Pros and Cons of Barack Obama

Pro

• Just like his touchstone Abraham Lincoln, he acts like a principled idealist, but at bottom he seems like a crafty stoic. This latter trait can be the making of a great president (cf. FDR, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Polk).
  
• With Obama at the helm, America will definitely look a lot less ridiculous to the rest of the world. Partly this might have something to do with his brains, heritage and skin color, but mostly it's the fact that he's not a sinister puppet. And also, that smile.
  
• He voted against CAFTA, for the totally retro reason that it would hurt American workers (though he wasn't exactly a lone wolf on that roll call: 44 other senators voted against it). Still, it suggests he's not ready to shake hands with the invisible hand of globalism just yet.
  
• He's in favor of network neutrality. I know this seems like a tiny issue for a presidential candidate, but it demonstrates that he's willing to draw a firm line in the sand when it comes to that escalating "everything for sale" corporate mentality.

Con

• He's been marking his campaign with weasel words such as "journey", "hope", "quest", and "destiny," which suggests a total lack of imagination and even a teensy bit of mushbrain (not to mention that "destiny" has been owned by Darth Vader since 1981).
  
• His misapprehension of Abraham Lincoln's character ("[Lincoln] tells us that there is power in hope" etc.) suggests either a cynical manipulation of an American myth, or Obama's true belief that Lincoln was a dreaming idealist. If the former, then whatever, Obama's a politician. But if the latter, then we're in trouble.
  
• He played a really crappy U2 song ("City of Blinding Lights") to open his campaign kickoff speech. I mean, sure, it wasn't Radiohead (that would've cost him my vote). But U2? A somber quartet of Irish millionaires? For the record: at least two-fifths of Fleetwood Mac were American citizens when Bill Clinton used "Don't Stop" in his 1992 campaign.
  
• He seems to be repeating the unquestioning pro-Israel cant of so many neocons and beltway insiders. If he truly wants to "usher in a new birth of freedom on this Earth" (the closing words of his speech), then he should probably look at Israel with a more critical, even jaundiced, eye.
  
• Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility - for instilling an ethic of achievement in our children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice. So let us begin. Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation. That there's a nice lawyerly dose of "ask not" escapism from Obama's infuriatingly moderate campaign kickoff speech. Utterly meaningless. Haven't we been "working hard" already, fending off predatory lenders, trading our talents for diminishing returns in crap jobs, tossing frayed lifelines to our hurricane-drowned peeps? Instead of the elder Bush's "thousand points of light", we get "a thousand communities instilled with an ethic of achievement." You know, places like Kenwood or Darien, CT! Same old class reproduction couched in pseudo-meritocracy blather. Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose.

Well, Jesse Jackson he ain't. On the whole, I'm wary of Obama's centrism, almost as if he sees the Presidency as an end in itself (but then, so did Lincoln). Still, I'd vote for him if he wins the nomination (whereas I would not vote for a New Democrat such as Hillary Clinton). And I still prefer the open class warfare of John Edwards, a healthy bit of angry ideology that might actually turn this country around.