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Hernando Today

Cruel Hoax Upon The Democrats

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By JOHN REINIERS, More Than Words

Hernando Today

Published: September 21, 2008

At some level, the nomination of Barack Obama to be president was a cruel hoax to play on the Democratic faithful. They are really voting for an idea — not a person — but more importantly against John McCain.
What brought this to mind recently were the early attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin's credentials by Obama. It made people consider that maybe she did have more political experience in leadership roles than Obama himself. Hold on a minute. She's running for vice president against Joe Biden — not Obama. His advisors are telling him to back off, as it is unseemly for a presidential candidate to attack the opposition's vice presidential candidate — that Obama is higher on the pecking order — it is beneath his dignity etc, etc.
They don't want voters to focus on a comparison, because of his relative inexperience. (If Obama had been McCain's VP choice, Democrats would be saying Obama is "only a heartbeat away from the presidency. Is he ready?") Obama touts as presidential credentials his having lived overseas in Indonesia as a kid, and his experience as a candidate for 19 of the 22 months he's been a senator. As he says, "I've been through this for 19 months ... she's been through it — what — four days so far?" (There he goes again — running against Palin.)
Secondly, Obama's advisers realize Palin's selection by McCain only exacerbates the outrage all women generally feel — regardless of party — that this election was really their turn. Sen. Hillary Clinton reminds women they are a majority in this country — not men. Yet the male dominated Democratic leadership picked a man whose experience couldn't touch Hillary's. (And how about this other feisty woman from Alaska?) Many women see an injustice in the selection of a novice male politician. So now some are thinking of venting their anger by voting for Palin, who would at least be the first American female vice president.
McCain was as dumb as a fox. The Democrats should have realized the possibility of a woman on the Republican ticket. There had been talk of running Condoleezza Rice or Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson before the Democratic leadership picked Joe Biden.
But back to Obama's background. The traditional media hardly play this up — particularly avoiding investigative reporting of people from his past. So we don't really know him. And this also touches upon his Harvard type elitism, which is a disconnect for the average American. (Palin has already connected with professional women, mothers with kids who wonder how she does it, the Wal-Mart moms and a surprising number of men who respect her spunkiness for taking on the Republican old boy's network.)
This is a guy who was recruited by the University of Chicago Law School where he was an instructor in constitutional law for 12 years. (One doesn't rub elbows with the common man in this line of work.) They liked him so much they gave him a fellowship, an office to write his first best-selling memoir and then a couple of months leave so he could vacation in beautiful Bali, Indonesia, one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, so he could finish his book. Indonesia — a Muslim country — is where Obama went to school during his mother's second marriage to another Muslim. I've read interviews of people who knew him from in Indonesia and from his teenage years in Hawaii, but only in the Chicago Tribune.
His breathtakingly rapid ascent in politics was well planned. He was described by friends as a "political opportunist," who was "strategic in his choice of friends." And like most politicians was seen as "self-centered." This may account for Obama being described as eager to accommodate himself to political institutions, rather than to take them on.
His 20-year membership in Jeremiah Wright's controversial Trinity United Church might have prompted the media to downplay these formative years. There must be lots of stories that can be told from people in the church where he was married and his children baptized. This cantankerous left-leaning racist was Obama's mentor for years. Toni Preckwinkle, Alderman, Chicago's South Side, suggested he join Wright's church reportedly saying, "It's a good place for a politician to be a member ... lots of social connections."
Until he settled into politics, he wasn't a Christian. His spiritual journey started with his socialist secular mother's favorite text, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, then a little Buddhism, Catholicism and Islam. Obama can recite the Muslim evening call to prayer in flawlessly accented Arabic and calls it "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset." He may not be qualified to be president, but you can't say he isn't an incredibly interesting guy.
There also hasn't been much reporting on his state senate years. Some supporters mistake his 13th district for the Illinois 13th Congressional District, which is much larger and more populous. His is a small sliver of real estate in Chicago. He was one of 59 state senators. The average Illinoisan never heard of him back then. Florida, a larger state, has 40 state senators who are also largely unknown except to political wonks. (This is certainly understandable. Most of us cannot even name our two U.S. Senators.) There are stories the media could investigate about this time in his life. The Illinois Senate was a stepping stone to bigger things, but he had to stay there for two terms because he lost his bid to unseat Chicago Black Panther icon, Congressman Bobby Rush during his first term.
The Obama stories are out there for an investigative reporter to find, but the traditional media ignore them because his lack of legislative accomplishment doesn't burnish his credentials to be president. There's simply nothing to report. On the other hand, I got 61,000 Google hits the very day it was reported that Palin bought a tanning bed (with her own money) when she moved into the governor's house in Alaska. Tell me, which is more important information for a voter?
This inauspicious thin record of an admittedly well-spoken, talented "political opportunist" forces him to bill himself as a candidate of the future. He would be wise to consider the words of Lincoln Steffens, a left-leaning journalist, who, upon returning from Russia in 1919 famously said, "I have been over into the future, and it works." Little did he know. For leftists, big government always works, even when it fails.
On the other hand, the famous words of Patrick Henry bear some thought: "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past..." And Henry said these words when he was only 39 years old — having had a lot more mileage at 39 than Obama at 44 years old.

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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