Encouraging point of view:
“very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves – Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson … Happy in the company of prominent intellectuals, & with a mind equal to theirs, Obama promises to spectacularly raise the IQ & the standard of debate inside the White House …
Obama brought to the election a clear-sighted grasp of the tragic aspect of US history. His most uplifting speeches were grounded in images of the shame of slavery, the national agony of the civil war & the intimate humiliations of poverty in America, & it was by reminding his audiences of the depths to which the country is prone to sink that he was able to summon them to hope. … somewhere out there, very smart people are thinking & talking in a serious conversation from which narrow ideologues have been rigorously excluded.
We’ve elected … someone who is empirical, cautious, conservative with a small “c”, yet unusually sure of his own judgment when he makes it, which is often slowly…”