It's just that my bullshit meter doesn't go off as often with Obama.

[Writer]

Politicians, just like salesmen, advertisers, or anyone else trying to sell you something, aren't dealing in 100% truth. Why? Because they're trying to make a case for why their deal is the best deal. We tend to complain about the selling game constantly. Seriously - if we don't like salesmen, then we should simply get rid of any system that entails public choice. Otherwise, it's the reality we have to deal with.

Obama's a politician, but I trust him more than most.

I wish I could put my finger on it, but when he speaks, I don't get the feeling that he's trying to finesse me. When he says he's pissed about something, I believe there's a possibility that he's actually pissed. He seems to care more about being effective than having his ego proved correct. You can accuse me of being naive. Okay, go ahead. But it's just that my bullshit meter doesn't go off as often with Obama than even, say, Nancy Pelosi. Or any of the GOP.

Obama is a sober pragmatist. You're not going to see him put on a wig and dance for you just to make you smile, or make dogs jump through hoops to help you get through the day. If there's anything I suspect he DOESN'T want to do, I think blowing sunshine up our asses is one of them.

If we're in for the long haul during the Great Recession, and we are, he'll tell you that.

If he's not going to be able to accomplish a campaign promise, for the most part, he'll tell you that.

He doesn't care about solidifying his presidency. He said at the beginning of his presidency that if he doesn't fix the economy, there'd be a new president in 2012.

We can hammer away at the abstractions of politics - at the rhetorical games between the Dems and the GOP - analyzing our daily politics like the longest football game in our nation's history, but Obama isn't going to care. Politics are not as important to him as governance. And THAT is why he's in office. He's not after building a legacy a la Bill Clinton, but trying to fix problems.

And that IS something different about Obama versus other politicians. And that's why I tend to trust him more than other people in government.

[n2doc]

1. It's not the telling, it's the doing n/t

[MorningGlow]

2. I completely agree with you, Writer

(We may be in the minority on this here at DU, of course.) I also firmly believe that Obama means what he says and doesn't want to sugar-coat anything. I've also got the impression that he doesn't like to play stupid power-trip games in order to get what he needs--it's like he wants to operate completely above board and converse with other politicians like mature grownups, and that's to his detriment, unfortunately, because he's surrounded by a bunch of underhanded, Machiavellian poo-flingers, otherwise known as career politicians.

So now the question is, how is he going to achieve his goals, when everybody around him is interested in nothing but obstruction and corruption? Can he even find a way to do that? Maybe not. That remains to be seen.

[Cosmocat]

17. But, he is now getting hammered for it ...

The OP is spot on, I have a BS meter that blows to 100 every time an R opens his/her mouth, and I get various hits with guys like Chuck Schumer ...

BO is flat out a straight shooter ...

But, the media is killing him now for "being too lawyerly" or "too scholarly" ...

WTF, the idiot spewed innate BS every time his mouth opened and he was positively framed as a "Man, you gotta love a go from the gut type president" when he was just saying crape to say it ...

BO lays it out, does not make promises like most hack politicians which everyone SAYS they hate, and the media negative frames it ...

WTF ...

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[tblue]

9. Delete

[Arkana]

4. Me too. I voted for him because I believed that when he got in front

of a camera and said something, I would be able to give him the benefit of the doubt--something I wasn't ever, ever, EVER able to do with Bush.

It's nice to be able to trust the guy in the big chair again.

[Kahuna]

5. Exactly! As much as I liked Clinton, my BS meter got a workout from time

to time, though not nearly as much with bushco. Now, I'm sure that my meter will go off during the SOTU address. I'd be very surprised if it doesn't because that is when it usually went off under Clinton.

[tblue]

6. And that's what will carry him, people's trust. But I don't share it.

I am wary because I feel he's let us down. He makes a speech or a statement about "change" and then we read he's carrying on Bush policies time and time again. He days he's closed the revolving door on lobbyists, but turns out there are exceptions. He says he wants true healthcare reform, and then he tells Reid to bend over to make Joe Lieberman happy. Said he opposed mandates and now he's ready to sign them into law. Says we're closing Gitmo and come to find out we're still gonna hold certain detainees indefinitely without charges. Said he'd stop renditions, but they still happen, just we don't keep them rendered quite as long. I wish I was making this up.

