Category Archives: Election

Speechless: The Barack Obama Response to a Terrorist Attack

Posted on March 30, 2008 | Leave a comment

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Could be – although I certainly hope not – that we’re about to have one of those 3 o’clock in the morning moments Senator Clinton talks about.

Ayman Al-Zawahri, Al Qaeda’s second in command under Osama Bin Laden, has released a video which differs from those he and Mr. Bin Laden have produced previously.  According to one analyst I saw interviewed on MSNBC yesterday, the video seemed rushed, did not come through the usual channels and, most strikingly, used remarkably direct language in the way it seemed to literally give orders for attacks on the United States and Israel.  Who knows what all this means, but it got me thinking.  What if there is an attack before the convention, before the Democratic nominee is selected?  What difference will it make?

Senator Obama will find it difficult to resist the opportunity to remind voters that he opposed the use of military force in Iraq from the start, even when it made no sense in light of threats to our security which he acknowledged in the same October 2, 2002 speech.  The fact that the wisdom of his opposition to the use of military force in Iraq is convenient hindsight will be lost in the excitement of the moment.  (See “Reckless Endangerment” posted February 23.)  He will want to tell us that the attack might have never happened had we focused our attention on Afghanistan instead, but may not for fear voters will be annoyed by his taking advantage of the attack to further his campaign.

He’ll give one of his trademark, feel good “Obama Knows Best” speeches to divert our attention from the question at hand:  The attack has happened.  You’re President of the United States.  What specifically do you do?  “This is not a drill,” will be the message that threatens to take him off his game.

Personally, I don’t have the slightest idea.  Depending upon the circumstances of the attack, I can imagine all manner of reactions which might be appropriate.  I’m sure both campaigns have anticipated an attack, and have prepared their candidates with responses which will be perfectly scripted to seem instinctive and unscripted, the way you would hope a seasoned Commander-in-Chief would be ready in any eventuality.

Senator Obama believes in talking to everyone, including the leaders of countries which may be outright enemies of our state.  Admirable, but unrealistic.  Even if Al Qaeda would agree to so much as a phone call with an American President, we really don’t want to talk to them.  To meet with Al Qaeda, particularly in the aftermath of an attack, is to give them status, to recognize them in a way which elevates their movement from criminal to something higher, more civil.

He can talk to the leaders of the countries where Al Qaeda is based, but to what end?  To convince them to do our job for us?  To tell them what Secretary Rice and others have made clear to them already?  And how much time is all this talking going to take?

If not talk, then what?  John McCain will tell the voters he supports the use of our military, if necessary, to find and dispatch the perpetrators, and to punish Al Qaeda in general.  It’s the Israeli concept of hit me, I’ll hit you back harder, words to live by which have gone a long way to protect a people surrounded by its enemies.

Nobody doubts that Hillary Clinton and John McCain would engage the military, certainly for a police action of the sort we’re discussing.  Barack Obama will have to agree or risk not seeming Presidential – and do it without whining about how we got into this mess.  Even more stifling, all three candidates will need to be careful not to undercut the current administration for which this scenario will be far from an academic exercise.  With a new administration just months away, our allies and enemies alike will want to wait to do business with the next Commander-in-Chief, particularly if they sense he might be naïve, inexperienced, and disinclined to use force.

Strip away the power of his rhetoric, hardly an effective weapon against terrorists, replace the exuberant crowds with a nation of worried families and concerned businesses.  What does that leave for him to demonstrate the insight and leadership he’s so often promised?


Site Meter

Leave a comment

Posted in Al Qaeda, Barack Obama, Election, Foreign Policy, Politics, Terrorism

Tagged , , , , ,

Quote of the Day: Chelsea Clinton

Posted on March 30, 2008 | Leave a comment

Sunday, March 30, 2008

From a campaign rally yesterday in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina:

I didn’t really get how much sexism there was in our country until I was at a rally with my mom in New Hampshire, and someone came up to me and said, “I just can’t see a woman being Command-in-Chief.”

