moron.

[joeinvt]

She certainly could have run a better campaign, but what does that say about Obama? He only won by a margin of around 52-48 against a "moron!" From your viewpoint, had she run a half way decent campaign, Barack would be long gone.

[DMW1]

Everything I have ever read stated she was a mediocre student, but I'm not sure how reliable the Internet sources were. It is a fact that she failed the Washington D.C. bar exam at least once.

[FogBelter]

The United States has always benefited from pragmatic Presidents ... FDR accepted the New Deal when his Elite background really didn't predict it ... Theodore Roosevelt was the anti-Republican for most of his term when it came to making significant changes to American Society ... even Abraham Lincoln equivocated in terms of Slavery until the die was cast and it was obviously going to be eliminated.

Presidential Pragmatism is of great benefit when compared to the blind conservative ideology that has driven the US for the last 28 years.

[Rogue55]

I wouldn't consider Clinton's presidency to be one of blind conservatism by any stretch.

I hope Obama wins the presidency. I will be extremely curious to see how his approach will work with Congress and with those with opposing viewpoints.

I do hope that he gets a chance to appoint a few Supreme Court justices and that one of his first acts would be to undo all the damage Bush and Co have done to our Constitution and civil liberties.

I think some of his supporters are in for a rude awakening though because I don't think he is going to get us out of the Iraq war after 16 months, nor do I think he can change the nature of politics itself (as he seems to think he can). I thought the article was well-written. He *is* a politician and that's fine with me. I'm not into sainthood.

[olivia]

It is our job to give Obama a significant Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

Only then can he do what America needs him to do.

[FogBelter]

"I wouldn't consider Clinton's presidency to be one of blind conservatism by any stretch"

All I would say is evaluate the significant legislative achievements of the Clinton years ... NAFTA, Welfare "Reform". GATT94(WTO), "Don't Ask Don't Tell", Telecommunications Act of 1996, Most Favored Nation for China, and GLBA and see if those weren't a natural progression of the Reagan/Bush agenda.

You can view a Presidency in terms of the peace and prosperity of that specific era, but what defines a Presidency is the long term influence of enacted legislation that outlives it.

[DMW1]

Obama is definitely a politician. He has never claimed otherwise.

Pragmatism: A practical, matter-of-fact way of approaching or assessing situations or of solving problems.

Sounds like something our nation could use.

[axt113]

Which is why he's praised even republican ideas, use what works and if it doesn't work, try something new

[TrollsTakeYourMedstoo]

Sounds to me like just another politician.

[MariaHopeful]

Maybe. But he is definitely the best and brightest and most competent out there.

[TrollsTakeYourMedstoo]

For the sake of the Democratic Party, I hope you are correct!!!

[nomobull]

a politician running for office. what a smack upside the head concept. i guess that means you think lawyers should practice medicine .and doctors go to medical school to become lawyers.

[ApolloniaCreed]

...as opposed to what? I thought running for POTUS made you a politician by definition... silly me.