Note that this is an old story, and I think Obama had some quibbles with the reporter's use of the quotation.

I think it's silly to say that Sullivan is just as predictable as, e.g., TNR or NRO. Sullivan went from calling Democrats traitors to vigorously opposing Bush on his handling of the war. You can make the case you want to make, maybe, but you can't make it with the claim that Sullivan is more predictable than others (Krauthammer?) who hew more closely to a party line.

And secondly, isn't there value in thinking independently? You seem to skirt the possibility that this is true. Isn't it conceivable that independent thinking leads one away from the pitfalls of certain kinds of groupthink, and leads one towards an accurate assessment of phenomena?

This is too facile. If you want to strike down the presumption that being interesting is of some inordinate value, then you have to strike it down, not merely wish the world were otherwise.

Senator Obama triangulating against Daily Kos doesn't surprise me either. It's exactly what I'd expect an empty suit with delusions of being President would do, and he doesn't interest me.

Sullivan was perfectly predictable, down to the timing: He's a weathervane of elite opinion, and when supporting the war is what the cool, serious kids we're doing, he was there -- and when it wasn't, he wasn't. Again, there's nothing wron with being predictable, Sullivan has his opinions and analytical techniques, like everyone else, and given his time in the public eye, it's inevitable folks would notice.

Meanwhile, this whole conflation of independent thinking with "interesting" thinking is the problem ("independent" isn't a word that appears in my post). None of those mentioned lacks independence -- of the four, I'd even argue Kos is the most independent. The issue is that "interesting" and "surprising" are superficial, silly, and internally inchoate metrics on which to judge political commentary.

I think 'interesting work' as a phrase means a lot more than not being predictable. If, for example, we talk about a scientist doing 'interesting work' that implies that he is either breaking, or potentially breaking new ground. Part of that is, yes, some surprising results.

At one point, I think a lot of blogs were doing 'interesting work' in that sense, and Daily Kos as much as anyone. To a large degree, this has disappeared in many blogs and been replaced with commentary and opinions that is predictable and somewhat stale. Regardless of the facts, the opinions will be the same.

This may not be any worse than traditional media, but it isn't any better either.

Ironically, I consider Ezra's site one of the few 'interesting' sites on the left, although his values are perfectly predictable, he (and the co-bloggers for the most part) deal with facts as they are and that sometimes causes surprising things.

Sullivan in contrast, is generally not 'interesting.'

Obama is an ass. Perhaps if the Dems had not slobbered all over him after his convention speech (sadly, I too was effusive in my praise), he wouldn't have become convinced that he is, in fact, the golden child, the new political messiah destined to unite the Democrats and sensible Republicans and establish an era of peace, prosperity and ponies for everyone.

But we did, and he did, and now he spends his time hectoring Democrats on problems that don't exist and making grand pronouncements that are supposed to make our hearts skip a beat.

Daily Kos is regularly unpredictable, predictable, interesting, boring, surprising, offensive, wrongheaded, prescient, accurate and many other things. That's the beauty of a community that features the writing - good and bad - of thousands of people.

Obama, OTOH, is entirely predictable and uninteresting, not that they go together, but because his behavior was scripted long ago and has been followed by many others before him: Bayh, Clinton (both), Lieberman, Biden, Wittman, Shrum, and on and on.

Bleah.

"Interesting" is something an academic says about a law review article. It's not what a politician says about other political voices. This is just more proof that Obama's still forming himself, politically speaking.

Ditto on what Nolo said. The construction of the discussion is a bit bizzare for me. Democracy isn't about who is the most interesting, but, instead, the goal is in this case a myriad of goals. Sullivan is predictable even in this put down because he has a thing against websites like Kos, which I would argue are far more "interesting" because Kos's site isn't one blogger, it's thousands. Some of them far left, some middle of the road, some left of center and some are right of center. I think blogs like this one which has a few voices writing diaries are far more predictable. Obama has a thing about trying to appear middle of the road that's starting to piss me off. As I have said before, if he were truly trying to be the consensus builder or trying to get us all to just get along why is most of his criticism always so onesided. This kind of faux consensus building in which you attack people for "not being interesting" or creating strawmen such as secularist v. people of faith (as though one can not be person of faith who is secular) is getting old.

What good is a community of thousands if they all (generally) agree with each other and violently oppose other viewpoints?

Daily Kos has gone from provocative and enlightening to an unreadable equivalent of a 24/7 attack ad. At least the science articles and C&J are still around.

akaison,

Its like Gene McCarthy said, most wrecks happen in the middle of the road.

