Obama Talks To His Chicago Staff

Normally I figure that readers who come here visit the big political blogs and see more or less the same stuff I do, if not more. But in case, just in case you didn't see this YouTube footage of Obama talking to the staffers at his Chicago headquarters after winning the Democratic nomination, it's worth repeating here.

I'm putting it up for viewing (despite being 13 minutes long) because I know that leaders matter more than systems. What gets focused on, what gets followed up on, what gets decided on and what gets done are the province of leadership, and those are all inseparable functions of the beliefs, the prejudices, and the desires of a real person. It goes right down to how their neurons fired, and how their mothers held them when they were a child.

The video provides a different view into a campaign and a politician, one from the backside. It looks soft-spoken, calm, determined, powerful, respectful, and purposeful. Whether Barack Obama is genuine or not is for you to decide, but he's displaying exceptional leadership in the clip, laying out what he expects in the coming months both from the Republicans and from his own people. You get to see why, maybe, things have worked out the way they have so far. Let's hope it's a little taste of better things to come.