See “Hillary Clinton:  Does anyone really care about electing a woman President?” posted earlier today on WordFeeder.


Site Meter

Leave a comment

Posted in Election, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Sexism

Tagged , , , ,

Hillary Clinton: Does anyone really care about electing a woman President?

Posted on March 30, 2008 | Leave a comment

Sunday, March 30, 2008

“Why aren’t more women supporting the Clinton candidacy with something approaching the levels of black support for Senator Obama?”

In the midst of the most recent news about Pastor Jeremiah Wright, his preaching, publications and relationship to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton managed somehow to divert the attention of the media, and the electorate with it, by her confusion over conditions when she visited Bosnia as First Lady.  This had to be a moment of legitimate confusion.  To consider it purposeful misrepresentation, in light of how easily the facts could be checked, is ludicrous.  Not surprisingly, fraudulent campaigning is how the Obama campaign would have us see it, and the way the media tended to report it.

I get the feeling sometimes that many ordinary voters, professional politicians, and pundits are looking for any excuse to find fault with Senator Clinton’s campaign.  Barack Obama has the temerity to defend his 20 year affiliation with the likes of Pastor Wright and walks away, figuratively speaking, unscathed.  If Hillary Clinton so much as burps in public, it’s breaking news.  She’s down two points in the polls.  Her campaign, so she’s told, is a losing cause.  Why not give it up for the good of the Party, and to make Howard Dean happy?  Democratic process is apparently only a good thing if it nominates Senator Obama without the mess of an open convention.

Whether or not he’s in the lead, Senator Obama’s affiliation, by close proximity if nothing else, to the opinions of Pastor Wright, his spiritual advisor until he became too much of a political liability, should have crushed him in the polls.  That he would claim to have been generally unaware of these offensive beliefs during 20 years of attendance is a ridiculous notion that laughs at the gullibility of his supporters, and mocks the lectures he continues to give us on the new politics of Obamism.  And yet the effect of all this on his standing in the polls was minimal, and only temporary.

What’s going on?  Is it Hillary or, heaven forbid, that she’s a woman?

It’s one thing to wonder whether there are men out there who, consciously or subconsciously, might feel uncomfortable having a woman President.  It’s another to ask the same question about American women in general.  My mother, sadly no longer with us, was a big Bill Clinton fan but would have never bought into the notion that his wife – however accomplished in her own right – or any woman should ever be President.  It was an idea that was, at best, on the periphery of her vision, limited as it was by the times of her upbringing.  I’ve got to wonder if there aren’t still remnants of the same mentality in women of my generation and younger.

Barack Obama has gone out of his way to remind us, at every opportunity, that he’s black.  He’s using his race in a way similar to how JFK used his Catholicism in 1960, to shame some voters, and galvanize others into voting for him.  (See my own “Channeling JFK” posted March 14.)  He wants people to vote for him because he’s black – black people because he is of the same color and shared experience, and white people because, to do otherwise, would be evidence of prejudice.

Don’t believe he’s using the issue of race?  Consider Senator Obama’s recent speech about race.  If I may borrow an observation from Professor Walter Williams’ recent column in The Examiner, the question to which the speech was supposed to be responding had nothing to do with race, per se, but with his long term affiliation with Reverend Wright.  (See “Quote of the Day:  “Is Obama ready for America?” posted March 27.)  Instead, what Senator Obama chose to talk about race, race, and more race.  Okay, I get it.  He’s an American of mixed ethnicity who identifies with the black experience while, at the same time understands all things white.  (I’m exhausted by his omniscience.)

So why isn’t Senator Clinton opting for the same strategy based on gender?  She’s also an American of mixed parentage – one man, one woman – who identifies with the female experience.  It’s perfect.  And haven’t women suffered their own struggle for equality?  Women are half the population.  Black Americans, only 13%.  Even considering that black Americans are almost universally Democrats, there are still more white women Democrats.  You’d think there would be no way she could lose.

