Obama and Stevenson

Jonathan Alter offers up a comparison--he thinks complimentary--between President Obama and his fellow Illinoisian, Adlai Stevenson:

A year ago, Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's onetime strategist, compared [Obama] to his fellow Illinoisan, Adlai Stevenson, in order to discredit the upstart as an effete intellectual. Penn failed, in part because Obama won't refute the charge by dumbing down his language or playing the plebe (as George H.W. Bush did by eating pork rinds) or otherwise pandering to those with less bandwidth in ways he knows are inauthentic. When Stevenson was running for president in the 1950s, a woman approached him and said, "Governor, you have the support of every thinking American." Stevenson replied, "That's nice, but I need a majority." Obama is less cynical about the public. He seems perfectly content to be caught in the act of thinking in prime time.

(link) Alter may find this reassuring. Me, it scares me silly. Indeed I think Alter has put his finger on something profoundly unsettling about the Obama mystique: he's too much like Stevenson--Stevenson by all accounts a nice man, who would have made a terrible president. Granted, Obama has an indisputable capacity to inspire, to galvanize, a crowd, and heaven bless him for it. But he lacks the capacity to define and crystallize a specific issue or a precise point of view--in short, to lead. This is not merely a matter of eating pork rinds. Its a matter of explaining yourself and focusing public attention--in short, a matter of leadership. The all-time master was, of course, FDR, and I don't think anybody ever accused him of being a man of pork rinds.

All this has been obscured in the great bath of euphoria, but I think we're beginning to see signs of it now. The voters still believe that Obama's heart is in the right place, and that he wants to do the right thing. But they aren't very clear on what exactly he is doing, and how it is supposed to work. Their patience is beginning to show signs of strain, and one day, it will vanish. That's when Obama will need to be less like Stevenson and more like those other guys who understand that leadership is more than a warm bath.

[For the Newsweek pointer, H/T John again].

Update: I'm taking some heat for my friends for being beastly to that nice Mr. O. I have allowed myself to be misunderstood: given the available choices, he is light years ahead of any possible competitor (the Republican's stubborn and persistent unwillingness to be serious about anything is just a wonder to behold). I just want perfection. And heaven knows, we could use it.