A Realist Called Obama

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18cohen.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

A Realist Called Obama

By ROGER COHEN
Published: February 18, 2008

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The fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is increasingly portrayed as one between romantics and realists.

But a realistic view of Obama would be that he is best placed to seize and shape a new world of such possibilities. He has the youth, the global background, the ability to move people, and the demonstrated talent for reaching across lines of division, even those etched in black and white.

He would, as Andrew Sullivan has written, “rebrand” America. Wieseltier dismisses such rebranding. But even the Papacy was rebranded in our times, by a Pole, and Poles then precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire.

A romantic view of Clinton might be that she has the guts and savvy to free herself of her husband’s coterie of the world’s rich and famous, with its dubious deal-making from Kazakhstan to Colombia, and ensure that a White House with a president and ex-president in it projects U.S. renewal rather than the tawdrier sides of Clintonism.

I’m just not enough of a romantic to believe it.

Obama is the expression of a hybrid world whose promise outweighs its menace. He needs to recall what he once said: “No president should ever hesitate to use force ­ unilaterally if necessary ­ to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened.”

If he does, and a tough foreign policy team would help, hope and hardness will in time find a fecund balance confounding even to Iran’s mullahs.

[caseycoon]

1. Excellent article! Thank you K&R n/t