Obama the Law Professor

Twelve years at the University of Chicago and "he learned to lie low," says NYT.
He's a smart, ambitious guy and some of his former conservative colleagues apparently resented his non-committal nature. So they haven't much to criticize now that someone's elevating them to the quotable category. Heh.
Kept things to himself, broadly admired by the students.
Some random, insightful quotes:

The Chicago law faculty is full of intellectually fiery friendships that burn across ideological lines. Three times a week, professors do combat over lunch at a special round table in the university’s wood-paneled faculty club, and they share and defend their research in workshop discussions. Mr. Obama rarely attended, even when he was in town. “I’m not sure he was close to anyone,” Mr. Hutchinson said, except for a few liberal constitutional law professors, like Cass Sunstein, now an occasional adviser to his campaign. Mr. Obama was working two other jobs, after all, in the state senate and at a civil rights law firm.

But he was a politician in waiting from day one. How can we deny the basic nature of our elected officials and pretend they are otherwise?

But as a professor, students say, Mr. Obama was in the business of complication, showing that even the best-reasoned rules have unintended consequences, that competing legal interests cannot always be resolved, that a rule that promotes justice in one case can be unfair in the next.

So even some former students who are thrilled at Mr. Obama’s success wince when they hear him speaking like the politician he has so fully become.

“When you hear him talking about issues, it’s at a level so much simpler than the one he’s capable of,” Mr. Rodriguez said. “He was a lot more fun to listen to back then.”