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Alter-nate Reality

Newsweek is the magazine that recently informed us in its cover story that ?We Are All Socialists Now.? Now one of its quintessential Alter-nate reality writers, Jonathan Alter, tells us ?How Obama Can Talk Us Out Of The Recession.?

That, actually, was Real Clear Politics? headline for Alter?s story. Newsweek itself called the article ?America?s New Shrink,? and, with its customary fawning idolotry of all things Obama, cheerily instructs us, ?Chin up, everyone. This president is well poised to bring us back from the brink.?

Alter, it turns out, is much more interested in Obama?s demeanor than in deficits, in his personality more than in his performance, in his ?leadership? than in where he is trying to lead us. In Newsweek?s Alternate-reality, personality has been elevated from cult to quasi-offcial state religion.

?Why,? Alter asks, does he think ?Barack Obama has a good chance of restoring confidence and pulling us back from the brink?? He?s only too happy, giddy even, to tell us.

Because my take on Obama, based on conversations with him and his team stretching back more than four years and extending into the White House, is that he has a firm grasp of the psychological and substantive challenges of the presidency....

The critical element, of course, is confidence. Leadership in war is mostly about concrete tactical and strategic decisions. Leadership in a peacetime crisis also involves making the right calls on policy?but at bottom, it?s dependent on a subtle understanding of how to make people feel better so that they invest in the future....

It?s early yet and much can change, but the new president is showing signs of carrying himself in a more naturally confident way, with the right blend of traits. He?s bold enough to add a couple of zeroes to the conversation about spending, but humble enough to utter those three most unpresidential words: ?I screwed up.?

Obama?s confidence is the product of an unusual combination of good early parenting by his mother and grandmother and his own search for racial identity....

In this Alter-nate universe, the only thing we have to fear is ... lack of confidence in Obama.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 22, 2009 (boomark / email).