The routinization of Obama

A great outtake from the last page of a new New York Magazine profile of President Barack Obama and where and how “the politics of hope” has run aground:

Obama has done his share to contribute to what Max Weber might have called the routinization of his own charisma. For much of the past ten months, the outside-shot candidate has been the inside-game president, consumed with dickering with Congress and deliberating with his team, spending more time appealing to various Beltway constituencies than to us. His oft-noted omnipresence in the media has done little to connect him more viscerally to the electorate. Astonishingly, this inspiring, eloquent, and persuasive man has often seemed an arid and distant figure.

That said, maybe that “side” of Obama is just as real as the inspiring/eloquent/persuasive side is.

In either case, the story is right, at the end. Ultimately, clarity is needed from Obama. Of the several things that sank Jimmy Carter, lack of clarity at times might have been one of them.