Does He Feel Our Pain?
There’s a twofold irony in all this. First because Mr. Obama did enter national politics on a platform founded on empathy, as set forth in his book The Audacity of Hope. And second because, paradoxical as this may seem to his detractors, what Mr. Obama means by empathy has little if anything to do with emoting…
The answer to the question, in brief: Obama would act empathetically… He also presents it, however, as the guiding principle of his political activity as well as of his hopes for America. It’s a tribute to his treatment that consideration of it discloses not only the strengths but the problems of empathy as a moral and political norm.