I believe that I have determined the essence of the man. He is derivative. I realized this while listening to his speck in North Carolina on the radio. Without seeing him it enabled me to listen to his inflections. His patterns of speech are indelibly linked to the tradition of the African-American pulpit. He is the child of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton and, yes, Jeremiah Wright. This makes eminent sense as he was in Wright’s thrall for so long. But why doesn’t he sound like a white preacher? What brought him to the black community for identity when he was born and raised in a white world? His adoption of the black community to constitute most of his identity is revealing. I believe that this is emblematic of who he truly is. He acquires his views from others. For example, his foreign policy consists of (i) his opposition to the war in Iraq when he was a state senator, (ii) his opposition to NAFTA and related free trade agreements, and (iii) his proposal to meet with all foreign leaders no matter their position or policy. A corollary of this latter ‘plank’ in his platform was his criticism of his rival for saying that she would have the US obliterate Iran if it used a nuclear weapon on Israel. He believed that this would be far too harsh. One supposes the logical conclusion to this is an American President arranging a little tête-à-tête with brother Mahmoud Ahmadinejad following the detonation of an atom bomb on Tel Aviv, to ask what? Why did you do it? Are you going to stop doing it again? As for the plank in his platform with regard to the war, one wonders how he would have voted on the war had he been in the US Senate as opposed to the Illinois Senate when the issue arose. I was against the war in Viet Nam, but had no more power than Obama did when the issue came up. Would I have voted against the war in 1964 if I were a US Senator. I wonder. As to NAFTA, it was clearly pandering to the voters du jour to oppose the treaty. No one bothered to ask him if he would support the creation of manufacturing jobs in industries that could only compete because they were protected by the US government, resulting in higher prices for uncompetitive goods. Either he is dissembling or does not understand the way things work. Either way, his ‘policy’ appears to be adopted for the purpose of garnering votes in particular states, not because he believes in any fundamental policy. Obama’s economic policy consists of being against a gasoline tax holiday, which he calls a gimmick. Period.
Now I said that Obama possessed a derivative personality. And where do his foreign policies come from? Remember that his primary learned foreign policy advisor is Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security advisor and the gentleman who planned and brought you Operation Eagle Claw, the disastrous Delta Force intervention in Iran. The lesson to be learned in all of this is that Obama will put on the coat that fits the best when the time comes, and we must rely on his character, that is the one that adopts views as and when necessary. Principle is not important. Relativism is. Jimmy Carter believed (and still believes) in meeting with all world leaders whenever possible. The Democratic Party and the country are still paying the price of his utterly failed administration.
Let us not make the same mistake twice.
He may sound like Jeremiah Wright but it may be Jimmy Carter in disguise.
Barack’s ‘yootful supporters deep(gasp)sense of history probably reflects his own. Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy? Yep, Retreat in Defeat guys, all. Uh-huh. But, notably, the Democrat President that he wishes with all his heart to emulate, Jimmah Cawtah, isn’t mentioned. What does that say about the confidence you have, Barack?
When, exactly, did Harry Truman meet with Mao & Kim Il Sung? When was that meeting of FDR and Hitler...Tojo? And, except for JFK’s disasterous confab with Nikita, early in his first year--the one where the Soviet Dictator ate young Kennedy for lunch and brought the Berlin Wall and Crisis shortly thereafter...Oh, and Cuban Missles for what he believed was a weak Prez.
So much for the Historical Depth of the former Harvard Law Review Kid!
This is turning into the 1976 Ford/Carter election. It’s going to be a near thing either way.
Basically, Hill has a good point that Barry’s going to have a hard time in the battleground states such as Pennsylvania. Barry’s margin of victory in total pledged delegates are all from red state caucuses. I think that there are too many bitter voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania who are going to vote for McCain.
But, weaknesses aside, the Democratic leadership is going to stick with Barry because it can’t afford to alienate it near monolithic support among the black vote. Giving Hill the nomination will probably drive blacks out of the Democratic party for a generation. It is that near monolithic support that give the Democratic party viability in so many tight elections. BTW, that’s not racist.
