Obama’s True Passion: Campaigning for Office

Barely had Barack Obama settled into his job as a United States Senator in 2005 than he began setting his sights on the White House.  He spent the second half of his Senate tenure running for the presidency.

He didn’t seem all that engaged in his legislative duties.  And now he doesn’t seem all that engaged in his executive ones.  He yielded to his fellow partisans in Congress to draft the key legislation of his term and preferred giving speeches to offering solutions.  Where his predecessor titled his memoir Decision Points, he could call his Decision Punts.

Responding to Drew Westen New York Times essay where that psychology professor acknowledged Obama’s absence of accomplishment prior to his election to the White House, John Hinderaker contends that

. . . there is only one context in which Obama has ever displayed passion–that is, when he was running for political office. When Democrats say, Where is the Obama we voted for and thought we knew? they are referring to Obama the candidate. It is not hard to see why Obama is passionate about his political campaigns, when he is seemingly so indifferent to almost everything else: they are about him.

Note that when he traveled to Europe in the midst of his bid for the White House in the summer of 2008, he did what no previous major party had done, headlined a “campaign rally” on foreign soil.

Seems Barack Obama would rather run for president than be president.