In the course of an insightful piece on Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama, Shelby Steele makes a salient point about Senator Obama’s apparent and dysfunctional decision-making style. WSJ:

on the level of cultural and historical symbolism, an Obama presidency might nudge the culture forward a bit — presuming of course that he would be at least a competent president. (A less-than-competent black president would likely be a step backwards.) It would be a good thing were blacks to be more open to the power of individual responsibility. And it would surely help us all if whites were less cowed by the political correctness on black issues that protects their racial innocence at the expense of the very principles that made America great. We Americans are hungry for such a cultural shift. This, no doubt, is what Barack Obama means by “change.” He promises to reconfigure our exhausted cultural arrangement.

But here lies his essential contradiction: His campaign is more cultural than political. He sells himself more as a cultural breakthrough than as a candidate for office. To be a projection screen for the cultural aspirations of both blacks and whites one must be an invisible man politically. Real world politics, in their mundanity, interrupt cultural projections. And so Mr. Obama’s political invisibility — a charm that can only derive from a lack of deep political convictions — may well serve his cultural appeal, but it also makes him something of a political mess.

Already he has flip-flopped on campaign financing, wire-tapping, gun control, faith-based initiatives, and the terms of withdrawal from Iraq. Those enamored of his cultural potential may say these reversals are an indication of thoughtfulness, or even open-mindedness. But could it be that this is a man who trusted so much in his cultural appeal that the struggles of principle and conscience never seemed quite real to him? His flip-flops belie an almost existential callowness toward principle, as if the very idea of permanent truth is passé, a form of bad taste.

Perhaps Senator Obama has a clear guiding set of principles that form the basis for consistent decision making (other than the decision to try to get elected). If so, they are not yet evident in a man who can be “both far left and center right” to use Steele’s words. (It is of course of note, and probably useful for predicting behavior, that the Senator’s actual voting record suggests that, in practice, he is closer to the former than the latter.)

Rhetorically, Senator Obama often appears to try to split the difference between options he labels as “two false choices” (see video at 1:45). That sounds nice, professorial even. But there is a tremendous chasm between observing or critiquing the decisions of others, and actually having to make executive decisions. They are often wholly separate ways of looking at the world. We may think that, as President, Obama might want to lean left and split the difference in his decision-making, but as of now, we know very little of what that would mean in practice when choices — as they often do — present no room for nuance.

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