Requirements

David Brook’s new column is a frustrating piece of writing. His basic thesis seems to be that Barack Obama, a smart, charismatic guy who has succeeded at most of the things he’s turned his hand to, and who came from a relatively humble background, isn’t really, “fully,” a part of American society.

If Obama is fully a member of any club — and perhaps he isn’t — it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama’s age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It’s not clear what the rest of America makes of them.

So, cautiously, the country watches. This should be a Democratic wipeout. But voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.

My question is: this is a problem? Beyond the larger issue of the defing down of “winning” that has been going on all this season (Obama is “only” consistently ahead in the polls, but he should be winning in a blow out! What’s up with that?), I’m curious as to why Brooks says that Obama was in the law school, but not of it. “He was a popular and charismatic professor, but he rarely took part in faculty conversations or discussions about the future of the institution.” Obama was not a tenured professor. If he didn’t take the time to join in faculty politics, I fail to see how that makes him any less a part of the program. According to Brooks, it isn’t enough to be popular and charismatic. You also have to belong in some sort of deep, existential sense. Or something.

Brook’s main complaint seems to be that Obama hasn’t done anything long enough – like, say, just at random here, John McCain (who has done everything he does for a long time now). It doesn’t matter that Obama is a smart, accomplished man – because Middle America, with its deep-seated love of “traditional values” are unsure about him. So unsure about him, in fact, that they keep saying they’re more likely to vote for him than his opponent. People like Brooks worship the idea of the “independent” politician, the one who isn’t beholden to interest groups and the “Washington elite.” But when your guy is a Washington elite, and as tied into the Republican Party as McCain, suddenly Brooks discovers the values of staying in one place and being a Rotarian for the past thirty years.