CHICAGO—He supports the death penalty for heinous crimes, while acknowledging that capital punishment is likely not a deterrent.
He is opposed to same-sex marriage, though noting that time may prove he's on the wrong side of history on this issue.
He wants more combat troops in Afghanistan, while vowing to take American soldiers out of Iraq within 16 months of assuming office.
He had himself baptized as a Christian in adulthood.
Barack Obama is not the Canadian version of a liberal politician, even while occupying the far left – as a United States senator – of the political spectrum. In Canadian terms, he'd barely qualify as a Red Tory.
This may all underscore how far to the right America has listed in recent years, or how vast the chasm between what much of the world considers progressive and how that term is defined in this country.
An overwhelming majority of Canadians adore Obama, would have swept him into the Oval Office with a record-setting trouncing of the Republican party. Indeed, it often seemed as if Canadians were resentful of the fact they couldn't vote in another nation's election; as if they should be able to impact another's political topography.
Of course, Obama-mania is an extraordinary phenomenon 'round the globe, which augers well for the U.S. reclaiming moral stature internationally. Comparatively, the president-incoming is the flip side of the president-outgoing, George W. Bush, and all the neo-conservative ideology embodied by this White House.
But, on the testimony as Obama has provided it – in his own words, in two memoirs – he simply is not as perceived by many in his thrall. The fault isn't that he's misrepresented himself; Obama has been quite candid about his beliefs, values and objectives. Yet many seem not to have been listening, or perhaps just tuning out the bits that rankle, parts that don't fit into their idealized characterization of Obama as antidote to what came before.
"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own values," he once said.
While rejecting all stereotypes of race, Obama has been equally dismissive of pro forma liberalism, or what he wryly called the "latte-sipping Lakefront liberals," to put a local Chicago flavour on a type we all recognize.
In The Audacity of Hope, the then-junior senator from Illinois wrote about the failure of liberal governments in the U.S., an elitist disconnect from the lives of ordinary Americans that was so effectively exploited by Ronald Reagan.
Reagan exaggerated the sins of the welfare state but he tapped into a middle-America, middle-class exhaustion; a disenchantment with highbrow Democrats who derided their values. "A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities," Obama wrote.
Obama has values. You just might not like them. What he has promised, however, is that he won't be held hostage to his own certainties either. That way lies same-old partisanship and polarized governance.
The difference Obama draws between values and ideology: "Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question."
It is America's business where it decides to go under an Obama administration, no doubt to be influenced by the judges he nominates for the Supreme Court. But Canadians weary of losses in Kandahar might be in for a rude awakening when, as commander-in-chief, this president does exactly as promised: Muscles up the U.S. war against terrorism in Afghanistan, asking for more – not less – from its NATO allies. Obama has been even more hawkish than McCain about running Al Qaeda and Taliban belligerents to ground in their Pakistan sanctuaries.
He has so many promises to keep. Not all will be so sweetly received as getting a puppy for his daughters in the White House.
Toronto Star
He is opposed to same-sex marriage, though noting that time may prove he's on the wrong side of history on this issue.
He wants more combat troops in Afghanistan, while vowing to take American soldiers out of Iraq within 16 months of assuming office.
He had himself baptized as a Christian in adulthood.
Barack Obama is not the Canadian version of a liberal politician, even while occupying the far left – as a United States senator – of the political spectrum. In Canadian terms, he'd barely qualify as a Red Tory.
This may all underscore how far to the right America has listed in recent years, or how vast the chasm between what much of the world considers progressive and how that term is defined in this country.
An overwhelming majority of Canadians adore Obama, would have swept him into the Oval Office with a record-setting trouncing of the Republican party. Indeed, it often seemed as if Canadians were resentful of the fact they couldn't vote in another nation's election; as if they should be able to impact another's political topography.
Of course, Obama-mania is an extraordinary phenomenon 'round the globe, which augers well for the U.S. reclaiming moral stature internationally. Comparatively, the president-incoming is the flip side of the president-outgoing, George W. Bush, and all the neo-conservative ideology embodied by this White House.
But, on the testimony as Obama has provided it – in his own words, in two memoirs – he simply is not as perceived by many in his thrall. The fault isn't that he's misrepresented himself; Obama has been quite candid about his beliefs, values and objectives. Yet many seem not to have been listening, or perhaps just tuning out the bits that rankle, parts that don't fit into their idealized characterization of Obama as antidote to what came before.
"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own values," he once said.
While rejecting all stereotypes of race, Obama has been equally dismissive of pro forma liberalism, or what he wryly called the "latte-sipping Lakefront liberals," to put a local Chicago flavour on a type we all recognize.
In The Audacity of Hope, the then-junior senator from Illinois wrote about the failure of liberal governments in the U.S., an elitist disconnect from the lives of ordinary Americans that was so effectively exploited by Ronald Reagan.
Reagan exaggerated the sins of the welfare state but he tapped into a middle-America, middle-class exhaustion; a disenchantment with highbrow Democrats who derided their values. "A lot of liberal rhetoric did seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities," Obama wrote.
Obama has values. You just might not like them. What he has promised, however, is that he won't be held hostage to his own certainties either. That way lies same-old partisanship and polarized governance.
The difference Obama draws between values and ideology: "Values are faithfully applied to the facts before us, while ideology overrides whatever facts call theory into question."
It is America's business where it decides to go under an Obama administration, no doubt to be influenced by the judges he nominates for the Supreme Court. But Canadians weary of losses in Kandahar might be in for a rude awakening when, as commander-in-chief, this president does exactly as promised: Muscles up the U.S. war against terrorism in Afghanistan, asking for more – not less – from its NATO allies. Obama has been even more hawkish than McCain about running Al Qaeda and Taliban belligerents to ground in their Pakistan sanctuaries.
He has so many promises to keep. Not all will be so sweetly received as getting a puppy for his daughters in the White House.
Toronto Star
