Obama the Conservative?

So say a couple of interesting sources. One is a new book making waves in Washington this week, Game Change, by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. In Jacob Heilbrunn's review in Sunday's edition, President Obama is said to be described in just that manner by the authors.

In “Game Change,” Obama emerges as the most incisive, most disciplined and, in important ways, most conservative of all the contenders. He assembled a crack team that did not engage in the internecine warfare that afflicted his opponents. And his evidently spotless personal history helped insulate him from the buffetings his counterparts suffered as their tumultuous lives came under forensic scrutiny. Even the crisis of his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright faded against the image of the faithful, even uxorious, husband and devoted father of two young daughters.

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan has described Obama in similar terms in response to several speeches, most recently his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize.

And this is the critical distinction between Bush and Obama: Obama is far more conservative than his predecessor. He sees that the profound flaws in human nature affect us as well as them; that we "face the world as it is," not as we would like it to be; that the decision to go to war is a moral and a pragmatic one; that ends have to be balanced by a shrewd and sometimes cold-eyed assessment of means.

Previously, Sullivan used the same term to describe the President in a foreign policy speech.

This speech, to my mind, was a conservative one by a conservative president who seeks first and foremost to use existing institutions to address the new challenges of the moment, and then seeks pragmatic compromises, always open to future checks and balances, in those places where such institutions clearly need reform and adjustment. The speech does not shrink from clear positions but it always does so from a place of reason and authority as opposed to politics and power. It is a presidential speech - from a man who seeks to unite and lead this country forward, rather than someone who sees fear and division as a tool to be exploited.

Here, Sullivan makes an interesting distinction in response to criticism of Obama from a self-described liberal reader.

What strikes me about Obama is not that he is conservative or liberal, it is his policy liberalism with conservative temperament. It is his movement beyond these exhausted ideologies.

--Ballard Burgher