By Ankush
I had high hopes for Larissa MacFarquhar’s profile of Barack Obama,
but ultimately I don’t think it breaks much, if any, ground: What you
get is the requisite (if interesting) personal history, the commentary
on Obama’s
mostly reserved demeanor on the campaign trail, and — the centerpiece
of this profile — much ado about his interest in consensus-building.
But
can you really call someone a “conciliator” (as the title of the
profile does) if you pay so little attention to the man’s actual policy
positions? MacFarquhar mentions that Obama publicly advocated removing the troop withdrawal timetable from the Iraq supplemental in the event of a Bush veto, and that he has “one of the most liberal” voting records in the Senate, but that’s basically it.
If your thesis, however, is that Obama
pursues consensus as an end in itself, you really do need to identify
specific issues on which he has compromised or demonstrated his willingness to compromise.
You need to try to substantively answer the question of whether the
rhetoric is designed to draw people from both parties to some sort of
middle ground (which isn’t the same thing as the true political
“center”) or whether it’s designed to draw people to his
positions. If it’s the latter, then a better word than “conciliation”
is probably “persuasion.” It will only seem like conciliation if you
wish he were further to the left than he actually is.
