What Obama can learn from Chavez  | March 15, 2010  Barack Obama
is a reluctant people's president, but to become a great
president and deliver on his promise of "fundamental change in
Washington" he has to act like one.  To end the war in Iraq and
win in Afghanistan, create jobs while reining in corporate
excess, usher in a green economy, and reform health care, he has
to fall back on his community activist roots. Simply put, Obama
rise to the presidency has more in common with Bolivia's Evo
Morales and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez than with that of George
Bush.  Like most people-power presidents, he was running against
a well-established political machine within the Democratic Party
for which Hilary Clinton was the heir-apparent. John McCain, a
Vietnam war hero, was seen by many as tested and pragmatic, and
seemed a natural choice for commander-in-chief when compared to
Obama, who had not even been a boy scout. And his being
relatively young, and an African-American in a country where
race still matters, made hi