I didn’t watch the Super Bowl last night, but apparently Barack Obama ran an ad. To me, the best line from the ad was “The world as it is, is not the world as it has to be.”
The realists in the world often use the state of reality as an excuse not to do anything. I think I tend to fall in this camp. I get annoyed with fuzzy thinking optimists who ignore details and just focus on what they want. (I was thinking of liberal social science types when I wrote this; but I realized the description is apt for Iraq War enthusiasts as well.)
We can’t ignore reality. You have to know where you are to get where you want to go. And, you have to know what’s possible. Obama strikes me as the kind of guy who can a) see the facts on the ground; b) see a desirable goal; and c) have an idea of how to get from point A to point B.
We’ll see if he gets a chance to demonstrate whether or not my perception is accurate.
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