Brooks Swoons for Obama

Playing hard to get has won Obama a new supporter: David Brooks. "He doesn't seem to need the audience's love. But they need his," Brooks writes in a paean to Obama's Zen-like calm. "It is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president," Brooks says in what is probably as close to an endorsement from the conservative columnist as Obama is going to get. "He would be untroubled by self-destructive demons or indiscipline. With that cool manner, he would see reality unfiltered." The pitfall is that "Obama will be an observer, not a leader," but then his success with voters over the past year hints that the former possibility is more likely.