Obama Really Profound

Obama's on the cover of the tony GQ, with a lovely story inside. Ryan Lizza:

Obama’s aides, too, often fret that his fame is diminishing him. They struggled for weeks before deciding to agree to let him grace the cover of this magazine. “Frankly, I could do with fewer cover stories generally,” David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist and adman told me during a recent visit to his Chicago office. “He’s an incredibly magnetic and also photogenic person, and so he lands on the covers of a lot of magazines. And that had its utility at one point, but it can get overdone. This is a really profound guy in many ways, and you don’t want him trivialized.”

Obama is really profound. Really, really profound, complex, layered, kind of like a landfill:

I’ve interviewed and traveled with Obama numerous times since early 2004, just after he won his improbable Senate-primary victory in Illinois, and I’ve experienced the same mix of conflicted reactions as voters like Kara Asmussen: genuine excitement about discovering a politician you actually admire, followed by skepticism and a realization that Obama, who earned his political education in Chicago’s tribal wards, is more of an old-fashioned pol than you think. Michael Kinsley once said of Bob Novak, “Underneath the asshole is a nice guy, but underneath the nice guy is another asshole.” One way to describe Obama is that underneath the inspirational leader who wants to change politics—and upon whom desperate Democrats, Independents, and not a few Republicans are projecting their hopes—is an ambitious, prickly, and occasionally ruthless politician. But underneath that guy is another one, an Obama who’s keenly aware that presidential politics is about timing, and that at this extremely low moment in American political life, there is a need for someone—and he firmly believes that someone is him—to lift up the nation in a way no politician has in nearly half a century.

Ah, but will Democrats who approve of him actually vote for him---there's a real numbers gap quantified in internal polling. Is Obama really as special as he thinks?:

One of his oldest Chicago friends, Judson Miner, whose law firm Obama worked at for nearly ten years, told me his biggest disappointment was that Obama hired as his top strategist David Axelrod, a longtime Chicago consultant who got his start as a political strategist for the second Mayor Daley, a man Miner has spent much of his career working against. But even Miner seemed to understand this decision, even if he didn’t approve of it. “You don’t get to be where Barack is,” he told me with a sigh, “by being Mr. Goodie every day. Sometimes you do have to compromise your values.”

Yeah, Mr. Goodie knows how to scoop up the goodies. Disappointing to some, disappointing to others:

Here in Webster City, Obama is now in an argument about Iraq. “It just feels like we’re leaving them high and dry,” a man says to him. “How could we ever have anybody in the world trust us again?” Obama tries to explain his position that the occupation is inflaming the Middle East. “If you look at what’s happening right now,” he says, “the situation in Iraq is metastasizing, so that you’re starting to get Al Qaeda in Lebanon, you’re starting to get the same kinds of disruptions in the Palestinian territories—”

“Terrorist groups,” the man says, “I just see them all—they’re all one.”

Obama tries a different approach. “I guess what I’m saying,” he says, revealing just the slightest hint of impatience, “is we’re spending $275 million a day. It’s not sustainable for us to be able to do this, have thousands of U.S. troops maimed or killed over the next five or ten years.”

The Iowan is not impressed. “Americans spend as much on Christmas decorations as we do on the war!” he tells Obama.

Obama tells him he's wrong and moves on.

You know what it is with Obama? He's patronizing and professorial. He's a pill in person. Hillary's a pill too but the difference is he has a better smile and a much better voice. Oh, and he's really profound. But does he have common sense? Does he really ever know what's really going on?

P.S. Another anecdote to add to the arugula stumble. This time Obama's in New Hampshire, not Iowa:

Despite the phoniness of the trip, there was one candid moment that ever so slightly suggests the distance Obama may need to come in winning over the beer drinkers. We stopped at a picturesque redbrick general store—“America’s oldest”—to photograph Obama and his family as they bought sandwiches and fudge and played with a puppy. As Obama stood at the counter paying, he looked quizzically at a display of trailer-hitch covers dressed in the guise of moose and turkeys. Turning to the phalanx of cameramen and reporters, Obama bravely wondered, “Who knows what a hitch ball is? This is a hitch-ball cover. We don’t know what a hitch ball is. Anybody know?” A cameraman politely explained that it’s the silver thing on the back of a truck used to tow a trailer. “Oh, I see,” Obama said, looking as if he was doing a mental calculation about whether this was one of those moments the press would use to make it seem like he’s out of touch. It wasn’t exactly President George H. W. Bush marveling over a checkout scanner, but still.

Actually, it's worse. Hitch ball technology has been around a long time. About as long as that covered bridge next to the general store. Hint: And if something is dressed up as a moose or a turkey it's fairly common.

P.P.S. I can't believe I read this entire article. Long is not always profound.