CHARACTER

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." - Samuel Adams

It is a fruitful exercise to try to come to understand the depth of character that may reside within each of the three individuals looking to take the helm of this country. Most by now understand that Hillary Clinton had shed most any claim to honesty, candor, or, to the anchor of principle. We need only recall the NYTs own William Safire as he labeled the woman a "congenital liar" to realize one need go no further. John McCain on the contrary has a reputation, even among his would-be detractors as someone with integrity and true convictions. We need not agree with him on every issue but at least we know he is not willing to say something, or anything just to get elected. He has demonstrated that time and time again. It’s refreshing to be able to rely on a candidate’s word.

We arrive at Barack Obama. He is certainly a skilled orator but in addition he seems a sincere man, an individual who claims that he is truly concerned with the well being of his fellow Americans and - key - is blessed with a vision of a way to effect positive change for every one of them. Is this true? Or, is the left’s David Ignatius of the Washington Post more on the mark when he asserts that Obama’s record is that of, "...a stridently-liberal partisan, not a bipartisan consensus-maker who gets things done.."? Is the man authentic? Is he honest? Or, is he a phony? We’ll take a look.

We highlighted in an earlier post the worrying relationship between Obama and a his chief Chicago fund raiser, one Tony Rezko. Rezko has a long record yet Obama says he did not end his relationship with this fixer until recently, "because there was no evidence of wrongdoing".Obama went to Harvard law school, was elected the Review’s first black president in its 104 year history, completed his degree magna cum laude, yet did not have the wherewithal to realize his friend was a gangster? Whoa! That’s a bit of a stretch.

Less obvious to the masses but more worrying to us was Obama’s posturing while in Ohio, telling workers whose jobs are threatened by NAFTA that he will work to re-write that document to preserve their jobs yet sent his economic adviser Austan Goolsbee that week to Canada’s consulate in Chicago to assure them that "not really", he just saying that, so don’t worry. Obama was cornered, denied the visit, then backed down after a Canadian diplomat’s memo confirmed the mission.

We also highlighted in an earlier post the venomous and paranoid denunciations of America from Obama’s minister for over 20 years. The Obamas were not merely endorsed by, or attended the church of the good Rev Wright, but subsidized his hatred with donations, were married by him, and had their children baptized by this clown. Newsmax correspondent Jim Davis attended a service at the church during which Wright referred to "white arrogance" and "the United States of white America". Obama was at church that day. Davis claims that he sat in his pew nodding in agreement. The WSJ featured an opinion piece by Newmax chief Washington correspondent Ronald Kessler in the Mar/14 edition which disclosed that Wright had delivered a sermon blaming America for starting AIDS, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society. Yet Obama has disassociated himself from all of this, saying he never heard any such thing or about any such thing all these years. As Newt Gingrich noted recently, "Does he honestly expect the nation to believe that for 20 years...he didn’t notice the anti-American rhetoric? I mean, does somebody seriously believe that in over 800 potential Sunday visits, it never once came up, no one ever mentioned it to him?" Or from life- long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Sen Obama has proclaimed a new politics of hope and change that were to transcend such venom and character assassination. Thus besides being politically dense, he suffers - unless he preempts and explains in detail his Byzantine relationship with the reverend - the additional charge of hypocrisy in courting such a merchant of hate." Well, it seems pretty obvious that Obama, since his early 20's has sat week after week willingly listening to the ravings of just another cookie-cutter race huckster. Or, are we missing something?

Finally, there is the seeming contradiction between his rhapsody of delivery and what appears to some to be a vacuity of content, or if nothing, certainly nothing new that has not been pablum from the left for years. Are we wrong? Is there something there that is authentic, genuine, new and different? Let’s take a look. Recall the so often-repeated line, "We are the ones we’ve been waiting for". What does that mean and where did that come from? Is this a sentence that as Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard put it, "...no one will admit to being confused by, like the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron."? Well, come to find out, the phrase was borrowed from the title of a book of essays by the left-wing-radical-feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker - We Are The Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. And then the more we looked at Ferguson’s research the more we found that Obama has been credited with using phrases that have been in circulation for years. "This is a defining moment in history," Obama repeats; that is what Elizabeth Dole said when her husband ran for president in 1996. Obama climbs to the climax of his stump speech. Head bowed, brow furrowed, eyes flashing, he announces that, "We will choose unity over division" (Jesse Jackson, 1992). "We will choose hope over fear" (Bill Clinton and John Kerry, 1994). "And we will choose the future over the past" (Al Gore, 1992). "In so doing we will overcome our moral deficit" (Bush 2000, Gore, 2000) "by bringing people beyond the divisions of race and class" (Clinton, 1992) because the "story of our country" (Perot, 1992) or the "genius of our country" (Bush, 2000) or the "wonder of our country" (Bush, 1988) is, as Obama says in 2008, "ordinary people doing extraordinary things" (Perot, Bush, Bush, Reagan).

Well, we’d like to believe the best about this guy; certainly the Democrats could use a break. At the moment unfortunately things do not look promising.

Robert Craven