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I have some thoughts I will likely write up soon on the connection between two ideas I’ve written about lately: Frugality and Eternity.

(Sounds like the beginning of a slogan for the French Revolution.)

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Robin Pettit ends a comment on another thread by saying, “I like Obama although I do not agree with every position he has taken. He is a little too centrist for me, but that’s OK as the only other option was was to conservative for me.”

I am not sure of this, but I’m willing to bet that Obama is not really centrist– at least not in any meaningful sense, when it comes to fundamental goals and deepest vision. I believe that Obama is, in terms of his vision for what a society should ideally be, rather radical. I believe that if he could successfully take America to where he’d like for it to be, you’d find us not with something like the status quo but with something far more like the values of radical utopians.

But he is not utopian in his political strategy. He is firmly realistic. And he realizes that in America the best way of getting the country moving in those directions is to go out of your way to make America see you as a centrist. NOthing to worry about. Nothing radical.

He appreciates the way things are as the way things are, and he’s willing to work with them. Which means using the power systems as he finds them, and it means presenting himself to the public in the carefully crafted way that he does– part of which is to continually reassure Americans that he is the contrary of radical, the contrary of someone who’s itching for a fight, the contrary of the strange alien the Republicans tried to make him out to be.

It is great theater, what he does. And it’s also true. He does have allegiance to a lot of what there IS about America, because he knows that is what he has to work with. He’s not going to get America from here to there except by using the existing set-up, which includes guys like Larry Summers and Hillary Clinton.

What Hillary achieved this week in places like Indonesia was, I think , radical. Her words about Obama’s great regard for Indonesia wrought radical changes in the minds of millions there. And so it goes, now, across the world.

We now have a government that is TRULY interested in Green Energy. That is a radical change.

Whatever the extent of his vision for desirable transformation, he understands that in America this transformation can only happen by steps, and that he’ll be able to take the MOST steps the more he can reassure Americans that he’s just fixing things, with a little change thrown in, rather than being dedicated really to the changes, with the fixing being partly a true necessity of crisis and partly a form of theater to dress up the process of transformation.

Again, I could be wrong. This involves interpretation, since by definition the presentation is crafted and, while honest, is not fully forthright. (He tells nothing but the truth, but he keeps a lot of what he believes to be the truth to himself. ) So, being an interpretation, it could be mistaken.

But this is what I see.

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I believe this perspective may help me understand better the parts of Obama’s behavior that have most troubled me.

Obama has not been vigorous about ending all that Bush did with respect to surveillance (his FISA vote) and with respect to state secrets (a court case in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, where someone from the Obama State Department sought to keep the lid closed on a case going forward that could divulget “state secrets,” a concept that the Bushites used in very bad ways to increase their own power and beat back the ability of the legal system to restrain them in any way).

My thought is that Obama is being very careful about dismantling too quickly the Bushite security apparatus. He knows that he is vulnerable to people perceiving him as a limp-wristed liberal who opposed the war in Iraq and who will not protect us so vigorously as GWBush did. The GOP has been laying this trap for him, pushing the idea that Bush protected us, and essentially saying that if there’s another terror attack that will prove that Obama shouldn’t be president.

So Obama is closing Guantanamo, but carefully. He is saying words about torture, etc. BUt he’s also being careful not to take moves that would readily be used by his political enemies to shove him into that trap they’ve been laying for him.

He chooses his ways and means of reclaiming the rule of law, but he avoids those that would undermine his overall position in the ongoing political struggle.

In this respect, he avoids leaning toward holding the Bushites accountable, saying that he wants to look forward, but he also keeps an opening by saying things like “no one is above the law.”

As the exposure of the Bushites moves forward, one way or another –Leahy’s commission, most likely– the image of the Bushites as protectors will weaken.

Obama will benefit from that exposure, and he will be increasingly in a position to dismantle the Bushite evils in the national security field without being so vulnerable as he would be now, if he walked into the GOP trap and allowed scoundrels like Rush Limbaugh to point to an action of his and say, “See, Obama isn’t going to protect you, he cares more about the rights of the terrorists than about the lives of your children.”

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Robin says that I’m describing Obama as a pragmatist. If by pragmatist you mean someone who will follow whatever strategy allows him to achieve the most good, then yes. I see him as having goals for the country –based on a radical and utopian set of standards about the human good, married to a very realistic idea of the flawed nature of the human world– which he keeps constantly in mind, and proceeds toward by whatever means he believes will best enable him to move the world TOWARD that utopian vision.

He does not do ALL that is good because that is not the strategy that he thinks will enable him to best serve The Good in all its diverse forms and wholeness.

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It is radical, for one thing, simply to have a consciousness like Obama has. What he has shown us –the beauties of his DREAMS OF MY FATHER, the inspiration of his speeches, his unflappability under the most intense of circumstances, his repeated deftness of political judgment (note that getting Lierberman on board turned out to be crucial for getting the stimulus passed)– all this bespeaks a human being that goes a whole lot deeper, and is a whole lot better put together, than most anyone we’ve seen in the White House since I don’t know when.

So long as he can continue to find ways of sharing the magnitude of his humanity –not just get swallowed up in policy matters, but also show us his vision, his heart, the love in his family– Obama cannot help but be an agent of radical change in America.

It’s vitally important that we not let the right wing keep reducing the scene under Obama to its own vile little drama of unprincipled liles told as a weapon in waging an unnecessary war.