The Trouble With Character

David Brooks was very high on Barack Obama for a while. Then he got very upset at Obama for a while, slamming him as “Fast Eddie Obama.” Now he’s back to mostly praise:

He doesn’t have F.D.R.’s joyful nature or Reagan’s happy outlook, but he is analytical. That’s why this William Ayers business doesn’t stick. He may be liberal, but he is never wild. His family is bourgeois. His instinct is to flee the revolutionary gesture in favor of the six-point plan.

This was not evident back in the “fierce urgency of now” days, but it is now. And it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president. He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered. He could gather — already has gathered — some of the smartest minds in public policy, and, untroubled by intellectual insecurity, he could give them free rein. Though he is young, it is easy to imagine him at the cabinet table, leading a subtle discussion of some long-term problem.

I just wonder about this approach to thinking about politicians. Suppose Obama really is “Fast Eddie” and the main difference between now and when Brooks didn’t like him is that he’s gotten better at lying? After all, Brooks says that key elements of Obama’s character were “not evident back in the ‘fierce urgency of now’ days” but now they are. But maybe “Fast Eddie” is just turning it on and off to suit his schemes. I feel pretty confident as a well-informed, skeptical person with Google at my finger tips that I can figure out when politicians are lying to me about policy or about their records. But a lot of this genre of punditry seems based on the idea that journalists can discern when politicians are and aren’t misleading with their presentation of self. But I have no reason to believe I’m especially good at this, and plenty of reason to believe that big-time politicians are unusually good at misleading about this sort of thing. There’s something to be said for just analyzing politics as a rigid ideologue and not trying to wade into these waters at all.