"We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons
in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of
their own sect."
David Brooks's column on the two image of Barack Obama was very good. He writes that the left and the right have constructed their own two-dimensional cartoons of the president and neither conforms to reality. The right describes him as big-government liberal who uses slimy Chicago-style methods to rule. The left describes him as an intellectual too willing to compromise and dither.
Neither image is correct, says Brooks. "The fact is, Obama is as he always has been, a center-left pragmatic reformer."
Brooks praises the president for his achievements, including in education.
Take education. Obama has taken on a Democratic constituency, the
teachers’ unions, with a courage not seen since George W. Bush took on
the anti-immigration forces in his own party. In a remarkable speech on
March 1, he went straight at the guardians of the status quo by calling
for the removal of failing teachers in failing schools. Obama has been
the most determined education reformer in the modern presidency.
Brooks was enamored with Obama since the early days of his campaign. It's good to see the love hasn't died. It's also good to read critiques of the information cocoons that we live in.
Apt. 11d 
“The fact is, Obama is as he always has been, a center-left pragmatic reformer.”
yeah, I get this, and spend a lot of time explaining it to people who’ve convinced themselves that he was a progressive intellectual and then have felt betrayed since.
LikeLike
Obama’s pragmatism is one of the things that appeals to me about him. Intellectually, I know that strategy is better, but the problem is that people got on board with him because of emotion.
I was speaking with a student the other day. She is African American and from Georgia, and we were chatting about disagreement/dissent and being exposed to multiple points of view. She moved from Georgia to DC recently and feels like DC is a racial nirvana (she’s self-aware enough to know that it’s a relative thing). She says she thinks that the problem the South has with Obama is that there were a lot of people who honestly believed no one would ever vote for an African American–and she includes other African Americans in that group.
LikeLike
I agree that this is what Obama is and has always been. That doesn’t mean that one is obligated to approve of how he’s been governing even if you are a center-left pragmatic reformer. A centrist and pragmatist isn’t obligated to be timid or incrementalist, for example, or a pure split-the-difference compromiser. Jonathan Rauch has written for some time about what he calls “radical centrism” which includes the possibility of some bold actions and strong initiatives.
Brooks also strikes me as the wrong guy to be complaining about information cocoons, since he frequently reads as someone who sticks inside his own self-confirming loops.
LikeLike
I also think I remember Brooks writing a column or two about Obama’s intellectual style. If I had more time, I bet I could find it.
LikeLike
“She moved from Georgia to DC recently and feels like DC is a racial nirvana (she’s self-aware enough to know that it’s a relative thing).”
DC metro has a substantial Black middle-class, but like many other coastal areas in the US (like Caitlin Flanagan’s California), it’s got a sort of soft-apartheid system where the mostly white upper-middle class has its path smoothed by the labor of Latin American gardeners, Filipino nannies, etc. Stay there long enough, and it’s hard to remember that white people can be poor, can perform manual labor, and can mow lawns and take care of babies.
It will be interesting to hear what your student thinks of DC two or three years from now.
LikeLike
Huh – I thought that it was my move to an expat lifestyle that had me in an information bubble, but maybe it would be similiar at home.
LikeLike