Thread: Props to Obama's Niebuhrian skillz

http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0810/features/obama.shtml

As Germany’s Weimar Republic crumbled beneath Hitler’s vigorous ascent in 1932, Niebuhr wrote in Moral Man and Immoral Society, “The will-to-live becomes the will-to-power.” But he was no cynic; he recognized power’s necessity as well as its corruptibility, and he believed that the world’s realities, however grim or obstinate, were no excuse for abandoning the struggle. In 1944, a year that saw the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, the courageous, calamitous Warsaw Uprising and the Nazi surrender of Paris, Niebuhr concluded, “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

Obama’s grasp of Niebuhrian complexities, and his ability to articulate them off the cuff at the end of a long day, “is a skill,” Brooks told his U of C audience, “that’s rare in American politics.” Glancing around the Donnelley Center classroom where listeners filled every seat and stood pressed against the back wall, Brooks noted, “This is bound to impress those of us affiliated with this institution.”

But what about the rest of the country? Three days after Brooks’s visit to campus, during the waning minutes of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews mused on Obama’s apparent difficulty connecting with working-class, Middle America voters. Hillary Clinton had dropped out of the Democratic race the week before, but her supporters were not all flocking to Obama. Why? Matthews asked his roundtable of journalists: “Is he too University of Chicago?”

Stupid didn't work so good.

Vote Smart this time.