Sunday, March 1, 2009

Obama Has a Real Sense for Power but Not for Public Service

I've been rereading Ryan Lizza's longish New Yorker piece on Obama. One little comment Obama made about Bob Dole's presidential bid seems to say a lot about Obama. He said, "seems to me to be a classic example of somebody who had no reason to run. You’re seventy-three years old, you’re already the third-most-powerful man in the country. So why?" He seems to be asking why a reasonable man would go to that much trouble for so little possible gain. It's about power and how much you can get. He appears to have no true sense of public service. I feel that interpretation is bolstered by the lack of any evidence in his life that indicates any concern about public service. All we have from him is a lot of talk. And words are a dime a dozen to this guy.

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Off topic a little, but the article has a good quote from the great Chicago writer, Saul Bellow, "Politics are politics, crime is crime, but in Chicago they occasionally overlap. The line between virtue and vice meanders madly—effective government on one side, connections on the other."

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