Obama's American Idea
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By ROGER COHEN
Published: December 10, 2007
I asked Senator Barack Obama if he's tough enough for a dangerous world. Sometimes the Democratic candidate treads so carefully, and looks so vulnerable to a gust of wind, that the question of whether his legal mind can get lethal arises.

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Roger Cohen

Go to Columnist Page » Blog: Passages "Yes, I'm tough enough," he responded during a half-hour conversation. "What I've always found is people who talk about how tough they are aren't the tough ones. I'm less interested in beating my chest and rattling my saber and more in making decisions that build a safer and more secure world."

Obama, speaking less than a month before the Iowa caucus on Jan. 3, continued: "We can and should lead the world, but we have to apply wisdom and judgment. Part of our capacity to lead is linked to our capacity to show restraint."

That was striking: an enduring belief in U.S. leadership coupled with a commitment to, as he also put it, acting "with a sense of humility." Skepticism about the American idea and American global stewardship has grown fast during the Bush years.

..(T)his has led some to conclude that the world would be better off if America slunk home. As Joyce Carol Oates wrote in The Atlantic: "How heartily sick the world has grown, in the first seven years of the 21st century, of the American idea!" It has become a "cruel joke."

If a global survey were taken, that might prove to be a minority opinion, but I doubt it.

Still, Obama stands by the universality of the American proposition: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness under a constitutional government of limited powers. "I believe in American exceptionalism," he told me, but not one based on "our military prowess or our economic dominance."

Rather, he insisted, "our exceptionalism must be based on our Constitution, our principles, our values and our ideals. We are at our best when we are speaking in a voice that captures the aspirations of people across the globe."

.."Nowhere in American history has the gulf between ideals and sordid practice been greater than on questions of race. It is precisely the gulf between high principle — not least habeas corpus — and unprincipled actions that has done the most damage to America's image in recent years. Once again, Obama appears to bridge and reconcile.

"We can't entirely remake the world," he told me. "What we can do is lead by example."

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Put him in and let him roll.



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