Pluralism entails engaging a plurality of opinions to shape one’s thinking on a complex issue. What stands out as one of Barack Obama’s great assets thus far is his interest in hearing multiple perspectives on an issue.
One story I read about Obama as a freshman senator stood out to me, because of the many “low key” habits he cultivated. His MO seemed simple: be the best possible Senator he could be. But what made him a difference-maker was very likely habits like this:
Listening, staff members said, also became Obama’s primary strength as a decision maker. When an issue confounded him, he assembled what he called a “brainstorm group” to mull it over. He sometimes retreated to his office for hours at a time to call experts.
That’s pluralism. We see this also in the observation of Denis McDonough, a senior Obama foreign policy adviser quoted in the NYT article A Handpicked Obama Team for a Shift in Foreign Policy:
“This is not an experiment, but a pragmatic solution to a long-acknowledged problem,” he said. “During the campaign the then-senator invested a lot of time reaching out to retired military and also younger officers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan to draw on lessons learned. There wasn’t a meeting that didn’t include a discussion of the need to strengthen and integrate the other tools of national power to succeed against unconventional threats. It is critical to a long-term successful and sustainable national security strategy in the 21st century.”
He seems to be making cabinet selections with an eye towards listeners with flexible minds, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates. I especially like this insight about Gates, which suggests he is more motivated by effective service than power preservation:
Mr. Gates acknowledged a year ago, during the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University, that for many in the Pentagon it was “blasphemy” for “a sitting secretary of defense to travel halfway across the country to make a pitch to increase the budget of other agencies.”
These are just indicators–but promising ones, to be sure–that the Obama administration will aim to be both representative of the broader populous and open to the best thinking on a given issue. With the difficult and high calling of serving as President of the United States, being an effective listener will be critical to navigating the many known and unknown difficulties ahead in order to best serve the American people.
I think this is right on and, while I haven’t seen much written about it, I suspect part of it is in Obama’s Hawaiian experiences. There is no racial majority in Hawaii and being multi-racial is fairly common there and so it is no wonder that race has been a different experience for our President-Elect. It is also, more than anywhere else in the US that I have spent time, a place where who one is is a totally separate from how one earns a living. It makes dreaming big and taking professional risks a lot easier when one is secure that one’s core will be the same no matter the outcome.