If you’re like me, and you’ve been somewhat perplexed by some of the things the Obama Administration has been doing, you need look no further than a blog posting from 2008 by one of the founders of the Weather Underground; Mark Rudd.

Back in ’08, it appears Rudd was trying to assure his fellow radicals and progressives that what Obama was going to do would have reason, and in the end, they would all be able to understand it in retrospect. Believe me. Nothing this president has done has been without reason, either by action or inaction. His choices, after reading Rudd’s piece, are all very clear to me now.

To begin with, Rudd explains how Obama got elected in the first place, and why he positioned himself the way he did in his piece titled “Let’s Get Smart About Obama:”

Obama is a very strategic thinker. He knew precisely what it would take to get elected and didn’t blow it. He used community organizing methods to mobilize a base consisting of many people who had never voted before or who regularly don’t vote.

But he also knew that what he said had to basically play to the center to not be run over by the press, the Republicans, scare centrist and cross-over voters away. He made it.

I’ve often wondered what the Obama governing doctrine was, and it appears at times he’s wandering aimlessly without purpose. Au contraire – it is completely intentional.

…he has a narrow mandate for change, without any direction specified. What he’s doing now is moving on the most popular issues — the environment, health care, and the economy. He’ll be progressive on the environment because that has broad popular support; health care will be extended to children, then made universal, but the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance corporations will stay in place, perhaps yielding some power; the economic agenda will stress stimulation from the bottom sometimes and handouts to the top at other times.