Barack Obama has not flip-flopped or betrayed his lefty fans. You need to understand: He's a "visionary minimalist."

Cass R. Sunstein offers up a useful term — so that everyone can always understand everything about Barack Obama:

Of course Obama is a progressive.... But, by nature, he is also an independent thinker, and he listens to all sides. One of his most distinctive features is that he is a minimalist, not in the sense that he always favors small steps (he doesn't), but because he prefers solutions that can be accepted by people with a wide variety of theoretical inclinations.

When he offers visionary approaches, he does so as a visionary minimalist -- that is, as someone who attempts to accommodate, rather than to repudiate, the defining beliefs of most Americans. His reluctance to challenge people's deepest commitments might turn out to be what makes ambitious plans possible--notwithstanding the hopes of the far left and the cartoons of the far right.

He is infinitely complex, people. It's you that need to get up to speed. Readjust. Visionary minimalism makes everything right.

And, no, it's not a new round of triangulation. Don't pin that on the new man:

Just as he resists ideological templates, Obama does not believe in "triangulation"; his skepticism about conventional ideological categories is principled, not strategic.

(Did that hurt, Bill?)

Obama does not follow old-line political orthodoxies. Above all, Obama's form of pragmatism is heavily empirical; he wants to know what will work.

That can't be wrong.

[I]n his empiricism, his curiosity, his insistence on nuance, and his lack of dogmatism, Obama is indeed a sort of anti-Bush--and perhaps the best kind. If the Bush administration has often operated on the basis of the president's "instinct," we should expect to see, from Obama, a rigorously evidence-based government....

The larger point is that Obama's departures from left-wing orthodoxy should not be understood as a betrayal of his own beliefs, or as a kind of "tacking to the center." Instead, they reflect something altogether different: an independence of mind, and a rejection of doctrinal filters, that we do not often see in candidates for public office.

If I could know that's all true, I would vote for Obama. But it could just as well be a guise, a cover, to get me to fall for something I'm not going to want at all. After you do all that listening and evidence-collecting and cogitating, you still have to make the call. It can't be pure science. The instincts will tip the answers one way or the other. But Cass Sunstein insists that there's a rejection of doctrinal filters. I don't know that it is possible to think without something like a "doctrinal filter." But maybe it's possible that Obama does -- or at least comes closer to unfiltered thinking than anyone else is likely to do.

ADDED: This isn't the first time Sunstein has expatiated on Obama's "visionary minimalism" in TNR. Here's his piece from last January.

"Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn't."

Andrew Sullivan has this elaborate generational analysis:

One difference between Obama and Clinton does not seem to me to have been stressed enough. They are of different Democratic generations. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn't.

Realizing that I am from Clinton's generation, and Sullivan is from Obama's, I am instantly skeptical. Traumatized? He sees the older "generation" as suffering from a mental disorder?

I put "generation" in quotes because I think a 20-year span is needed for a generation. Calling a 10-year span a "generation" exaggerates for dramatic effect, but it does express something of the emotional distance felt (or sought). I've always felt distant from the era inhabited by my sister, who, like Hillary, is four years older than I am. Why not call that a "generation"? Then I could extricate myself from that post-traumatic stress disorder that plagues Clinton.

Back to Sullivan:

Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation.

Do we know what she "really believes"? And does she really believe something? Even if we assume she has liberal instincts, why can't she also believe that it is good to work through a process of accommodating those first thoughts to the world she encounters? I give a politician credit for pragmatism -- when it is done well. Why is "belief" so wonderful? Ideologues make terrible mistakes. Sullivan doesn't appreciate George Bush's commitment to his beliefs, so why is ideological purity suddenly so valuable?

She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in thier [sic] defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ah! The diagnosis. I feel averse to her, so I detect illness in her.

Obama is different. He wasn't mugged by the 1980s and 1990s as Clinton was.

Obama was 17 in 1980. Nothing has a greater impact on you than the way things are when you are 17. (I was 17 in 1968.) You could say that Vietnam and Nixon didn't affect him, but he was a young man in the 1980s and 1990s. That era must have affected him deeply. Did it not affect his age-mate Sullivan?

