Is Obama really a uniter?

A Texas friend and reader writes to say he was impressed by Obama's speech, but:

My question is always, what is Obama's history of compromising or creating win-win solutions out of divisiveness based on conflicting ideologies and principles? Because if there's nothing in his past to show that, he'll just be a repeat of Bush's empty promise to be "a uniter, not a divider," only from the other side of the spectrum (at least Bush did have something of a bipartisan track record as governor).

This reader's not the only one to ask the same question. Via Ross I read this insightful analysis of the Obama speech by Jay Cost, who was also impressed by the address, but wonders what Obama did in his 20 years at the church to help change attitudes from the pastor and others that he now claims offended him so. Cost explains why this matters:

Candidates make all kinds of promises about what they will do, and voters need to find some way to gauge whether they will keep their word. One way to do that is to look at what they have done. By contextualizing Jeremiah Wright in the broader dilemma of American divisiveness, Obama has identified his experience at Trinity as a small instance of a larger problem that plagues the country, the problem to which he intends to dedicate the 44th presidency. It is therefore reasonable to ask what he did - empowered as he was as a high-profile, long-standing parishioner - to change the viewpoint of Wright and Trinity, and whether those efforts were successful.

More:

Many parishioners in many churches or synagogues would do something if their pastors, priests or rabbis went astray on an important issue. Many more would expect a future president to do something.

What could be political trouble for him is that these are specific versions of the general question Hillary Clinton has been asking for weeks. Can't you just hear her now, in the back of your mind, say in response to this speech what she has said dozens of times before? "I have been working on these issues for 35 years. My husband and I made real progress in the 90s. You can identify the problems, but what have you done about them?"

This is particularly important with a candidate like Obama, who doesn't have much governing experience upon which to base his appeal, so has created a candidacy around his character, and the vague sentiment that he will bring hope, unity and positive change to a country in need of same. Well, Trinity UCC offered him a chance to do something about an issue that he says today was a serious one that really disturbed him. What'd he do?

The Bush years ought to have taught us to be wary of someone who speaks the language of therapeutic uplift -- although as my Texas correspondent says, Bush had a real record of bipartisanship as Texas governor. You ought to talk sometime to people who worked in the White House office of compassionate conservatism, or whatever they called it (hello David Kuo!). It was never taken seriously by the Decider. Anyway, James Poulos concludes that Obama's speech "seems destined to function as therapeutic balm." That's a judgment to keep in mind when you reckon that Obama has done a lot to reach out to conservatives who disagree with him on big issues, but he always takes the most liberal position ("...his nods to the right are essentially head-fakes" -- Larison). Based on evidence, Obama is a decent analyst and a first-rate orator, but in terms of doing things to bring people together to create positive change, well, he's a decent analyst and a first-rate orator.