Hill can be senator-for-life, but she’s washed up as a national player. Superdelegates don’t commit until they vote in August. The last thing she wants, after putting up will Bill’s tomcat morality for all these years, is to lose her one and only chance by a mere 150 delegates from red state caucuses. Red states that will probably vote for McCain anyway. Despite the above, every Democrat knows that Barry’s early strong showings don’t matter when the ghost of Pennsylvania and Ohio loom.
And, Barry’s is bringing Carter’s foreign policy back in spades--hard core appeasement. Much like Carter’s profound revelation that the Soviet Union is evil, after the invasion of Afghanistan, Barry’s going to have a similar epiphany about Islam after Iran nukes Tel Aviv. Maybe.
One other point missed by Obama (and this post) was that Churchill’s predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, adopted the approach Obama recommends. How many lives could have been saved had Chamberlain not believed in this fantasy that diplomacy and talking can be effective against those that are evil.
The ascendancy of Obama reflects nothing so much as the failure of our education system. Young people are not learning the lessons of history. What’s worse, they are constantly subject to a liberal bias by those who should be encouraging them to think more independently. They seem to buy their politics like they do everything else… on credit, going with whatever looks good and feels good with no thought to what is best for their country. Obama is simply a new pair of jeans or a prom gown they “just have to have.”
I am young, so I could be wrong, but didn’t Truman attend Yalta because Roosevelt was dead? Didn’t he lean over to Stalin and say something about the bomb? It’s a teeny point, I know, but I think we should keep our history as straight as possible.
References to past Democratic presidents, selective or not, would be de rigueur in an “acceptance” speech on the assumption that’s what Obama was delivering.
I think we need to get more simple, not more complex about this man. He’s a stealth candidate. He’s not going to tell us any more about himself than he can help, and that because the Wright/left-wing/marxist connection, already bruited about the blogosphere, is what Obama is about and that’s all he’s about.
He could of course go on to self-destruct, and spill all, but I doubt it, and this is why: the stealth component betrays an awareness that he needs to hide himself in plain sight, and that awareness is itself the kind of “hiding” that gives the game away.
I used to think he was a mindless idiot because what he said in public--all this blather about “change” and “getting beyond race” (while of course not being able to keep himself from dropping little “racelet” comments almost by-the way)--and from this I originally deduced that we had here that relatively rare bird: a presidential candidate who was hopelessly out of his depth, and wouldn’t even be taking up space in the media if he weren’t black and literate.
But I was wrong: the mindless rhetoric is calculated--it’s intended to fill up the void with as much blather as he can get the liberal/democratic base to take seriously (and he’s smart enough to know that they’re of capable of swallowing whole pails’ full), while he gets the black middle class that shows up laughing, cheering, and applauding in the Rev. Wright’s DVDs, to buy into the belief--which I believe would be an accurate read--that race hatred and America hatred are his trump cards.
I’m depending on McCain to get Obama to self-destruct on TV in debates. I think it can be done. Obama has already shown that he has no back-up strategy, that once challenged to say what he really thinks he can’t get himself to walk very far without a load of marbles streaming out of his pocket, all consisting of self-incriminating statements that he hadn’t originally planned to make. I say “originally planned to make” because if he did plan them, then I have to say he’s even less cunning that I think he thinks he is.
I am young, so I could be wrong, but didn’t Truman attend Yalta because Roosevelt was dead? Didn’t he lean over to Stalin and say something about the bomb? It’s a teeny point, I know, but I think we should keep our history as straight as possible.
Roosevelt went to Yalta, not Truman. I hadn’t read anything about telling Stalin about the atomic bomb, and since it was a huge secret and had not yet been successfully tested at the time of Yalta I tend to doubt it. The first test device was fired on July 16, 1945. FDR passed away in April of 1945.
