"In classes and seminars, I would dress up these impulses in the slogans and theories that I discovered in books, thinking – falsely – that the slogans meant something."
Obama ended his Tuesday press conference not with an attack on recalcitrant Republicans but with an assault on "sanctimonious" liberal purists who would never compromise on extending the Bush tax cuts. The extent of the beleaguered president's pique at the left wing of his own party seemed puzzling to many at a time when Obama needs all the supporters he can find.
Against this backdrop, Obama's impatience with ideologues is a striking motif of "Dreams from My Father." The quotation above is Obama's way of belittling his own tendency to over-intellectualize decisions like becoming a community organizer. But Obama is also constantly making little jabs at true believers who fall under the spell of abstract doctrine: "Two women, one black, one Asian, were selling Marxist literature and arguing with each other about Trotsky's place in history."
So, that goes back a long way. He's one of those liberals who doesn't much like other liberals. I know a bunch of them.