[Obama] doesn't carry within him the liberal self-hatred and self-doubt that Clinton does. The traumatized Democrats fear the majority of Americans are bigoted, know-nothing, racist rubes from whom they need to conceal their true feelings and views. The non-traumatized Democrats are able to say what they think, make their case to potential supporters and act, well, like Republicans acted in the 1980s and 1990s.

There may well be those two types of Democrats, but you haven't convinced me that they slot into two generations or that one type is healthy and the other diseased -- a theory that deserves to be called ageist. Nor am I convinced that it is unrealistic fear that motivates some liberals politicians to tone down their views in order to make themselves more appealing to voters.

By the same token, I don't believe that Obama's positions are pure expressions of true belief. He has to have thought through how to make himself appealing to voters. If he seems to be more idealistic, it may be that he's figured out that this stance works for him. Obviously, it does.

Since it's a good, pragmatic choice, there's no way to conclude he seems idealistic and proud of his liberalism because he's unafraid and untainted by the diseased thoughts of those a few years older than he is. How do you know he's not fearful of seeming less purely optimistic? One could just as well say that he's learned his lessons from the 80s and 90s. Reagan taught him the great value of getting people to think that you embody optimism. Maybe he avoids seeming to calculate and triangulate in order to distance himself from Bill Clinton (and Hillary).

The choice between Clinton and Obama is the choice between a defensive crouch and a confident engagement. It is the choice between someone who lost their beliefs in a welter of fear; and someone who has faith that his worldview can persuade a majority.

In my view, the call is not a close one.

Sullivan effuses. He loves Obama and feels aversion to Clinton. So do many others. This isn't an argument that Obama would make a better President than Clinton, but it's not a mere outburst of emotion either. He's saying that Obama will make a better candidate than Clinton, because he will -- by his faith -- inspire belief. That sounds rather dangerous, evocative of the worst things that can happen in politics. We need analysis and reason too, and I think Obama can only go so far exciting people with "the audacity of hope." The debate the other night showed how he can fall short, going for the hopeful, inspiring idea when Clinton comes forward with the more seasoned, mature, realistic analysis.

And which approach, in fact, betrays more fear that Americans are "know-nothing" "rubes"? I think the simplistic talk of hope, playing on the emotions of the listener, shows less respect for the intelligence and sophistication of the voters than a more complex, realistic presentation of the issues.

But in 2004, the Democrats lost with their dull, nuanced character, and the Republicans won with simplistic, emotional hope. Sullivan ought to consider whether -- if Hillary was "mugged by the 1980s and 1990s," Obama was mugged by the 00s.

Hillary's strange way of opposing the South Carolina flag.

Speaking yesterday:

"I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every single day"...

Huh? That would be an argument against all state flags!

It seems she's trying so hard to say just the right thing and please everyone that she ends up saying something weird.

IN THE COMMENTS: George thinks Clinton's triangulation is brilliant:

I'm a Southerner, and Sen. Clinton's approach to this issue is the first I've seen by a non-Southern politician that will actually appeal to the tender egos of middle-aged Southern men.

Sen. Clinton's approach is extremely clever. In fact, it is brilliant. It appeals directly to the patriotism of Southerners in time of war by asking them to put the present and future needs of the country ahead of what's long past.

Time on Hillary.

Time has a huge article on Hillary Clinton and the hot news that she wants to be President. I thought this paragraph was interesting:

[S]he is not as insulated as she once was on the left, which is far angrier than it used to be. Some liberals say they will not forgive her support for the Iraq invasion or, even worse, her refusal to recant that vote. When Hillary addressed the liberal group Campaign for America's Future in June, she was booed. And everyone there knew whom Kerry meant when he said, at the same conference, "It's not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details. It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake." Hillary of late has made a point of stepping up her criticism of the Bush Administration, to the point of calling for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And in a neat bit of Clintonian triangulation, she distanced herself from pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman even as her husband campaigned for him. But the hard truth is, she doesn't have much wiggle room. National security is the toughest test for a Democrat, particularly for a woman and especially for a woman so associated with feminine causes like child care and education. Her chief strategist has a grim assessment of what Hillary is up against on that front. The country may be ready for a woman President, Bill has privately told friends, but the first one to make it is more likely to be a Republican in the Margaret Thatcher mold.

