Blair similarity

British Conservative campaign poster, 1997

Alex Massie compares and contrasts:

Each has perplexed, even confounded, his opponents who've had difficulty deciding just how to attack them. Is he an extremist or a moderate and a sell-out? Like Blair, Obama is opposed by some on the right who think tht he's a dangerous socialist intent upon destroying everything that is sweet and profitable about the American. Remember the "New Labour, New Danger" campaign and the "Demon Eyes" poster of Blair? Well there's a lot of stuff like that swilling around on the American right.

It didn't work in Britain and, in this instance, I'm as yet unpersuaded it will triumph in America either. Equally, while the left of the Labour party always distrusted Blair (a distrust he was able to leverage to good effect) so some on the Democratic left have their own suspicions about Obama (not least over health policy and tade) even if, in other areas, he's shown himself to be a pretty orthodox liberal.

Not that he cares for such labels - another trait he shares with Blair. In fact both men resist labels both because fitting into a given ideological pigeon-hole makes it easier for your emies to attack you but also because each doesn't think think of himself in traditional left-right terms. The right thing to do is the thing that works. It is a pragmatic, even managierlalist approach to government that dislikes ideological language even as it pursues goals that are often actually strikingly ideological.

It's a perceptive take, go read the rest.