Yeah yeah yeah, there are reasons for all of this. But the bottom line is, don't tell me X and turn around and do Y, over and over again. Otherwise, excuse me if my Bullshit Meter does go off when you talk to me.

But I am honestly glad Obama has supporters like you. My outrage frightens even me. If everybody felt like I do, we'd be a demoralized, depressed, and frustrated lot.

[HopeOverFear]

7. Amen. nm

[jonnyblitz]

8. the last time i listened to him was his "terra terra terra" speech

at West Point when he was channeling Bush and I haven't had any interest in listening to him since.

[jaxx]

10. Well said.

I trust him.

[renegade000]

11. I agree as well.

I just fear that what makes Obama appealing to me actually weakens him in the eyes of people who want to be spoon-fed a bunch of emotionally-charged buzzwords. Fortunately, given the polls conducted on the subject, I think a majority of the country likes his style.

[wildflower]

12. There was an article posted here a day or two ago

The article mentioned how, just after he was awarded the Nobel Prize, he went into a meeting with advisors. They knew not to congratulate him on the award because, they said, unlike other presidents, he mistrusts being flattered. He just wanted to get down to business.

It's often said he's cocky, and perhaps he is. But the cockiness is simply confidence and shouldn't be confused with having a huge ego. In fact a huge ego is usually a sign of the opposite.

So I generally agree with what you're saying.

ON EDIT: The story was from a Joe Klein article in Time. Snippets:

....On the morning he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Obama met with a nervous group of aides. The award might be a political problem, they said. It might be ridiculed. He hadn't achieved any of his foreign policy goals yet. "It is kind of crazy," Obama acknowledged with a laugh, "but that's not the real problem we're facing here. How do you accept the Nobel Peace Prize when you're the Commander in Chief of a military that is fighting two wars?"

The President's next meeting was about one of those wars — the one in Afghanistan — with his National Security Council in the Situation Room. Everyone stood as the President entered. "I was waiting for people to start applauding or someone to say, 'Congratulations, Mr. President,' or something like that," an aide recalls. "But no one said anything, and the President didn't say anything about the prize either. He just started in on the agenda...

...Unlike most politicians, Obama doesn't thrive on sycophancy; he mistrusts it. That's why no one in the Situation Room congratulated him on the prize. And he's not very good at faking the hail-fellow camaraderie that is part of American public life, either. He doesn't seem to enjoy the game of politics all that much. In his memoir of the 2008 presidential race, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says his candidate grew "increasingly sullen" on the road during the early months of the campaign. Communications director Robert Gibbs asked Obama if he was having any fun at all. No, Obama replied. Was there anything that could be done to make it more fun? Again, the answer was no. "He found most coverage of the race banal," Plouffe writes. "And there wasn't nearly enough time for his favorite part of the campaign — noodling over policy, or, as he called it, think time."

...

In such an atmosphere, the President has to convey a little heat too. He has to be as concerned with stagecraft, political appearances, feel-your-pain empathy as he is with substance. That seems like an effort for Obama. In his first meeting with aides on his Nobel morning, he skipped past the political question — How could they react to the perception that the prize was premature? — to the heart of the matter: What was the rationale for a war President to receive a peace prize?...

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955401-2,00.html#ixzz0dHWTUN3B

[Writer]

13. That's a very interesting article.

Thanks!

Edit to add: Although I do think that Klein's analysis - and his great need to develop a parallel between 1994 and 2010 - is off.

[GeorgeGist]

14. Better yet ...

invest in a new bullshit meter.

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. Partly because he takes great pains to speak equivocally.

One person's sober pragmatism is anothers bland equivocation.

[Irish_shark]

16. You said he's "not after building a legacy a la Bill Clinton"

But Obama's cabinet looks like Clinton's. He even hired his wife. Look at Geithner, Summers, etc.

And why do 87% of Democrats approve of the job Bill Clinton did? http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=902

[timeforpeace]

18. Is it broken? Did it come with a warranty?

[uponit7771]

19. Obama promise meter establishes your radar

[depakid]

20. The conflict averse often have passive/aggressive tendencies

runs with the territory.