The New Yorker

Ryan Lizza has written a smart, revealing and encouraging profile of Barack Obama in the latest New Yorker (yes, that New Yorker) -- it is definitely worth reading, especially if you're wondering whether Obama can get the job done.

Lizza tells stories from Obama's experiences in Chicago politics, and summarizes his observations in a paragraph excerpted here below:

Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.

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