Obama: The Unconventional Conventional

Change, Change, Change.
We hear it, we see it, we are supposed to feel it.
He is different: Obviously, he looks different than any other man who has been president.
He is the voice of a new generation: At age 46, he is on the younger side of those who get this far in the primary process.
He is a "once in a lifetime candidate": So says Governor Bill Richardson whose own once in a lifetime campaign died a month ago.

So what is so different, engaging, and unconventional about Barack Obama. Besides the obvious, not much.

He loves campaign money: Oh, he doesn't take cash from PACs. Maybe not, but he sure knows how to use the internet to fund his effort. Obama is not a fool. He knows money is the grease that runs a campaign.
He will take money from anyone: Yes, even a bum like Chicago money man, Tony Rezko.
He is not a Don Quixote: Obama has surrounded himself with veteran pollsters and politicos (many Clinton refugees). He is not out on a one man mission to nowhere.
He hedges on issues: He was against the war. He is against the war. Yet he always has voted to fund the war.
He hedges on more issues: He is from inner city Chicago and should know the danger of handguns; yet his campaign steers clear of this politically tough but essential issue.
He has a big ego: Anyone running for president must think extraordinarily high about him or herself. Just a little more than twenty years ago he was a humble organizer in Chicago. Since then he became president of the Harvard Law Review, a high profile state senator, lost an ill conceived run for Congress, and now barely a few years into his U.S. Senate career, he is the leading Democratic candidate for the most important position in the world.

Obama is a gifted person. He is intelligent, photogenic, an incredible orator, and a visionary. But he is also a politician. He has used his advantages and disadvantages to his personal gain this campaign season. He is poised to win. But do not expect the world to change when and if he becomes president. Based on his career and his candidacy, he will guide the country on a slight leftward tilt always looking to stay close to the middle as any president would do who wants to win a second term. Funny, the mixed race middle aged senator from Illinois, is really not that much different from that female candidate from New York.