Why aren’t more women supporting the Clinton candidacy with something approaching the levels of black support for Senator Obama?  Possible explanations include:  They’d love to support a woman, but not Hillary.  They believe it’s more important to nominate the right candidate than a one of their own gender.  The latter would be nice, but they perceive the differences between the two candidates to be too great in Senator Obama’s favor to vote their gender.  They’ve arrived, so to speak, and don’t feel like they have anything, in particular, to gain or prove by electing a woman President.  Or, yikes, a significant number of them are not all that keen on having a woman – any woman, not just Hillary Clinton – in The White House.

Maybe electing a woman President just isn’t that big of a deal after all.


Site Meter

Leave a comment

Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Race

Tagged , , , , , ,

Quote of the Day: “Is Obama ready for America?”

Posted on March 27, 2008 | Leave a comment

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The following is a commentary by Dr. Walter E. Williams, a Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.  It appeared today on page 19 of The Examiner (www.examiner.com), a  Baltimore newspaper.

Commentary – Walter E. Williams: Is Obama ready for America?

Mar 27, 2008 by Walter E. Williams, The Examiner

BALTIMORE – Some pundits ask whether America is ready for Obama. The much more important question is whether Obama is ready for America, and even more important is whether black people can afford Obama. Let’s look at it in the context of a historical tidbit.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson, signing a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. He encountered open racist taunts and slurs from fans, opposing team players and even some players on his own team. Despite that, his first-year batting average was .297. He led the National League in stolen bases and won the first-ever Rookie of the Year Award. Without question, Jackie Robinson was an exceptional player. There’s no sense of justice that should require that a player be as good as Jackie Robinson in order to be a rookie in the major leagues, but the hard fact of the matter was, as the first black player, he had to be.

In 1947, black people could not afford a bum baseball player. By contrast, today black people can afford bum black baseball players. The simple reason is that as a result of the excellence of Jackie Robinson, as well as those who immediately followed him such as Satchel Paige, Don Newcombe, Larry Doby and Roy Campanella, there’s no one in his right mind who might watch the incompetence of a particular black player and say, “Those blacks can’t play baseball.” Whether we like it or not, whether for good reason or bad reason, people make stereotypes, and stereotypes can have effects.

For the nation and for black people, the first black president should be the caliber of a Jackie Robinson, and Barack Obama is not. Barack Obama has charisma and charm, but in terms of character, values and understanding, he is no Jackie Robinson. By now, many Americans have heard the racist and anti-American tirades of Obama’s minister and spiritual counselor. There’s no way that Obama could have been a 20-year member of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church and not been aware of his statements.

Wright’s racist and anti-American ideas are by no means unique. They are the ideas of many leftist professors and taught to our young people. The basic difference among Sen. Obama, Wright and leftist professors is simply a matter of style and language. His Philadelphia speech demonstrated his clever style where he merely changed the subject. The controversy was not about race. It was about his longtime association with such a hatemonger and whether he shared the reverend’s vision.

Obama’s success is truly a remarkable commentary on the goodness of Americans and how far we’ve come in resolving matters of race.  I’m 72 years old. For almost all of my life, a black having a real chance at becoming the president of the United States was at best a pipe dream. Obama has convincingly won primaries in states with insignificant black populations. As such, it further confirms what I’ve often said: The civil rights struggle in America is over, and it’s won.

At one time black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do. The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.

While not every single vestige of racial discrimination has disappeared, Obama and the Rev. Wright are absolutely wrong in suggesting that racial discrimination is anywhere near the major problem confronting a large segment of the black community. The major problems are: family breakdown, illegitimacy, fraudulent education and a high rate of criminality. To confront these problems requires political courage, and that’s an attribute that Obama and most other politicians lack.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.


Site Meter

Leave a comment

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, Jeremiah Wright, Politics, Race, Walter Williams

Tagged , , , , ,

Barack Obama: The Presumption of Prejudice

Posted on March 27, 2008 | 5 comments

Thursday, March 27, 2008

“Prejudice and discrimination have a certain ghostly momentum that continues for years after their demise.”

