I've posted from time to time that I didn't think a lot of bloggers understood Obama or how his operation works. I think that while Obama does believe in a lot of that hope and change rhetoric and genuinely wants to find common ground, the portrayal of him in the media and the netroots of someone who won't get dirty is false.
I'd known about this for almost 2 years, but Plouffe basically outed the Obama campaign for the Edwards haircut tidbit (which a lot of y'all thought was the Clinton campaign, b/c Obama would NEVER do that):
Obama's campaign had a particularly capable opposition research shop, a source of tips to many reporters, not all of them on policy. And Plouffe, in passing, outs the campaign as the source of a brief item I did in April 2007 off an Edwards campaign expenditure — probably driving as much traffic, chatter and grief as anything that short I've ever written.
"We did much less of this [opposition research] than other campaigns did," Plouffe writes a bit self-servingly, "but there were times we indulged — it was our researchers who found John Edwards's infamous $400 hair cut expenditures."
Well, let me rephrase a bit. Obama himself may be reticent to do stuff like this or personally wouldn't do it, but his campaign was filled with people who were streetfighters. He'll probably be reluctant and needs to be talked into things by advisers, but it's not like he hasn't or won't make the call.
His administration is stocked similarly with people who have no problem getting in there.
Let's be clear: the hope and change stuff wasn't total bullshit, but Obama, the politician, is more complex than that. When someone doesn't take this into account, it's a red flag that their analysis is going to be off. As I've written before:
Obama is one "tough motherfucker" -- Democratic consultant to me. He worked w/ Obama campaign.
The people who know the man will tell you that he's someone who "will make the call."
And
Continual portrayals of him as 'naive' or not "getting it" or puppet of his advisers, are not based in reality.
On almost all of the big issues, Obama is with us and gets it. On almost all of the big issues, the problem is in Congress or some other institutional actor that makes the political reality more complicated than portrayed in the blogosphere. On almost all of the big issues, the focus should be on building support in the public and on the Hill for what we want... too much handwringing with regard to the administration and the usual back and forth is a waste of time, in most cases.
If Obama were only about hope and change, he wouldn't be president, and I wouldn't like him as a politician.