Politico.com is often insightful beyond its years. Today's headline is as much about politics as it is about psychology:
"Hardened Obama Plans New Fights"
How character-driven of them. As someone who has followed Obama for over 4 years, read about even the most minute details about him (did you know he is fan of the political theorist and philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr?), and am intrigued at how his meteoric rise pairs with his steady, reformative nature, I can know this is an Obama truth. He changes, he regroups, he adapts.
One of the things he was praised for during the campaign was his uncanny ability to be self-aware and self-reforming. Early on in the primaries, after his campaign staff told him he needed to do find a way of articulating his positions in easy to digest morsels, he would say, "I know, I'll get better." One misstep or challenge after another, a new, refined version of Obama would come out as a result. This time it's no different.
Washington have Obama a honeymoon that looked more like a dry and bitter 29th year wedding anniversary (sorry married folks). One frown after another, Republicans and some Democrats were not too impressed with the new president. They hemmed, hawed, and finally gave him what he was looking for, a stimulus package, after they tore it up to their own liking. Three appointments to his cabinet have embarrassed themselves, and him for choosing and not properly vetting them, on a national level. His Treasury Secretary has been received with mixed reviews, when the economy needs a boost of self-esteem. He is, in 2009, not the perfect Obama of 2008.
That is great news for him. In 2007, as the underdog in the primaries, he tested his wits and his will. This is another opportunity to do the same. Seeing what the White House really entails, and molding it around his lifestyle, not the other way around, he is Obama, President-mode.
lhp
