How Long? Not Long!

I sat down to write a completely different post. As I was writing I had a recording of a key portion of President Obama's press conference playing in a different tab. Listening to his presser, I had to delete my whole post and start over because what I was writing was not meshing with what he was saying.

I can't help but again think back to a Q&A session I was at with State Senator Obama and how that lone event has shaped my opinion of him, his ideology and his politics. I've written before that it was then I realized he wasn't a person willing to be labeled any other way than by his actions.

Listening to President Obama cast aside liberal and progressive ideals in order to compromise is really my strongest opinion of him and it correlates well with everything I've known to believe about him.  I've said numerous times that I have never viewed Barack Obama as all that liberal.  If anything he was a master at cutting that thin middle line.  All of that has been blurred by countless hours of Fox News and hate radio painting him as the most liberal person to ever walk the earth. But in reality, his pragmatism has always been more moderate than he's given credit for.  I know because I was there.

It shows today in his press conference.  It shows today in his compromise with the GOP to extend all the Bush tax cuts for two more years.  And it shows in his presidency to do something rather than nothing at all even at the expense of what many may consider his strongest supporters.

Looking back to 2004 when I got to know the person behind Barack Obama, I see that person as clear as ever at today's press conference.  It's refreshing to me to see Obama the realist is still there and being leader of the free world hasn't caused him to lose sight of how far we've come and how long we have yet to travel.  How long? Not long.