I Miss Barack Obama

This feels like an attack piece on Sanders in disguise.

I have incredible admiration for Barack Obama. His book, "The Audacity of Hope" was logical and articulated the positions of his opponents better than his opponents were expressing those opinions themselves. He is a brilliant politician who embodies the Confucian principle of leading by example, and a man who really appreciates science and technology. I especially enjoyed his description of seeing network traffic on the World Wide Web:

The image was mesmerizing, more organic than mechanical, as if I were glimpsing the early stages of some accelerating evolutionary process, in which all the boundaries between men--nationality, race, religion, wealth--were rendered invisible and irrelevant, so that the physicist in Cambridge, the bond trader in Tokyo, the student in a remote Indian village, and the manager of a Mexico City department store were drawn into a single constant, thrumming conversation, time and space giving way to a world spun entirely of light. [1]

I love that one of his first initiatives in office was to put so many government resources online. I also loved his rational perspective of religion, and that he respects spirituality, but made it clear that we can't govern on religion alone. That everyone must find empirical justifications for their policy proposals:

We all know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham is ordered by God to offer up his only son, and without argument, he takes Isaac to the mountaintop, binds him to an altar, and raises his knife, prepared to act as God has commanded. Of course, in the end God sends down an angel to intercede at the very last minute, and Abraham passes God's test of devotion.

But it's fair to say that if any of us leaving this church saw Abraham on a roof of a building raising his knife, we would, at the very least, call the police and expect the Department of Children and Family Services to take Isaac away from Abraham. We would do so because we do not hear what Abraham hears, do not see what Abraham sees, true as those experiences may be. So the best we can do is act in accordance with those things that we all see, and that we all hear, be it common laws or basic reason.[2]

I appreciate Brooks' commentary, and share his disappointment with all of the candidates running for president. No matter who gets elected, it's going to feel like a step back to me. Obama has played the long-game, and I think history will remember him positively.

[1] http://mxplx.com/reference/28/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOwzy-vKaFI