Or one that Hillary could have been if she hadn't tried to shake off the hawkish image she'd been working on most of the time she's been in the Senate.

And check out how much of the article is about Bill Clinton. His name is mentioned more than 25 times! When Hillary runs, we'll be endlessly talking about Bill, comparing her to Bill, wondering what Bill thinks of her, how much Bill would sort of be President again, etc.

The mystery of a TimesSelect blog... and whether Hillary should run.

"Link to this" it says at the bottom of a post by "The Opinionator" by Chris Suellentrop. It looks like a blog, but it's in TimesSelect. I just don't understand the concept. Link so some small fraction of your readers can go there? Or did the link function to pierce the wall, allowing me to let my readers see the thing? Let me know if by chance that link worked some magic, but I'm going to talk about the post anyway. It's titled "Hillary, Don't Run."

In a bitterly divided and partisan nation, is there anything conservatives and liberals can agree on? Yes: Hillary Clinton, please don’t run for president. Lone Star liberal Molly Ivins kicked off a wave of anti-Hillary commentary with a column last week that began, “I’d like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.”

Sen. Clinton’s primary shortcoming? Ivins believes she isn’t liberal enough: “Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.”...

Conservatives are delighted about liberals’ newfound anti-Hillary animus. National Review’s Jonah Goldberg attributes the sentiment to Sen. Clinton’s recent moves to the right. “To be honest, I never understood what they saw in her in the first place,” he wrote in his weekly Los Angeles Times column. “[T]here’s something oddly satisfying in the possibility that Clinton being herself is politically disastrous. And, if she’s really just playing one more role according to some classically Clintonian political triangulation, there’s something equally satisfying to the prospect that even her fans aren’t falling for it anymore.”

Oh, wait, Suellentrop didn't take a position anyway. He's really only collecting links -- to Ivins and Goldberg and also to Arianna Huffington and Josh Marshall. I guess I should just copy his links and talk about the same subject myself. If so, should I put a "via Suellentrop" link? It's kind of screwy to do that if it doesn't get people to the post but just gives them a little experience of exclusion. And the main reason you do a "via" link is to send a fellow blogger some traffic. How can I be guilty of denying a blog something it's already denying itself?

A TimesSelect blog doesn't function in the blogosphere, but maybe that makes some sense for TimesSelect folks. They aren't really ready to read blogs, and it's nice to have a trusted voice to categorize and summarize what's being said by various commentators on the web, some of whom might actually even be bloggers. Look, I found Josh Marshall and Arianna Huffington for you!

Anyway, what do I think of these voices on the left and the right who are saying Hillary shouldn't run? Is the opinion trustworthy because it's on both sides? Not at all!

Those on the left don't like her -- as Suellentrop acknowledges -- because she's not far enough to the left. They ought to know that an excessively left candidate is doomed, but they don't want to face that horrible reality. These people were against Bill Clinton too, back before he actually did that thing that Democrats seem almost never to be able to do, win a presidential election. On the right, you've got folks who've loathed Hillary all along and who, of course, don't want the Democrats to win an election.

So how should Hillary hear these voices on the left and right who don't want her to run? As strong encouragement! But she's got to find a way to keep her hawkish credentials, or we'll be stuck once again with a Democratic candiate with an incomprehensible attitude toward national security who will push those of us who vote almost entirely on that ground to go with the Republican again.

But maybe it's already too late for Clinton. She's already lost too much credibility catering to the Ivins crowd. Being the front runner, she's got them at her all the time, making demands -- demands that she sacrifice all her potential to win in the end. Poor Hillary! If she finds a way through this ordeal, maybe she is good enough to be President.