In the year since he was elected president, Barack Obama has revealed himself as one of the boldest leaders to occupy the Oval Office in the modern era.
In that same year, Obama also has revealed himself to be an innately self-protective, constantly calibrating and, in some surprising ways, supremely conventional politician.
So who is Barack Obama? The drama of this presidency — in sharp relief with Wednesday’s one-year anniversary of his 2008 triumph — revolves around how Obama navigates his own contradictions.
Obama turns out not to be a Bill Clinton-style centrist or a Paul Wellstone-style liberal. His plans for health care and his trillion-plus dollars in new spending have earned the ire of Rush Limbaugh for being too grandiose and of Arianna Huffington for not being grandiose enough.
Obama is the president as grand improvisationalist: a leader of epic ambitions who — when faced with a difficult choice — almost always pursues his aims with a pedestrian strategy and style.
This may be a shrewd approach to governing. But it manages almost by definition to defy and disappoint the huge — and wildly divergent — expectations Obama encouraged supporters to harbor for his presidency.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29111.html