I don't know... I still find Daily Kos interesting AND unpredicatble, because of the plethora of voices, I think. And not to disagree too strongly with Ezra, but I don't think Sullivan is predicatble or elitist, exactly - what's frustrating is that he expresses his ideas as if, having just occurred to him, they are indeed the end-all of all arguments, when he's just as likely to decide something else later (e.g. the Iraq War), and even if one idea is wholly inconsistent with another (the NRO guys love to twit him for this). I would point to Andrew's whole coming out process, which he extrapolated into some notion of his story being a universal signifier for how everyone feels about coming out, when really, everyone's coming out is a bit different.

But I digress - I think there's nothing wrong with looking for, and expecting people who talk about politics to be interesting, and not doctrinaire. I think, personally, it's what true iberal thought is all about. I think lefties sometimes fall into traps of being doctrinaire and predictable (what righties call "the PC"), and it's occasionally regrettable. But the larger point is, a good idea, well expressed, is interesting even if it follows from a predicatble line of reasoning, knowing how a peron thinks. And Ezra, you are predictable, and sometimes a little knee-jerk, but you express yourself well, and your ideas provoke deeper thought in others. And the world needs some folks who are steady and true to what they believe. And I don't find TNR interesting because I think their approach to being "unpredictable" is as regimented as the mindset they look for in the people they hire.

dKos stopped being a regular read for me a while ago. The site is a weird dissonant mishmash of Markos' stated goals of being a force for driving Democratic electoral wins and changing the shape of the Democratic party, amalgamated with a slew other voices and agendas, many of whom are much more radical than Markos himself. It gets huge traffic, but as far as quality goes, there are many other sites that are better.

There are some eloquent voices and some good writers who post there, but the signal-to-noise ratio makes it harder and harder to find them without virtually living on the site. After a while, I stopped trying.

Another thought, which may or may not have anything to do with what Obama said, but may have everything to do with why Sullivan thought it was clever: "Interesting" is just another word for "different," which makes it code-speak for the idea (popular amongst the pundocracy) that Democrats need to change their values/tactics/message/approach/et al., ad nauseam.

it's funny- the diversity of comments here- from d kos being group think, to it being mish mash of noise and good writers to yet other perspectives would seem to fly in the face, as the very least, that anyone can say that d kos is any one thing. but that's the problem with obama- nuianse when it comes to the side he supposedly is on is rarely a part of the discussion. no secularist can be a Christian, and vice versa, in his world. They are mutually exclusive concepts.

And as for Sullivan- yes- he does have some issues (major ones) w/ inconsistency such as his views of why gays should be treated equal versus what he says for other groups (he seems to miss the idea of what equality is about, but then requests it for gays). but, I feel the description above that is most accurate- is that he thinks he comes up with ideas first, and proceeds to act as though it's the only possible way to see things. however, I believe the real issue he has with kos is a kind of elitism mixed in with a bit of professional jealousy.

I'll just note that this paragraph directly followed the one about kos.:

“There are times I think we’re not ambitious enough,” Obama says. “I remember back in 2004, one of the candidates had made a proposal about universal health care, and some DLC-type commentator said, ‘We can’t propose this kind of big-government costly program, because it’ll send a signal we’re tax-and-spend liberals.’ But that’s not a good reason to not do something. You don’t give up on the goal of universal health care because you don’t want to be tagged as a liberal. People need universal health care.”

Ezra: The difference between "interesting" and "independent" in this context is a bit like splitting hairs -- if you think you win the argument because you scrupulously avoided use of the word in your post. Regardless of your opinion of Sullivan's lickspittle habits, lockstep adherence to an organized political movement or party is always going to play as more "predictable" than adherence to elite opinion, by its nature diffuse and a challenge to define (elite opinion in some quarters is counseling staying in Iraq even today).

The word "predictable" is a little like "likeable" -- "likeable" to whom? Just because you fancy that you were on top of Sullivan's mental maneuverings day in and day out does not precisely mean that his habits of mind were actually as conforming as those of Kos or NRO. Aren't the Liberal Hawks (to which TNR conforms) and the Antiwar Left (to which Kos more or less conforms) more homogeneous than this "elite" of which you speak? If Kos still uses his noodle (never said he didn't), doesn't he do it in the service of a more coherently programmatic set of ideas than Sully does?

I agree with the general idea that there is value in what e.g. TNR does and that "mavericks" may be overrated -- but you didn't stop there. You tried to turn Sully into an apparatchik, and love him or hate him, that's not what he is.

My Ouija Board tells me that in the near future, Leon Wieseltier will write an essay in the New Republic about how Israel is pretty neat...you'll see, it shall come to pass.

Martin Peretz begins his latest piece on Syria as follows:

"Yes, I admit it. This is a theme I've been harping on for almost a quarter of a century..."

...A quarter century of "interesting" news and views from Mr. Peretz.

Is there ever a time when Sullivan ISN'T crowing?

If memory serves, this "interesting, surprising" line was actually the big-print advertising theme on TNR's subscription insert cards (whatever call them) already in the early 1980s, when it first went addressively to the right.

It's cool site please visit our site.