Inside Obama.(on the right)(Barack Obama)

NEW YORK, JANUARY 11

AT 3:00 A.M. the night after Iowa, a tough-minded friend e-mailed me (he didn't want to wake me at 3, merely to record what was going through his mind after the tumultuous victory). "I must say," he wrote, "I liked Barack a lot less after his flagrantly ranty speech about how the real evil in America is a) the drug companies and b) the oil companies. That is, the industries that keep us a) alive and b) warm."

There is a lot of what we used to write off as "reductionism" in that sentence. But there is also that wholesome impulse to search for a more comprehensive reading of Barack Obama.

Everybody knows Obama has gone further than merely to denounce oil and drug profits. What is it, concretely, that he wants?

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One needs to disqualify a few of the candidate's postures, and this applies also to other candidates, of both parties. Nobody, at this stage, is going to favor aggressive military action. The politicians therefore make it clear that such appropriations as they support for the military are for beefing up our self-defense. Kindly do not muddy this proposition by interjecting that sometimes, self-defense is best done by preemptive military initiatives.

So Obama will struggle for peace and a resilient military. On this point, he will disagree only retroactively in the matter of Iraq. So, in understanding Obama, one reaches for concrete policy differences, and here is one that attracts attention: "I simply believe that those of us who have benefited most from this new economy can best afford to shoulder the obligations of ensuring that every American child has a chance for that same success."