"What seems certain is that if an American of Chinese or Indian origin had been elected, Janine de Giovanni would not have written with quite so much self-satisfaction."
That didn't seem very certain, or even supported, from the article. Where did that come from? Is the guy claiming that Janine Whoever (who doesn't sound terribly important) is *only* happy that a black won and not actually happy that a minority won? A Native American president wouldn't be similarly symbolic?
The rest of the article seems to make the general argument that Obama could turn out to be as useless as most other politicians. Sure. He could. You could look at the election and say that within the context of the general contest, Obama demonstrated that he could campaign effectively, McCain demonstrated that he could not adapt well to circumstances, but neither of them demonstrated that they will be able to meet the challenge in advance of having to actually meet the challenge. Seems reasonable. I've never heard of a politician who wasn't a gamble. Anyone who doesn't have a "wait and see approach" is just being optimistic, which isn't very conservative, but is only wrong when falsely presented as precognitive truth ;-)
Obama's appeal will remain entirely symbolic until the man and his team actually do stuff. Hard to argue with that. This guy may write well, but he wrote this like a pundit who says general, vague, self-evident stuff in order to avoid being really wrong. Of course, I've only read one piece.
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That didn't seem very certain, or even supported, from the article. Where did that come from? Is the guy claiming that Janine Whoever (who doesn't sound terribly important) is *only* happy that a black won and not actually happy that a minority won? A Native American president wouldn't be similarly symbolic?
The rest of the article seems to make the general argument that Obama could turn out to be as useless as most other politicians. Sure. He could. You could look at the election and say that within the context of the general contest, Obama demonstrated that he could campaign effectively, McCain demonstrated that he could not adapt well to circumstances, but neither of them demonstrated that they will be able to meet the challenge in advance of having to actually meet the challenge. Seems reasonable. I've never heard of a politician who wasn't a gamble. Anyone who doesn't have a "wait and see approach" is just being optimistic, which isn't very conservative, but is only wrong when falsely presented as precognitive truth ;-)
Obama's appeal will remain entirely symbolic until the man and his team actually do stuff. Hard to argue with that. This guy may write well, but he wrote this like a pundit who says general, vague, self-evident stuff in order to avoid being really wrong. Of course, I've only read one piece.