Congratulations to Barack Obama for apparently beating the Clinton machine and apparently becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. But here is a question: You are promising to usher in a national unity, post-partisan regime. So what bone are you going to throw to conservatives? How are you in any way different from just a regular liberal?
I asked this of an Obama supporter that I am related to, and he said, after thinking for awhile, “Well, he isn’t going to demonize you so much.” Uh, that would be nice, but is there anything else? “His foreign policy,” the point being that traditional conservatives are not so interventionist and nation-building as the Bush administration has been and that Obama would return to that more conservative model.
Can anyone else offer a picture of what a post-partisan administration might look like? Or is this mere rhetoric or, more dangerously, the promise of a cult of personality in which the nation is unified by its devotion to a charismatic leader?
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