Barack Obama, more than anyone this election, has raised the issue of race and kept it in the headlines.  At first, it was a reasonable strategy akin to the way John Kennedy handled the potential of his becoming the first Catholic President in 1960.  The candidate tells everyone that it shouldn’t be an issue, the implication being that it is.  Many non-Catholics then, or white voters now will feel compelled to deny the implicit charge of prejudice and will support your candidacy to prove their point.  At the same time, Catholic and Black voters will be galvanized into voting for one of their own.  It worked for Kennedy, and has worked for Senator Obama – up to a point.  The  Pastor Wright controversy and Senator Obama’s speech on the subject of race are on the verge of casting the Senator as a Black candidate, rather than simply a candidate who happens to be Black.  The latter works for his candidacy, the former might not.  We’ll see.  (See “Channeling JFK,” posted March 14th here on WordFeeder.)

The explicit message of the Senator’s comments on the subject has been to describe Black and white Americans as racially sensitive.  The typical white person, he tells us, is still apprehensive, if not outright fearful in his or her contacts with Black Americans who still feel resentment for inequities against which they have long struggled.  Senator Obama pretends to be enlightening the American voter by bringing all this to our attention.  Others no doubt think he’s stirring the pot.  My feeling is that he’s a throwback to another era, not all that many years ago, but another time nonetheless, and that bothers me.

He can’t be forward looking, and backward thinking at the same time.  He can’t bring us together, if he doesn’t appreciate how much progress we have made on our own toward precisely that objective.  I don’t particularly like the way he claims to speak for all Black people, and to understand the race-related anxieties of whites.  He may be bi-racial personally, experienced and well read, but that doesn’t make his interpretations of Black and white behavior universally or even generally correct.

Some time ago I worked with a gentleman, a quality individual in all respects, but somewhat odd in appearance and behavior, who is a member of a small, but prominent ethnic group.  He had one of those last names that could easily be mispronounced by people who didn’t know him.  To make matters worse, the common mispronunciation was a real word with unattractive implications.  I won’t give you his actual name which would be unkind, but will defer, by way of example, to a commercial which ran some months ago.

The ad featured a young man toward the end of an important interview which appeared to be going very well, when he rises to his feet, extends his hand to the interviewer and says, “Thank you, Mr. Dum-ass,” to which the interviewer, his displeasure obvious, responds by saying, “It’s ‘Doo-mahsss.’”  Needless to say, the real individual I’m talking about was the subject of considerable kidding, and suffered a daily struggle to feel good about himself.  As I remember, he often complained about how he was treated under various circumstances, attributing his lack of personal and professional success to his ethnicity.  In fact, as one colleague eventually told him, ethnicity had nothing to do with it.

Prejudice and discrimination have a certain ghostly momentum that continues for years after their demise.

For those who have been on the receiving end, they, like the rest of us, are prone to make assumptions which attribute the adverse aspects of their experience to factors other than their own behavior and capabilities.  Unfortunately, excuses, race-related or other, tend to distract from root causes, and delay the progress a clearer vision might accomplish.

For all of those who have reacted in a way conditioned by the habits of prejudice and discrimination against others, there are doubtlessly remnant feelings that persist without reason.  They can be hurtful, and die a slow death I’m not sure any politician can hasten.

Is all this worth talking about on the evening news?  I don’t know, except that exposure in the media tends to exaggerate the prevalence of any problem.  Blowing things out of proportion is an unavoidable byproduct and favorite pastime in the world of “Breaking News” and 24 hour coverage.

I wonder how much of what Senator Obama and his spiritual advisor, Pastor Wright, cite of the Black experience is still valid, or the vestigial mindset of another generation’s reality?  It’s a reasonable, although difficult question for someone to ask another of a different color, but Senator Obama raised the issue in public, and that gives all of us the right.  Senator Obama, how much of the reaction of typical whites to Black Americans which you describe is real, how much of it imagined, and how much of it the confused, outdated and inherently prejudicial teachings of 20 years of Sundays in the wrong place?

