it's all about respect, chicago-style

To understand what makes this president tick you can basically read David Brooks and forget everyone else (apart from Marbury obviously). Today's piece is a typically brilliant and perceptive analysis that draws a straight line from Chicago to Cairo.

Here's one of my favourite bits:

The president’s critics complained on Thursday about Obama’s distortions: The plight of the Palestinians is not really comparable to the plight of former slaves in the American South. The Treaty of Tripoli in 1796 was not really a glorious example of Muslim-American cooperation, but was a failed effort to use bribery to stop piracy.

But this is diplomacy, not scholarship. Obama was using this speech to show empathy and respect. He was asking people in different Muslim communities to give the U.S. a new look and a fresh hearing. He was showing people in a region besotted with tiresome hysterics how to talk to one another with understanding and dignity.

Diplomacy, not scholarship. Exactly. Obama isn't paying respect to the Palestinians (and the Iranians etc) because he wants to be liked or to impress people. He'd doing it because it's smart politics.

As Brooks goes on to argue, Obama contains an unusual mixture of idealism and a rather brutal pragmatism (or, in Chicago terms, the Lakeside and the South Side).

Comments

[Tony]

Broken/wrong link? Thanks for the daily read; keep up the good work.

[Lyle]

Brooks is one of my favourite columnists these days. He nails it here once again. Odd to think that back at university I used to harbour a journalistic crush on George Will, of all columnists. I guess it's not that odd when I consider how my politics have changed over the past 20 years, but still...Brooks is pragmatic enough to see situations clearly, a la Rich Lowry recently, rather than through a permanent political filter, whilst Will clings to his filter like a mad man.