A vie of Obama.

At first glance, Richard Lowry seems to have Barack Obama figured out ("The Great Audacious Hope," March 5). Mr. Lowry rightly notes the centrality of Obama's vague yet comfortable message of hopefulness. He also properly calls Obama to task for his lack of detail and concrete policy positions, and the underlying arrogance in Obama's message that is perceived by those who do not emotionally or intuitively already accept what Obama is offering. However, when Mr. Lowry suggests that Obama is miscalculating the "very stuff of politics" and that the general voters will tire of Obama's repackaged, yet empty, Oprah-style liberalism, I think it is Mr. Lowry who underestimates Obama and not Obama who underestimates our political culture.

When I first heard Obama's smooth, folksy brand of redistributionist liberalism as his law-school classmate, I knew he was someone who could make the most radical policy prescription seem reasonable. (And at Harvard Law School they were sure radical.) Today, his pleasant, reasonable, comfortable, and non-threatening style transcends the "conflict and disagreement" that makes up ordinary politics. Obama is not ordinary, and he speaks emotionally and intuitively to a much larger group of people than Mr. Lowry suspects, inducing their acceptance and trust without the need to be specific.

What Mr. Lowry concludes is a weakness is actually a strength, as Obama's audaciously vague message of hope speaks to the frustration and cynicism of today's voters, many of whom will all too easily embrace him without really knowing or caring what he intends to do with the power he seeks.

William Ryan 

Chicago, Ill.