Getting Obama Right

This commenter at TNR nails it:

When Obama was elected president many wondered if he would live up to their expectations. But increasingly, it appears that they forgot to focus in turn on whether we would live up to his. In my view, Barack Obama is like no other politician that has come down the electoral pike---at least not of late. He is a pragmatist who manipulates those who are nothing of the sort into bargaining that leads not to the usual zero-sum game embraced by The True Believers, but to the more tentative win-win collaboration whereby everyone gets something but no one gets it all. Needless to say, those who are committed...or accustomed...to getting it all are flustered to say the least. Now it all comes down to a tug of war between those who demand the usual I Win/You Lose denouement and those who are willing to accept an I win something and you win something too. Needless to say the dogmatic religious and political fanatics have a lot to lose if Obama wins.

Which is why the neocons are so rattled. They don't do non-zero-sum.