After the inauguration speech, I didn’t really feel like writing…just watching. What surprises me about the speech is that so many liberals found it surprising. I didn’t really ever think any differently about Obama’s personal politics. You don’t grow up multiracial in Hawai’i smoking the pakalolo and surfing, go to Occidental and Columbia on the Upper West Side, do Harvard Law, become a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, and hang out in Jeremiah Wright’s congregation without having some fairly predictable and progressive views on things. That’s just how it is.
All that crap the right said about Obama being a secret Muslim and a socialist was bullshit. But his progressive values are obvious. It just happens that he is smart and ambitious enough to do what it takes to win over control of the Democratic Party and the White House. The only thing that surprised me about his speech was his reference to Stonewall.
But, as I said before, until he calls for a rethinking of the War on Drugs and major prison reform, I’ll see him as an urban, sophisticated, Ivy-educated liberal who wants a progressive country but will only push so far. That’s fine by me. I’d govern the country the same way.