"I strongly believe in a free-market system," he told reporters in London, "and...in America, at least, people don't resent the rich; they want to be rich. And that's good." The market, he declared, "is the most effective mechanism for creating wealth...that history has ever known."

Unfortunately, it's no slouch at destroying wealth, either. Sometimes "it goes off the rail," he noted, and without some "thoughtful frameworks to channel the creative energy of the market...it can end up in a very bad place." Abroad and at home, Obama's pleas for "commonsense" economic reform sound almost...]]> Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0600 from the February 11, 2009 edition

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Claremont, Calif. - Despite all his efforts to transcend partisanship, President Barack Obama is demonstrably a liberal. But what kind of liberal is he? And what does his brand of liberalism augur for America?

Even in the Democratic primaries, he shunned the "liberal" label. (Hillary Clinton did, too, preferring to be called a progressive.) Mr. Obama's favorite tack was to assail the whole argument between left and right as cynical and outdated. In its place he offered a pragmatic, hopeful, allegedly nonideological way forward.

On...]]> Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Eager to find himself by finding a community to which he could belong, he was struck, nonetheless, by the flaws or limits of every race, culture, and country he encountered. Unlike other intelligent human beings who have made the same discovery, Obama did not lower his expectations but decided that, just as he could and did choose to refashion his own identity, communities could do the same, with a little help. He spent three years as a community organizer in Chicago, but was disillusioned with the results. Eventually he found in politics, and especially in political oratory, the path he was seeking: the way to redeem the sins of an existing community by leading it to a vision of its...]]>