The [US] presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country. The person with the fewest wounds usually does best in the White House, and is best for the country.

David Brooks’ article on Obama vs. Clinton starts out supporting Clinton as the most viable winner in a competition between the two… if the race is for the Senate!

Then he dissects the vicissitudes of the Presidency of the Big, Fat ol’ US of A. And he doesn’t mince words. He uses the above acerbic language to describe the nature of the US presidency.

Then he outlines the particular strengths of Barack Obama to fill those HUGE shoes. Perhaps Oprah Winfrey is thinking along the same lines.

Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. […]

But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. […] In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual. (emphasis mine)

Well put, Mr. Brooks. Are you by chance considering running for Vice-President?

And, above all, could this analysis of character be applied to each of us in our search for balance and meaning?