The Beef

Reacting this morning to Leon Wieseltier's Obama-skeptical essay, Andrew remarked:

This kind of skepticism is entirely a good thing, I'd say. The one unfair critique is that Obama lacks policy substance. His campaign is laden with policy substance. Oodles of it. More, I wager, than Leon's interest would ever bear.

This is very true. I hear this complaint a lot, and while I think it's very fair to say that Obama's fans sometimes make a policy-free case on his behalf, it's just not true that there's no policy substance to the campaign. From the small-bore (here'ss a safe drinking water plan) to the giant (here's a comprehensive global warming plan) he's chock full o' policies. That's just how Democratic campaigns work -- the left-of-center universe if full of busy bee think tankers who are happy to write up a plan about anything ready to fit just about any specification. Neither the Obama campaign nor the Clinton campaign talk in much detail about policy, because I think ordinary people mostly don't care, but also because I don't think they seriously disagree about very much of this.