How much of the problems which still plague Black America are attributable to race, or to color-independent economic and other factors to which your attention and our country’s resources might be better directed?


Site Meter

5 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, Jeremiah Wright, Politics, Prejudice, Race

Tagged , , , , ,

Second Thoughts: How Hillary Clinton Snatches Victory from the Jaws of Defeat

Posted on March 25, 2008 | 9 comments

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

“Suddenly, it’s no longer just about the super delegates, but also the ordinary ones trying to do the right and the smart thing.”

 There’s a piece on the Politico website (dyn.Politco.com), published yesterday, that is called “The Clinton Myth,” the gist of which is that she doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning.  You should read the entire article, but here are the opening paragraphs.

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory.  An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

For the record, I am not writing this from my office on the planet Zork, nor am I an illegal alien of the technically correct type.  Also for the record, I think the Clinton campaign, which I favor, is in a world of trouble.  Yes, she needs to do really well in the remaining primaries, well enough to make the argument that she’s won in the states with the highest total electoral count, and would therefore be the more effective candidate to run against McCain – an argument that I suspect will weigh impressively upon super and regular delegates alike.

That having been said, will someone please remember that elected Democratic delegates are not precisely required to vote for their state candidate on even the first, let alone the second and subsequent ballots.  According to section 12.J. of the Delegate Selection Rules, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”  That’s it.  That’s all it says. They could have written the rules to say something like, “…shall invariably reflect the votes that elected the Delegate at his or her state primary or caucus,” but they didn’t.  “Sentiments” are subject to interpretation and tend to change during a protracted campaign.

Many delegates will be from states whose primaries and caucuses were months ago.  They and their constituents may be having second thoughts about Senator Obama’s experience, policies and personal beliefs.  Would Iowa and other early, Obama honeymoon states favoring his candidacy produced the same results had the Pastor Wright mess been raised before they voted?There are roughly seven months between the first primary and the convention, seven months of hard fought campaigning against a backdrop of important domestic and foreign events.  Obama supporters may have second thoughts, as well might early Clinton advocates.  If we had a national primary, with the convention soon thereafter, time wouldn’t be so much of a factor – but we don’t, and it is.

If Senator Clinton can survive the first ballot at the Democratic convention, and depending upon how the last 11 primaries go, she may have a real chance of winning.  Delegate support for both candidates will become fluid, and there’s no telling what could happen.  Suddenly, it’s no longer just about the super delegates, but also the ordinary ones trying to do the right and the smart thing.

Predictably, some Democratic Party leaders and other notables fear an open convention.  These are what I call “Tidy Democrats” who publicly abhor the clutter of real democratic process in favor of wanting to broker their own solutions by frightening us into thinking we’ll lose in November if we’re not polite to each other.  They miss the point, and need to be reminded who’s really in charge of their Party.

In a close and highly contested race, what’s the point of having a convention if it isn’t open?

As for Politico’s point about no one being willing to tell a Black candidate that strict adherence to the process for nominating a Democrat for President has denied him a victory, it’s a notion that sells Senator Obama and other Black Americans – “the party’s most reliable constituency” – short.  It presumes that their only reaction to all things is racial and, as such, insults their intelligence and sophistication as voters.  Of course, if I were Black, it would be nice to have someone who looked like me in The White House.  If it doesn’t happen this time, it will happen soon, quite possibly with a Barack Obama candidacy in 2012 or 16.  So what?  Hillary Clinton is a woman representing a full half of the population that has never held the same high office.  Whoever wins, this election is history in the making.

He may not like the outcome, but I suspect Senator Obama and most other Black voters would agree that it makes no more sense to give him the nomination because he’s Black, than to deny him the opportunity for the same reason.


Site Meter

9 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Convention, Democratic Party, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Race

Tagged , , , , , ,

Question of the Day: Barack Obama’s Interview with ESPN Radio

Posted on March 21, 2008 | 1 comment

Friday, March 21, 2008

(To understand the context of this Question of the Day, please see today’s earlier posting, “The Influence of Pastor Jeremiah Wright?”)

