The interesting thing about Obama's senior thesis

Apparently, wingnuts are batty for getting their hands on Barack Obama's "missing" senior thesis, which was on Soviet nuclear disarmament. I guess they think that if they can find proof that Barack Obama opposed nuclear weapons, that he is unqualified to be president?

Even their the reasons for their search are plain ol' stupid, I did find one thing interesting in NBC's writeup of the caper (emphasis added):

His former professor, Michael Baron, recalled in an interview with NBC News that Obama easily aced the year-long class. Baron described the paper as a “thesis” or “senior thesis” in several interviews, and said that Obama spent a year working on it. Baron recalls that the topic was nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.

“...As I remember it, the paper was about those negotiations, their tactics and chances for success. Barack got an A.”

Baron said that, even if he could find a copy of the paper, it would likely disappoint Obama’s critics. “The course was not a polemical course, it was a course in decision making and how decisions got made,” he said. “None of the papers in the class were controversial.”

Here's what interested me about that -- one thing that I've noticed about the Obama campaign is that it is incredibly methodical, especially contrasted with the undisciplined Clinton and McCain campaigns. But while it is methodical, I'm not saying that is conventional.

Actually, I think the Obama campaign's strategic approach is generally unconventional. Unlike most campaigns that rely on "beltway CW," the Obama campaign seems to use a game theory approach towards politics: they run through scenarios, explore the potential consequences of those scenarios, and from that develop strategies and contingency plans.

There's something liberating about taking this approach to problem-solving and decision-making: instead of getting hamstrung by orthodoxy, you actually work through a set of facts and conditions, and try to come up with the right course of action. This obviously is something we need a lot more of in the White House.

I've often wondered how much of this came from Barack Obama himself, and how much of it was a staff driven thing. Based on what this professor says, Barack was interested in the decision-making process way back in college. (This is basically a form of game theory.) So although the wingers wanted to expose something scary about Barack, I actually learned something interesting -- and heartening. Thanks!