What We Talk About When We Talk About Obama: The American Prospect

Quoted via The American Prospect:

In The Audacity of Hope, the book Barack Obama penned in advance of his presidential campaign (as all good candidates do these days), he was rather candid about his political image. "I'm new enough on the national political scene," he wrote, "that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them." As Obama takes the oath of office, he can no longer benefit from people simply assuming he agrees with them. Instead of talking about what he might do with power, as of today he will actually wield it.

In the months since he won the Democratic nomination, a series of images of Obama have been constructed by his admirers and foes, assembled out of bits and pieces of reality. Out of an offhand statement here, a policy proposal there, and mostly the observer's own hunches, hopes, and fears, they offer radically different interpretations of the man whom as of today we can finally stop calling "president-elect." more