Barack Obama, A Free-Market-Loving, Big-Spending, Fiscally Conservative Wealth Redistributionist - NYTimes.com

"POST-PARTISAN" ECONOMICS?
Barack Obama spent 12 years at the University of Chicago, mostly as a senior lecturer on constitutional law. It happened to place him inside what is arguably the intellectual center of modern American economic conservatism, the home of Milton Friedman and the laissez-faire philosophy known as the Chicago School of economics. Obama didn’t spend much time with Friedman’s disciples at the law school. Instead, he became friendly with another crowd: liberals who had come to think that Friedman was right about a lot, just not everything. Some of the confusion about Obama's economic policies stems from his presentation as a postpartisan figure. But, invoking pragmatism doesn’t help the average voter much; ideology, though it often gets a bad name, matters, because it offers insight into how a candidate might actually behave as president. Obama does have an economic ideology. It’s just not a completely familiar one. Depending on how you look at it, he is both more left-wing and more right-wing than many people realize.
(Suggested by DOUG PERRYMAN)

OBAMA AND THE REAGAN DEMOCRATS
The flight of the Reagan Democrats away from the Democratic Party in the 1980s and earlier was largely driven by racial issues. But their hesitation is based primarily on two other issues. First, Obama's inability so far to convince these voters that he shares their passion. Second, doubts about Obama’s national security credentials; many refusing to dismiss their worst fears – that he does not love America or even might harbor a secret agenda.