Delete comment from: Boston 1775
"Indeed, the last place I hope any 2008 candidate would look for economic policy is in the eighteenth century. The policies and solutions of that time obviously don’t apply to our situation today." Well, in that sense, sure. The thing is, Obama is looking to the eighteenth century, explicitly rooting current challenges to "the same forces that confronted Hamilton and Jefferson." And I think his reliance on the famous TJ-AH polarity lacks much realism -- the realism that might repay looking to history, and using historical references as benchmarks. I'm not sure that any kind of intellectual, historian or otherwise, can make a good politician, for the reasons you suggest: consensus, real or manufactured, is the song successful politicians sing; intellectuals must deal in conflict. Thus any pol's citing a historical interpretation raises questions, and hence the sheer weirdness of the issue for Obama, whose comments on race, in the context of discussing Wright's sermons, though emphasizing progress and consensus, also demanded of his audience a greater sense of historical realism and complexity than Obama himself is willing (for all the understandable reasons you mention) to grant other relevant aspects of our history. Thanks again --
Mar 31, 2008, 9:16:00 AM
Posted to Barack Obama and the Founders