David Brooks on Obama

David Brooks annoys me just as much as the next Democrat - I especially dislike his oversimplifications of neuroscience - but he has a great column today on Barack Obama. Since it's behind the wall of Times $elect, I'll quote liberally:

Barack Obama should run for president.

He should run first for the good of his party. It would demoralize the Democrats to go through a long primary season with the most exciting figure in the party looming off in the distance like some unapproachable dream. The next Democratic nominee should either be Barack Obama or should have the stature that would come from defeating Barack Obama.

Second, he should run because of his age. Obama's inexperience is his most obvious shortcoming. Over the next four years, the world could face a genocidal civil war in Iraq, a wave of nuclear proliferation, more Islamic extremism and a demagogues' revolt against globalization. Do we really want a forty-something in the White House?

And yet in his new book, "The Audacity of Hope," Obama makes a strong counterargument. He notes that it's time to move beyond the political style of the baby boom generation. This is a style, he said in an interview late Tuesday, that is highly moralistic and personal, dividing people between who is good and who is bad.

Obama himself has a mentality formed by globalization, not the S.D.S. With his multiethnic family and his globe-spanning childhood, there is a little piece of everything in Obama. He is perpetually engaged in an internal discussion between different pieces of his hybrid self -- Kenya with Harvard, Kansas with the South Side of Chicago -- and he takes that conversation outward into the world.

"Politics, like science, depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality," he writes in his book. He distrusts righteous anger and zeal. He does not demonize his opponents and tells audiences that he does not think George Bush is a bad man.

Of course, despite all of Obama's potential, one significant hurdle remains: he hasn't done anything yet. He remains a first term senator who has yet to introduce a significant piece of legislation, or take an unpopular stand. And yet I don't care. For one thing, this Congress has been distinguished by its lack of achievement: no senator has done anything noteworthy. Secondly, when Obama has spoken out - like on lobbyist reform, where he tussled with McCain - he's been consistently on the right side of things. Finally, Obama is a hell of a writer. After eight years of incoherent Bushisms, wouldn't it be refreshing to have a president who was actually eloquent?

Update: Over at Open University, Cass Sunnstein reviews Obama's book. While I generally avoid buying this sort of political memoir - they are usually just gussied up stump speeches - this book sounds smart enough to actually read. After too many years of Rove's cynical polarizations, in which the electorate was intentionally divided, we need this kind of reasonable, pragmatic politician:

I've just finished reading Barack Obama's new book, The Audacity of Hope. An immediate reaction is that whenever possible, Obama likes to propose solutions that do not reject the defining principles of those with whom he disagrees--and if he finds it necessary to reject those commitments, he does so in a way that shows unfailing respect for them, and that puts their beliefs and (perhaps above all) their motivations in the most favorable light. This is true on questions involving the economy, national security, immigration, the role of religion, abortion, affirmative action, and much more.

To say the least, the idea of political minimalism raises hard questions. What is clear is that Obama's approach, as reflected in his book, is entirely different from that taken, at crucial times, by the Bush administration--and now being taken by certain segments of the Democratic Party.