Concerns about Obama beginning to arise

I’m not one for links posts, but between the flu and this other crud, I have very little energy for thought, and the articles that I thought I might comment on are piling up. So, thematic links post on the Obama worries and caveats that are starting to percolate. (Which doesn’t mean, btw, that he’s a bad guy or unworthy to be president; it just means he’s human. In his domestic life, of course, his wife has never let us forget that. As a politician, though, his essential appeal has been the image that he’s better than everyone else, that he can lead us into a new political age, and all that; which makes relatively small black marks look much worse than they would for everyone else, because a large part of his campaign has been that he doesn’t have any.) The majority of these I found through RealClearPolitics.

Sen. Obama: all hat, no cattle?

Obama the Messiah of Generation Narcissism (Kathleen Parker)

Obama Lacks Reagan’s Audacity (Blake Dvorak): To wit, where Reagan won by proudly raising the conservative banner his party scorned and carrying it all the way to the White House (“Reagan’s response to the charge of being a conservative was, Yes, I am. And here’s why you should be, too'”), Sen. Obama has refused to do that for liberalism, despite being more liberal than Reagan was conservative.

Would President Obama really help our image abroad?

Certainly that’s one of the cases he’s making for himself, that he would restore America’s international popularity (something Sen. Clinton is also saying she would do). Would his pledged actions in fact accomplish that? Maybe not.

“A senior Latin American diplomat says, ‘We might find ourselves nostalgic for Bush, who is brave on trade.'” This from Fareed Zakaria, one of those observers who should always be taken seriously. This one applies to both Democratic contenders, of course.

Obama’s First 100 Days (Michael Gerson)

The Myth of America’s Unpopularity (Michael Gerson): The fact is, as the Pew report shows, we really aren’t that unpopular in most of the world. (As long as we don’t send troops, anyway.) I can attest to this, at least for some countries, and I know others who would say the same about other parts of the world.

Is Sen. Obama just another Chicago pol?

I don’t know, and I hope the answer is “no,” but I suspect we’ll know more than we want to before all’s said and done.

Barack Obama and Me (Todd Spivak): The brief memoirs of a journalist who covered Sen. Obama during his days in the Illinois State Senate.

Beyond that, go here if you want to dive into the Rezko story. I had thought Sen. Obama a Democrat I could respect, even if he’s far too liberal to vote for; I hope I wasn’t wrong.

And . . . can he handle the scrutiny?

Folks in the media are starting to wonder.