Given that Senator Obama is half black and half “typical white,” does he sometimes scare himself when he looks in the mirror?


Site Meter

1 Comment

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, Jeremiah Wright, Politics, Race

Tagged , , , ,

Barack Obama: The influence of Pastor Jeremiah Wright?

Posted on March 21, 2008 | 6 comments

Right Time, Wrong Candidate – Part 2
Friday, March 21, 2008

“Senator Obama’s repudiations notwithstanding, maybe he really was paying attention all those Sundays in The Church of Outdated Ideas.”

This piece is a sequel to an article entitled “Right time, wrong candidate.” which I posted on Wednesday.  I hadn’t intended to write a sequel, but then I didn’t anticipate that Senator Obama would make the comment he made yesterday on ESPN radio which clearly suggested that white people – not just a few or some white people, but white people in general – react with apprehension, and sometimes fear, when they encounter Black Americans.  To quote Senator Obama who was attempting to clarify what he said in his speech about race:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know, there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.*

Senator Obama’s remark is too politically stupid for someone of his obvious intelligence not to actually reflect what he believes.  As such, it gives us extraordinary insight into the personality of someone who boasts of his ability to bring us together – all of us, Americans of course, but also nationals of other countries in the management of our foreign policy.

I don’t pretend for a moment to speak for anyone other than myself, nor do I believe that Barack Obama speaks for Black Americans other than himself.  What I am is a student of behavior, my own, and others I observe.

I was in New York, yesterday, on business.  It was a long day, including time on trains, taxis, and walking crowded streets.  It was, as always, an ethnically mixed experience of the highest order, covering the full spectrum of incomes and occupations.  I saw no fear in the faces of the white or other people who found themselves in the company of their Black countrymen.  Nor have I in the faces and behavior I have observed in any other context, in any other city, large or small, sophisticated cosmopolitan or working class rural, grocery store, mall or schoolyard.   What I see is people of all colors and hues, working, living and playing together.

No doubt there are still people out there, white and black, who harbor latent and even conscious fears of the other color, but if these fears are commonplace, if they are the norm, then I have completely missed it.

One of us – Senator Obama or me – holds the more correct view of how black and white people, Hispanics and other ethnic groups, have come to relate to each other.  I believe we are a nation that has gone from open prejudice to accommodation, to understanding, to acceptance, to “Who cares?” in my own lifetime, and I am impressed by, and proud of my country.  It’s breathtaking, the speed at which we have reaffirmed and extended the principles upon which our nation was founded.

If I’m wrong about how people feel toward each other, then I stand to be corrected, and will humbly return to my job and blog, the wiser for what I have learned.  If, on the other hand, Barack Obama is wrong, he can’t be allowed to be President because his point of view will adversely affect his ability to govern, to formulate and implement domestic and foreign policy.

From what age, from what era in all this progress we have made does Barack Obama originate his sense of the “typical white person”?  He tells us he is about the future, when he clearly lives in the past.  The Senator is 46 now, and for the past 20 years, since he was twenty-something, has considered the Reverend Pastor Jeremiah Wright to be his friend and spiritual advisor.  Senator Obama’s repudiations notwithstanding, maybe he really was paying attention all those Sundays in The Church of Outdated Ideas.

*From a telephone interview, yesterday morning on 610 WIP.  See the full text at http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/16849076.html.


Site Meter

6 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, Jeremiah Wright, Politics, Race

Tagged , , , ,

Barack Obama: Right time, wrong candidate.

Posted on March 19, 2008 | 9 comments

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Yesterday in Philadelphia, Barack Obama delivered his speech about race and his relationship with Pastor Jeremiah Wright.   Some reviewers I’ve heard considered it to be on a par with Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream.”  I seriously doubt it, and will be surprised if it is remembered or revered as long, by so many of all ethnic groups and nationalities.

