Sweet's review of Obama's new book

Quotes from the end of it.

"We Democrats are just, well, confused," Obama writes. He goes on. "Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action.

"In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning."

On Bush, Obama relates two encounters with the president. "Both times I found the President to be a likable man, shrewd and disciplined but with the same straightforward manner that had helped him win two elections."

However, at his second time with Bush, at a breakfast meeting, Obama writes, "There had been a moment ... that I witnessed a different side of the man. The President had begun to discuss his second-term agenda, mostly a reiteration of his campaign talking points ... when suddenly it felt as if somebody in a back room had flipped a switch.

"The President's eyes became fixed; his voice took on the agitated, rapid tone of someone neither accustomed to nor welcoming interruption; his easy affability was replaced by an almost messianic certainty."

Given a choice between likable-shrewed-disciplined-and-almost-messianic-certainty versus likable-shrewed-disciplined-and-almost-chronic-uncertainty, I'm guessing voters will go with the certain candidate for the same reasons we avoid pilots or surgeons given to self-doubt: nobody wants to be on the operating-room table at the surgeon's moment of doubt.

Surgeons and Pilots trained to be decisive. No one trains US Presidents, but the decisive one is the one voters go with; especially when -as Obama tells us here- the alternative's confused.

Good luck Senator Obama getting clarity into this mess of a party.