{"id":2984,"date":"2008-04-05T22:10:23","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T16:40:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200804\/virgina-postrel-echoes-me\/"},"modified":"2008-04-05T22:10:23","modified_gmt":"2008-04-05T16:40:23","slug":"virgina-postrel-echoes-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200804\/virgina-postrel-echoes-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgina Postrel Echoes Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Barack Obama<\/a><\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s glamour also accounts for some of his campaign\u2019s other stumbles. Plenty of candidates attract supporters who disagree with them on some issues. Obama is unusual, however. He attracts supporters who not only disagree with his stated positions but assume he does too<\/em>. They project their own views onto him and figure he is just saying what other, less discerning voters want to hear. So when Obama\u2019s chief economic adviser supposedly told a Canadian official that, contrary to campaign rhetoric, the candidate didn\u2019t want to revise NAFTA, reporters found the story credible. After all, nobody that thoughtful and sophisticated could really oppose free trade.<\/p>\n

Unlike Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, the two glamorous presidents who shaped 20th-century American politics, Obama has left his political philosophy a mystery. His call for \u201ca broad majority of Americans\u2014Democrats, Republicans, and independents of goodwill\u2014who are re-engaged in the project of national renewal\u201d is not a statement of principles. It\u2019s an invitation to the audience to entertain their own fantasies of what national renewal would look like<\/p>\n

<\/span>Like any candidate, Obama of course has position papers on specific issues. But even well-informed observers disagree about whether he represents the extreme left wing of the Democratic party or something more market-oriented and centrist. As the NAFTA flap demonstrates, his supporters can\u2019t even decide what the candidate really thinks about free trade. His glamour makes it easy to imagine that a President Obama would dissolve differences, abolish hard choices, and achieve political consensus\u2014or that he\u2019s a stealth candidate who will translate his vague platform into a mandate for whatever policies you the voter happen to support. (The Peril of Obama<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The link may not stay valid for long, but Postrel is using “glamour” in its\u00a0 original sense, when it meant “Magic spell”. (That also accounts for the odd spelling of the word – odd, that is, if you are an American.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Barack Obama Obama\u2019s glamour also accounts for some of his campaign\u2019s other stumbles. Plenty of candidates attract supporters who disagree with them on some issues. Obama is unusual, however. He attracts supporters who not only disagree with his stated positions but assume he does too. They project their own views onto him and figure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[96,53,97,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}