Ryan Lizza, The New Republic: The Agitator, Obama's Unlikely Political Education

Closing paragraphs...

The way that Obama and his team have responded to the opening skirmishes of the presidential race has also been telling. Every time Obama has been challenged this year, his campaign has responded with ferocity. When Fox News falsely reported that Obama attended a madrassa in Indonesia, his aides not only went into war-room mode, beating back the story--not that difficult, considering it was obviously untrue--but Robert Gibbs, Obama's communications director, also told Fox political reporter Carl Cameron that he wouldn't be allowed to travel on Obama's plane. What is Fox going to do to us, Gibbs asked Cameron, report that Obama attended a radical Islamic school? Oh, wait, you already did that!

When Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Obama's Iraq plan would embolden Al Qaeda, Obama delivered a rehearsed line to a room full of reporters about how Howard should send more Aussies to Iraq if he cares so much about the situation there. And, most famously, when the Clinton campaign called on Obama to distance himself from Geffen, his campaign shot back by referencing the Clintons' Lincoln Bedroom fund-raising scandal.

In our last conversation, a few days after the Geffen episode, I asked Obama if his reputation for purity is a little overblown. He chuckled. "I wouldn't be a U.S. senator or out of Chicago or a presidential candidate from Illinois if I didn't have some sense of the world as it actually works," he said. "When I arrived in Chicago at the age of twenty-four, I didn't know a single person in Chicago, and I know an awful lot of folks now. And so, obviously, some of that has to do with me being pretty clear-eyed about power."

But being clear-eyed about power also means understanding its limits.

"What I am constantly trying to do," he added, "is balance a hard head with a big heart."

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