What Does Barack Obama Want Us to Choose?

Barack Obama speaks eloquently and draws large, passionate crowds. I want to believe that he should be the next president. For some reason I just can't.

Fouad Ajami, professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, has helped me understand why I feel this way. He wrote a Wall Street Journal article entitled "Obama and the Politics of Crowds." It comes down to ambiguity and equality.

Professor Ajami credits Mr. Obama with having a certain political genius--that of being a blank slate onto which people can project onto him what they wish.

"Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate," Professor Ajami writes. "He has been different things to different people..."

This ambiguity makes me uncomfortable. I wonder what Mr. Obama is hiding and why. I want more of the measure of the person who seeks to be president. But Mr. Obama remains elusive.

Professor Ajami adds by citing Nobel laureate Elias Canetti's book "Crowds and Power" which states that crowds are about equality. Crowds seek the moment when "'distinctions are thrown off and all become equal. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd."

Equality is something in which I think Mr. Obama truly believes--that and fairness, a word he uses. That's admirable. But I also get the feeling that Mr. Obama is less than fully committed to the importance and value of individualism, individual achievement and the accompanying rewards. I find that troubling.

Kevin O'Brien, columnist with the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, has also helped me see why I react to Mr. Obama the way I do. He recently wrote that at stake "in this election is nothing less than the pivotal question of the individual's relationship to the government--a question defined in what may be the only two moments of candor Obama has offered America during this campaign."

"ABC's Charlie Gibson first lifted the veil back in April," wrote Mr. O'Brien, "during a primary-season debate among Democratic candidates. He asked why Obama would raise capital-gains taxes even if the result were decreased collections for the government."

"Obama replied, 'What I've said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness.'"

Who decides what's fair?

"Then came Obama's chance meeting with Joe 'The Plumber' Wurzelbacher, who questioned Obama's tax plans and got this reply: 'It's not that I want to punish you for your success. I just want to make sure that everyone who is behind you - that they have a chance for success, too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it is good for everyone.'"

Who decides what wealth to spread around and to whom?

This is what I struggle with: Mr. Obama believes in equality and that sometimes it is necessary for someone--government--to decide that you or I have to make some adjustment, pay more taxes or do something else not yet seen, to ensure that others have equality of opportunity. That strikes me as a blow against liberty disguised as something more delicate.

It was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late Democratic senator from New York who, Professor Ajami wrote, "once set the difference between American capitalism and the older European version by observing that America was the party of liberty, whereas Europe was the party of equality. Just in the nick of time for the Obama candidacy, the American faith in liberty began to crack."

Is this where we find ourselves on the eve of the presidential election, a choice between liberty and equality? Perhaps that is too dramatic.

But it's not unreasonable to suggest that Mr. Obama has a preference between the two, and that by voting for him a person expresses that same preference. That's what Mr. Obama wants us to choose.