What makes voters so wary of Obama?

Ripped from the wires ... David Brooks identifies the Obama quality likely responsible for his lackluster showing in the polls. Hint: It's not his race or youthful age:

By DAVID BROOKS

Why isn't Barack Obama doing better? Why, after all that has happened, does he have only a slim 2- or 3-point lead over John McCain, according to an average of the recent polls? Why is he basically tied with his opponent when his party is so far ahead?

His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren't dismissive of Obama or hostile to him. Instead, they're wary and uncertain.

And the root of it is probably this: Obama has been a sojourner. He opened his book "Dreams From My Father'' with a quotation from Chronicles: "For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.''

There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.

Last week Jodi Kantor of The Times described Obama's 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. "The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count,'' Kantor wrote.

He was a popular and charismatic professor, but he rarely took part in faculty conversations or discussions about the future of the institution. He had a supple grasp of legal ideas, but he never committed those ideas to paper by publishing a piece of scholarship.

He was in the law school, but not of it.

This has been a consistent pattern throughout his odyssey. His childhood was a peripatetic journey through Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii and beyond. He absorbed things from those diverse places but was not fully of them.

His college years were spent on both coasts. He was a community organizer for three years but left before he could be truly effective. He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it. He had some accomplishments, but as Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker wrote, he was famously bored by the institution and used it as a stepping stone to higher things.

He was in Trinity United Church of Christ, but not of it, not sharing the liberation theology that energized Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is in the U.S. Senate, but not of it. He has not had the time nor the inclination to throw himself into Senate mores, or really get to know more than a handful of his colleagues. His Democratic supporters there speak of him fondly, but vaguely.

And so it goes. He is a liberal, but not fully liberal. He has sometimes opposed the Chicago political establishment, but is also part of it. He spoke at a rally against the Iraq war, while distancing himself from many anti-war activists.

This ability to stand apart accounts for his fantastic powers of observation, and his skills as a writer and thinker. It means that people on almost all sides of any issue can see parts of themselves reflected in Obama's eyes. But it does make him hard to place.

When we're judging candidates (or friends), we don't just judge the individuals but the milieus that produced them. We judge them by the connections that exist beyond choice and the ground where they will go home to be laid to rest. Andrew Jackson was a backwoodsman. John Kennedy had his clan. Ronald Reagan was forever associated with the small-town virtues of Dixon and Jimmy Carter with Plains.

It is hard to plant Obama. Both he and his opponent have written coming-of-age tales about their fathers, but they are different in important ways. McCain's "Faith of My Fathers'' is a story of a prodigal son. It is about an immature boy who suffers and discovers his place in the long line of warriors that produced him. Obama's "Dreams From My Father'' is a journey forward, about a man who took the disparate parts of his past and constructed an identity of his own.

If you grew up in the 1950s, you were inclined to regard your identity as something you were born with. If you grew up in the 1970s, you were more likely to regard your identity as something you created.

If Obama is fully a member of any club -- and perhaps he isn't -- it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama's age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It's not clear what the rest of America makes of them.

So, cautiously, the country watches. This should be a Democratic wipeout. But voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.

Comments?

Comments

[Richard L. Wolfe]

It sounds like Obama is Bill Clinton without the womanizing, experience or guile.

[Denney Clements]

How so, Richard? Bill Clinton made great hay of his small-town Arkansas attachment. There was never any doubt about where he came from and what he stood for; the guy may be a disgrace on some counts, but give him that. He had a base and everyone knew what it was.

Brooks' point is that Obama is so detached that there's this ambiguity about him. What is his base? Not clear. Is he with me or against me on (fill in your concern here)? Not clear. This, in turn, makes it harder for voters to understand and to identify with him. I have this problem myself.

dc

[Richard L. Wolfe]

Come on Denney. You are just repeating conventional wisdom or bio-view. Bill Clinton became a citizen of the world the day Senator Fulbright took him under his wing. Obama in Berlin, " today I stand before you as a citizen of the world." You don't believe in conspiracies so the coming one world government is just silly nonsense to you. I respect your viewpoint as a wise and prudent one. I just see the lightening and hear the thunder and I think there is a big storm coming.

[Denney Clements]

I don't pretend to be wise or prudent, just a strong-willed guy with a point of view.

Of course Clinton became a citizen of the world. But he never lost sight of his base -- a place called Hope -- and therefore seemed grounded to his supporters. Everyone in the politics game at the national level has to transcend his roots or he/she won't meet his political goals. But Brooks' point is different: that Obama moves through the world without seeming to be part of it, at least as some see it.

dc

[Richard L. Wolfe]

Denney, While we are on the subject let me give you an interesting side bar on the Clinton Administration and me. In 1994-95 my wife to be and I delivered newspapers for USA Today to earn extra money. We use to listen to Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio broadcast for fun. After the massacre at Waco there was a lot of hostile, violent chatter on the program.

I wrote Bill Clinton to warn him that Janet Reno's handling of the situation would lead to further violence. I know the president doesn't read or answer these letters, but I was hoping that someone would take me seriously. The letter I got back, ( which I still have )said, " All I am trying to is get the United States on a sound financial ground." This had nothing to do with the letter I sent. Four months later we had Oklahoma City.

[jim sefter]

I think Brooks has Obama nailed - that he can't be nailed. Obama is what I would call a compleat opportunist, the epitomy of being a politician. That's why he seemingly changes positions so well and with such alacrity. All the successful politicians I have ever known personally (not many) had that ability. They would always answer a question with a question and never quite give an answer. So, as with all good politicians, he cannot be pinned down. I guess for a lot of us, that is disquieting. Welcome to the world of politics.

[prefab sprout]

I enjoyed the piece. Its an example of a right winger column thats well thought out and well written.

Maybe this is the type of writer Michelle Malkin wants to be when she grows up-though its debatable she has the writing skills or insight.