Would we rather see “don't even blink?”

More than I sometimes realize, I admit, and I try to view the real world realistically.

He has a lot on his shoulders, already — _before_ taking office. Most of us see the color of his skin the same way we see the color of someone's hair, or failing that, of eyes, etc., as a superficial thing and mainly a matter of appearance, nothing more. But obviously many see or think of more. Ken Burns's “Baseball” was full of gimmickry (the voice gimmick is especially overdone), reliance on liberal Northeastern dolts (Cuomo, Goodwin) about whom we don't care what they have to say about baseball, and really overdid the liberal garbage about the USA in depicting Jackie Robinson as Jesus. (Obama is not the first Messiah to save us from the Evil USA, in a tired and tiresome liberal political theme, which Burns's “Baseball” is.) But obviously Obama is a meaningful social as well as political phenomenon (black Americans rightfully deserve to be proud of his election; I am especially happy for the black centenarian children of slaves who got to vote for him last month and some of whom are making the journey or even _pilgrimage_ with other black Americans to Washington see him inaugurated next month) and I suppose keeping him “safe” is so important it may strike me as excessive and unnecessary but isn't seen that way by Obama and by others.

As for change, anyone can see that any statement is going to be parsed a billion times and if he says anything that later turns out to be inaccurate then it will be a complete nightmare. The same for making decisions.

Really I can't blame politicians for the way they interact with the public/press because people don't care about substance, politics is all about image. I mean Politico keeps running stories about the new transition website feature that lets people ask questions and rate which ones they like. Instead of focusing on the top questions, they are obsessing over the fact that people keep voting down the Blagojevich ones because it's the scandal du jour and it “proves” censorship or something.

Our leaders can't run a new politics until the populace lets them; and that starts by caring more about reality than discussing marketing.

Also I interpret his pause to be more of a sign of his introverted nature than parsing. If you know any introverts that are strong speakers, they often pause to construct answers when they aren't just going off a playbook but then can talk for quite a while without missing much of a beat; that's also the reason why he says “Well look” a lot, as it's a throw away segue that lets him construct his answer but without extroverts being suspicious about the pauses. When he is stumbling a lot with tons of “uhs” that means he doesn't really know what to say and would rather say nothing because he's afraid of being held to something he doesn't want to be — but due to his introversion that is a more natural response than just a string of market speak BS that means nothing, although he'd be better served by doing that perhaps.

I always could tell that he was an introvert even though everyone was going on and on about which personality type he was and they thought he was an extrovert. My suspicions were confirmed a couple weeks ago in a story about how his personal habits have changed.

Of course he is involved to some extent with Blagojevich and the rest of the Chicago gang. In the case of the governor, it is independent of the Chicago-gang stuff — _of_course_, even _before_ he vacated his Senate seat, he was talking to people in Illinois. It would be irresponsible not to do it.

That's the way it should be.

Isn't it?

This is what President-Elect Obama is. In the Blagojevich affair, Obama basically has concluded the he means nothing to my plan and seems to be slightly irritated at the fuss. Whether that assessment is wrong or right, time will decide.