Fox and Lion

This David "Applebee's Salad Bar" Brooks argument (basically, that Obama's a ruthless political operator) is presumably supposed to make me feel worse about Obama, but it actually makes me feel quite a bit better once Noam Scheiber chimes in:

The key with Obama is to distinguish between his inside game (i.e., mechanical, procedural, largely behind-the-scenes maneuvering) and his outside game (i.e., the policies/positions/stands he takes on the public stage). Obama has been as ruthless as anyone at playing the inside game, but less cynical than most when it comes to the outside game.

This is exactly what I want from a presidential candidate: someone who is going to be steadfast in terms of policy but Machiavellian when it comes to tactics and strategy. Look, politics is a rough game. There's that great high-mindedness one finds in some politicians, which is admirable, but which in recent times has tended to come hand-in-hand with losing elections. The Republicans have basically given up on policy (what issues, aside from the war, is John McCain running on again?) and have resorted to nothing but guilt-by-association, smearing, and scaring the living shit out of people to win. We need a candidate who can match wits and keep the GOP machine off balance, and based off of the GOP's inept response to Obama's declination to take public financing yesterday, it looks like we Democrats finally found our man.