As oratory goes, it wasn’t even one of the Senator’s best.  The introduction was stock Obama verbiage, the same emotional, historic prelude we’ve heard before.  (Am I the only one who keeps waiting for him to get to the point?)  That “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” suggests that Black churches and their memberships share similar views.  His comparison between Pastor Wright and the older white grandmother who raised Senator Obama was inappropriate.  The latter shared her personal fears and prejudices of two generations ago in private with her grandson – for whom she cared despite his bi-racial heritage.  The Pastor, on the other hand, shouted his prejudices from the pulpit of his church to teach his parishioners, impressionable children and budding politicians among them.

Over the past 20 years during which Pastor Wright has been his spiritual advisor, did Senator Obama become the voice of reason within his church, in opposition to the Pastor’s admittedly objectionable points of view?  Did he, at the very least, move his family membership from the Pastor’s church to another whose clergy offered points of view consistent with those which the Senator professes to be his own?  What conversations did he have with his two young children who were exposed to the Pastor’s preaching, week in, and week out, as they were growing up?

It’s not at all clear that the Senator who tolerated Pastor Wright’s rants can be expected to emphatically discourage those sentiments elsewhere in our country and in the world were he to be elected President.

I would have voted for Colin Powell for President, his Republican affiliation notwithstanding, without a moment’s hesitation.  I consider him an exceptional American, particularly well-suited, by virtue of his experience and intellect, for the office of President.  And I am certain there are other highly qualified African Americans, of both genders, that I and the electorate in general would enthusiastically support, and with whom we would entrust the management of our government, and the security of our country.  It may just turn out that Barack Obama isn’t one of them.  For all but a relatively few of us, this election has never been about race, or gender for that matter.

The Senator is emphatic about his rejection of Pastor’s Wright’s points of view, an assertion which I accept without question or skepticism, the timing and circumstances of his comments yesterday notwithstanding.  My problem with Barack Obama has nothing to do with the color of his skin – a ridiculous notion that distracts from the truth of the matter, although the argument may have worked for his campaign, until now.  (See “Channeling JFK,” posted March 14.)  It’s his lack of experience, and the overwhelming sense I have that he’s all talk, however well-spoken, and too little substance.  To these two, I now add a third concern:  That he lacks of the strength of character to correct prejudice, stand up against ignorance, and dispel anger whenever and wherever he encounters it.

He repudiates, but is slow to distance.  He objects, but does not change.  He explains, and thinks that is enough.  So next Sunday, or the Sunday after the Inauguration, when the Obama family goes to church, and should Pastor Wright happen to be the guest speaker that day, does the Senator sit there once again, accepting by virtue of his silent example what the Pastor has to say?  Whatever your ethnicity, what would you want your President to do?


Site Meter

9 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, Politics, Race, Religion

Tagged , , , ,

Channeling JFK: Why Barack Obama Needs to Make as Much as Possible Out of Being Black, Without Overdoing It

Posted on March 14, 2008 | 2 comments

Friday, March 14, 2008

“The subliminal message is simple: “Vote for Obama as a re-affirmation of your tolerance.”  How can we prove that race doesn’t matter?  What better way than by electing a African American President, that is, a President who happens also to be Black.”

Hard to believe that I can remember, as someone who first became politically aware in the 60s, when people wondered if America could elect a Catholic President, that is, “a President who happens also to be Catholic.”  I wasn’t old enough to vote when Jack Kennedy ran for office, but I remember being surprised that anyone would even ask what religion a candidate happened to be.  But it was in the news, and I just assumed that it must have been important to a lot of people – although, in retrospect, far fewer than the media exposure it received led us to believe.  It was an issue Kennedy addressed head on, in much the same way Senator Obama has discussed the race issue in this year’s election.

On September 12, 1960, Jack Kennedy made a speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association that Barack Obama could have written.  I won’t quote from it extensively, but leave it to you to read the entire text, if you like, at the website I’ll give you at the end of this column.  (The quote in the first paragraph is from the same speech.)

But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured – perhaps deliberately, in some quarters less responsible than this.  So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again – not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me – but what kind of America I believe in.

