Barack the conservative

Barack Obama is going to surprise a lot of people by being more conservative than expected. And by “conservative” I mean both in the sense of cautious as well as ideologically. As David Brook’s quoted Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center in his column this morning, “This was an election where the middle asserted itself. There was “no sign” of a “movement to the left.” Brook’s expect Obama to govern that way and makes a persuasive case.

The Rahm Emanuel pick is a good first sign. I remembered and reread a Fortune article from September 2006 in which Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who described Emanuel's aggressive style as a "cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache." But the point of the article was more that Emanuel is both smart and pragmatic and he knows how things work at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

A funny quote is attributed to Bill Clinton just after the ’92 election, in which after being asked how he felt, he was reported to have said, “like a dog that finally caught the pickup truck he’d been chasing.” That may have contributed to his waiting until just a week or so before taking office to pick his WH staff, which turned out to be the wrong people. Obama did this first and picked pros.

Did you know Obama is considered to be a pretty good poker player? If you did it was despite his campaign staff’s strenuous efforts to keep it under wraps until after the election. It’s not a bad skill for a President to have.

How much interest is there in the election? By noon on Wednesday you couldn’t find a copy of the New York Times anywhere for love nor money. Copies are for sale on eBay starting at $40 and going up from there. Time magazine is out today. They normally put out office copies for employees first thing in the morning, but there were none today and they have gone back to press to print an additional 200,000 copies. I think a lot of people are starting their own family time capsules.

Here’s a quote I heard the other day, apropos of nothing special: “Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.” Oscar Wilde.