Obama Is Not Naive About Power

The boy of six experienced this, the cold hard realities of power, in the flesh and life of a man to whom he'd turned as a mentor. The man of thirty-three wrote this passage.

Can anyone possibly believe that the man who lived that boyhood, and who wrote that passage, could be NAIVE about power?

Here's a boy learning lessons that, as he said, most Americans don't encounter. Living in a country whose soil is then still freshwith the blood of hundreds of thousands, and being mentored by a man who's been forced into the painful realization "that his life wasn't his own," the young Barack Obama takes in some profound lessons about the workings of power.

 We are safe in assuming that Obama -- --a man who later proved so excellent a student that he was elected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review-- learned well what he was taught. We are safe in assuming that power is something he understands at a deep level.

And progressives should take heart from one more piece of the picture: Obama learned about power by being not among the mighty who wield it but among the downtrodden who have been its victims.

This identification with those who need justice to replace raw power is shown in these passages. It's shown, too, in his choice to work as a community organizer in low income communities. And it's shown in the vision he presents now in those inspirational speeches.

That a man who understands power, and who sides with those victimized by unjust power, has chosen the inspiration of the people as his weapon of choice to carry into the arena of power should lead us to suspect not that he is naive but that he is wise.

Why wise? Because if the powers now ruling America are going to be overcome, it will be by harnessing the latent power of the people, by channeling the democratic force of a populace inspired by vision and the hope that Yes We Can!

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