Who is Barack Obama? That question was asked again and again by Obama's opponents during last year’s primaries and the general election. But no matter how many times they asked the question, the answer was always the same: Barack Obama is exactly who he appears to be. He is a devout, evangelical Christian. He is a community organizer who sees national politics as simply a matter of organizing a larger community. He sees politics as a process of reconciling diverse views rather than as a process of pitting one interest group against another. He is a pragmatist rather than an ideologue. He sees compromise not as the failure of the political process but as the heart of that process. He is not vindictive but prefers instead to reach out to those who have opposed him.
If you read his books, you see that he has done just what he wrote he would do. If you listen to his friends and associates, they all say that in private he is the same, calm, relaxed, together person we see in public. He is a Democrat who claims to be willing to listen to Republicans, and he does. Last night he even gave a dinner for John McCain, the man he defeated in the election. No previous president has ever done that before.
Obama is a progressive who has thoughtful, cautious, even conservative instincts. He's not afraid to tell us what he knows we don't want to hear. He's a White Sox fan even in front of a Cubs crowd. He's as smart as he appears to be, as cool calm and collected as he appears to be, as ambitious as he appears to be, and as a sincere as he appears to be. He is the man he told us he was during the debates and during the campaign. And he's the man he told us he is during today's Inaugural Address. Whether you support him or oppose him, the truth about Barack Obama is that what you see is what you get. He's the first WYSIWYG President we've had in a long time.
©Copyright 2009 by Keith Ellis; All Rights Reserved