One view of the speech that followed is that he was using his considerable skills as an orator to make a stirring point about the idea of America, about the country we hope to be, but never quite realize.  In fact, what I believed he was doing then, and what Barack Obama is doing now with respect to his own ethnicity, was embarrassing non-Catholics into voting for him, while prodding Catholics to make sure that they did.  Far from attempting to put aside the issue of his religious affiliation, he was doing his best to make the most of it.  It’s a ploy that didn’t work for Governor Romney for a number of reasons, but it’s working exceptionally well for Senator Obama, so far.

Without question, Senator Obama is very intelligent, a deliberate person who thinks carefully about the major life decisions he makes.  He had to have known that he was running for President early in his political career, but it was a reasonable gamble.  If he failed, he’d benefit from the exposure and run again 4 or 8 years from now.  If lightening struck, and it did, he might actually be able to compete against the likes of the Clinton machine.  She and others running at the time would be experienced, but easily characterized as “old school.”  He would take advantage of his inexperience by leaving his opposition few accomplishments they could challenge.  He would be the idealist, somehow unencumbered by the traditional Washington and international relationships in how he would manage our government, and direct its domestic and foreign policies.  It’s a ludicrous premise, that knowing nothing about something makes you better able to develop or manage it, but the strategy has turned out to be exceptionally effective – which says more about us and how we view the role of our Presidents, than it does about him.

Senator Clinton is a woman.  That’s certainly as ground breaking as an African American running for President, but then she has baggage, a lifetime of history in politics that would turn off voters desperate for something new.  (I like to think of them as the “I don’t know what it is, but I want one” vote.)

Being as bright as he is, Senator Obama couldn’t have thought that no one would notice or care that he was Black.  In fact, he’s acknowledged that, regrettably, race is still a factor for some voters, and that there are those who would prefer to vote for someone of their own ethnicity – as there are Black Americans voting for him for precisely the same reason.  That’s certainly not a good thing, but it could make the difference in a tight contest for the nomination.  Once again, the Senator wisely chose to turn a potential problem to his advantage.

I don’t pretend to have any idea what motivates the Senator, but what I can do is offer a reasonable explanation for his behavior.  Rather than pushing aside the issue of racism, he’s help keep it in the news.  He’s used it, the way Jack Kennedy used the issue of his Catholicism, to energize the African American vote, while at the same time, in a subtle, but nonetheless effective way, daring more educated and young white voters to support his candidacy in spite of his race – which shouldn’t make any difference to them in the first place, and probably never did.  The subliminal message is simple: “Vote for Obama as a re-affirmation of your tolerance.”  How can we prove that race doesn’t matter?  What better way than by electing a African American President, that is, a President who happens also to be Black.

Senator Clinton would win the support of white women in impressive, but not overwhelming numbers, while Senator Obama would motivate Black voters to turn out in record numbers in near universal support of his candidacy.  Add the Black vote to those of young and educated white Americans, and he might just make it.

Unfortunately, but not unpredictably, there are signs that the experience issue is catching up to him, and that the power of his rhetoric is waning in the land of the short attention span.  He knows he’s got to close before the first vote at the Democratic convention.  If that first delegate vote doesn’t confirm his nomination, he’s in real trouble.  Could he have come all this way on a wing and speech only to finish in second place?

Far from running as an a-racial candidate, solely on the strength of his experience, policies and vision for America, he’s raised the issue race every chance he gets.  He’s allowed no one else to so much as mention the subject, however academically, without extending the coverage of those remarks with his own and those of his supporters, knowing full well that the media has time on its hands with an insatiable appetite for “Breaking News.”  Is he telling us that it doesn’t make any difference, or challenging us to vote for him because it shouldn’t, while reminding Black Americans what’s at stake?  He and his supporters can be critical of Geraldine Ferraro’s comments all they want.  In an election this close, they need to keep the race issue on the table, and I suspect they know it, because they’re too savvy not to.

Kennedy’s speech:  www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html


Site Meter

2 Comments

Posted in Barack Obama, Election, Politics, Race

Tagged , , ,