Recently I came across a Nancy Gibbs essay from Time Magazine titled "Tickle Me Obama: Lessons from Sesame Street" illustrates for me what I like so much about Barack Obama.
The story makes the point that Obama is the first President young enough to have grown up watching Sesame Street, but also seems to fully embrace the reasoned approach and straight ahead tacking of problems advocated on the show. Really interesting stuff...
Also from Time are a few other pieces on Obama that I think gets at what he brings to the table. Going back a few months are the Joe Klein "In The Arena" commentaries "Obama's Speech: A Tonal Masterpiece" about the budget address and prior to that "Obama's Fresh Start: Substance Over Showbiz".
Two other Time pieces that take a different approach, but also illustrate some of what I like about the guy:
- The June 1 cover story was written (also by the very solid Nancy Gibbs) about Michelle Obama and shows a very nuanced portrait of the First Lady.
- From the June 8 issue, another Joe Klein "In The Arena" essay does perhaps an even better job of showing Obama's value-add in that rather being about something he did, it's about an excellent appointment he made of someone else to do something. "Robert Gates: The Bureaucrat Unbound" is about the current Secretary of Defense and the job he has done... after remaining as a holdover appointee from the Bush Administration. By all appearances, was an excellent pick which happened to run against political convention.
