Many of the election-season criticisms of President Barack Obama crossed the line from politics-as-usual to slanderous. Declarations that Obama was a “secret Muslim” and a socialist illustrated more than anything the willful ignorance, anti-intellectualism, and paranoia that the Right so often passes for political commentary in this country. However, one question raised by both sides of the aisle throughout Obama’s campaign was undeniably important and is now only beginning to be answered: What does Barack Obama stand for?
Press his most ardent supporters and they are unable to give you a straight, confident answer. This is fairly unusual for a successful presidential candidate. Reagan and H.W. Bush called for smaller government, a tighter fiscal policy, and a right-ward shift on social issues. Clinton promised to fix the ailing economy. George W. Bush first called for “compassionate conservatism”, combining fiscal conservatism with centrist, solutions-based education and immigration reforms. After 9/11 his administration became fixated on homeland security and a foreign policy that was in many ways regrettable, but nonetheless understandable.

Obama’s platform is less clear.  There is no doubt he’s for “hope” and “change,” which at the moment is well and good. His victory, however, had little to do with what he said he stood for. Much of Obama’s campaign dug its roots in America’s desire to replace an old generation of out-of-touch leaders with a newer, younger, and more energetic administration; tapped a general desire to kick out a party that had clearly overstayed its welcome. The general fervor resounds in Will.I.Am’s celebrity-filled video and Young Jeezy’s jaw-dropping cut, “My President is Black”. More auspiciously, Obama’s campaign was financed by a record number of contributions, many from small donors who usually would not involve themselves so intimately in the politics of presidential elections.

But now that the hype’s been hushed amidst an inspiring yet cautious inauguration speech, where is his administration actually headed? The media’s noted Obama’s penchant for hiring Clinton’s staff, but maybe we need to look farther into the past to put our finger on this administration’s pulse. Politically, Obama may have more in common with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Roosevelt, like Obama, entered the executive office relatively young (Roosevelt was 51, Obama is 47), and without a fully formed set of policies or a set political philosophy, but he believed it was possible for compromises to fulfill all major interest groups. We saw this most distinctly at the Yalta Conference, where Roosevelt served as a broker between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Obama’s desire to offer nonpartisan support to interest groups, as superficial as it may be, mirrors what liberal historian Richard Hofstadter described in Roosevelt as a feeling “that if a large number of people wanted something very badly, it was important they be given some measure of satisfaction.”

Hofstadter sees no problem in this goal, in and of itself, but his final evaluation of Roosevelt is more than a bit critical: “it would be fatal to rest content with his belief in personal benevolence, personal arrangements, the sufficiency of good intentions and month-to-month improvisation, without trying to achieve a more inclusive and systematic conception of what is happening in the world.” Reasonable people can only hope Obama is as uninterested as Roosevelt in creating a unified conception of the world to act upon. Theory should be left to the political scientists and historians, while politicians, particularly presidents, should try to act upon their well informed consciences.

Conservative writer William Safire is surely correct when he predicts that “Obama[‘s] philosophy will be regarded as…all over the lot,” but this is not troubling. Ideologues both left (Hofstadter) and right (former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney) hinder American policy when they demand it be rooted in a defined political philosophy.

A comparison between the ideologically flexible Roosevelt administration and the increasingly rigid George W. Bush administration makes clear Obama’s seemingly undefined philosophical convictions are by no means are by no means a weakness. Indeterminacy may however spell future disappointment for – and resulting attacks from – the dogmatic ideologues at the far reaches of either side of the aisle.

Obama’s pragmatism, like Roosevelt’s, will be defined by a liberal bent that is already begun to show itself. Within a week of his inauguration he’s kept his commitment to shutter the prisons at Guantanamo Bay. Yet even this decision — which is bound to draw flack from the Right if America suffers another terrorist attack — has been mitigated by Obama’s willingness to compromise on his economic stimulus package. The $250 billion in tax cuts included will quiet Republicans and provide a more immediate injection of economic relief than the not-so-shovel-ready public works projects that the stimulus will underwrite.

We can see the same centrism in his foreign policy maneuvers. Obama’s choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State ensures another four years of expansive American foreign policy and a liberal version of the hawkishness that pervaded the Bush White House. Still, while appointing officials who believe in the value of asserting American power abroad, Obama is already attempting conciliation with the Middle East by doing his first foreign interview with Arab television station Al-Arabiya.

While, Obama will eventually have to make some difficult choices and anger some in his enormous coalition, he’s off to a good start that reminds me of the legendary one hundred days of another President who entered office at the time of economic crisis. While I am probably one of the few who feel that Obama’s presidency will not be transformative in the way Roosevelt’s was (and I am not sure I would want it to be), I am confident that it will be successful, in that it will increase America’s prestige abroad, right the economic inequalities that have been growing for a generation, put the nation back on a path to prosperity, and revive the American spirit of fair play. As FDR said in his first inaugural address, “Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for.”