Addendum to previous post:

Michiko Kakutani writes in the NYT of the role literature has played in Obama's thinking

  www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19readhtml?hp.  

wherein she iterates what I've been trying to say, but more specifically related to his reading. I especially note this passage:

"Mr.Obama . . . has tended to look to non-ideological histories and philosophical works that address complex problems without any easy solutions, like Reinhold Niebuhr's writings, which emphasize the ambivalent nature of human beings and the dangers of willful innocence and infallibility."  This is what I meant about breadth of thinking and the willingness to embrace ambiguity. . . .