True, Truman was at the Potsdam Conference, not Yalta. Roosevelt was the one who, meeting with Churchill and Stalin at the end of the war, sold out Eastern Europe to the Communists. Historians argue whether Roosevelt was a Communist sympathizer or merely felt that America was sick of war and didn’t want to further commit US troops to stem the Soviet advance through Eastern Europe. Churchill, it should be noted, was the only one to take a hard line on Stalin and probably should have prevailed.
Two years ago at a Gridiron Club news media dinner in Washington before he announced his candidacy, Obama poked fun at his meager accomplishments when he told his audience:
“I want to thank you for all the generous advance coverage you’ve given me in anticipation of a successful career. When I actually do something, we’ll let you know.”
“This appearance is really the capstone of an incredible 18 months. I’ve been very blessed. Keynote speaker at the Democratic Convention. The cover of Newsweek. My book made the best-seller list. I just won a Grammy for reading it on tape. And I’ve had the chance to speak not once but twice before the Gridiron Club. Really what else is there to do? Well, I guess…. I could pass a law, or something…
About that book, some folks thought it was a little presumptuous to write an autobiography at the age of 33, but people seemed to like it. So now I’m working on volume two-the Senate Months.”
It seems a little less funny now that he’s the favorite to be our next President…
I think “independent mind“‘s an alysis is highly perceptive, I find no evidence in BO’s vaunted eloquence of depth of knowledge in either domestic or foreign affairs. The speeches that we are told he writes himself are notably lacking in citations other than personal encounters with individuals suffering from the miseries brought upon them by the Bush administration. I have this queezy feeling that he is a seriously unqualified candidate being closely managed by campaign professionals feeding him the correct lines, praying that his ego does not take over and lead him to make another disastrous blunder.
The Democrats’ likely nominee is more a puppet than leader and even less a statesman than Jimmy Carter. McCain’s greatest hope lies in the probability that Obama continues to reveal his ineptitude as November approaches.
I think “independent mind“‘s an alysis is highly perceptive, I find no evidence in BO’s vaunted eloquence of depth of knowledge in either domestic or foreign affairs. The speeches that we are told he writes himself are notably lacking in citations other than personal encounters with individuals suffering from the miseries brought upon them by the Bush administration. I have this queezy feeling that he is a seriously unqualified candidate being closely managed by campaign professionals feeding him the correct lines, praying that his ego does not take over and lead him to make another disastrous blunder.
The Democrats’ likely nominee is more a puppet than leader and even less a statesman than Jimmy Carter. McCain’s greatest hope lies in the probability that Obama continues to reveal his ineptitude as November approaches.
Well, if hope is the Republican strategy then the election is nearly over. In fact, if all McCain and the Republicans can say is “we aren’t as bad as Hussein Obama”, then the election is already over. Which is why the Dem’s are crowing already (tho they should be wary of the sin of hubris); they can see that McCain has little new to offer and they have successfully demonized what was a pretty good Republican presidency.
As pointed out above (I think) there is a huge cohort in this country now dependent upon the federal (and local) government for their livelihood. And they will continue to vote in representation who promise them more (money, power, influence, etc.). That it is essentially a giant Ponzi scheme doesn’t matter to these voters. There is always someone else who can be stripped of their money--and there is. Who better than a corrupt Chicago politician realizes this fact.
That policies promoted by Democrats will end up destroying a growing economy isn’t what these people want to hear. They want to hear about how they can get more--nevermind who has to pay or if it will damage our economic growth. Heck--look at Europe. The utter failure of their social democratic economic schemes hasn’t stopped them from adding to their crushing layers of taxation, regulation, and bureaucracy.
If Obama most closely resembles Carter, and he becomes president, we are on the way to Mark Steyn’s predicted demographic outcome. Want to bet that before the general election the truth will come out that the latest slickster politician---ie Obama---to pop out of the devilish Democratic hole actually does have an Islamic background?
BTW, I casme up with the following pertinent joke about Jimmuh---
What do you call a former president from Georgia who hugs a Hamas thug?
