The Willfully Blind

Even Obama’s most ardent admirers admit that he has accomplished little in his life by the way of setting a conventional track record for president. Tough to argue with that one. So what else could there be? What other characteristics are there to qualify an individual for president given that individual is without a track record? Well, judgement, character, courage and ability-of-decisive-action to name four. Do these apply in Obama’s case? Apparently his supporters think so. They must trust Obama to have the courage to act, to make sound decisions, to have a claim on character.

Let’s take a look. Rev Wright and Michael Pfleger are not just people with left-wing opinions but reckless demagogues preaching hatred of the lowest sort. Obama gave $ to both of them. How does this lend support to the man, give evidence of judgement? Or earlier, while in school, "I chose my friends carefully," he writes, "Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk rock performance poets (what?)". This gives evidence of his far-left disposition but what else? Bill Ayers is not just "an education professor" who has some left-wing views. He is a confessed and unrepentant terrorist who more recently has put his message of resentment into the schools-- an effort using money from a foundation that Obama headed. Where is the common sense in this one?

When Obama had a chance to end the war in Iraq, he voted backwards. As our friend Rex Murphy of Canada’s GlobeandMail.com puts it, "Obama offered unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain ‘it cannot be lost.’ In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country’s most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right; Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong."

When Obama had a chance to reform Fannie & Freddie, to endorse regulations which would have prevented the current crisis (and saved out lefty friends’ 401K’s) he voted to block that legislation. How is this a reflection of judgement? He knew better but lacked the courage to cross party lines. During his Illinois political career, when on those many occasions the questions got complex and required a choice, he dodged them and voted merely "present". How does that reflect ability of decisive action, a key requirement of any commander-in-chief? To govern is to choose, to make tough choices. What have we missed? When he got along to get along with the Chicago machine? When he voted to deny the surviving "fetuses" of botched abortions medical treatment? This reflects courage or character?

Instead, as he has done all his life, a president Obama (perish the thought) will take the path of least resistance. Let us apply that to foreign affairs. Here the thought of an Obama adm is frightening. An Obama presidency, combined with Pelosi’s House and Reid’s Senate would leave America with the most left-wing government of any major Western democracy. An Obama administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a "point of no return," the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America ever. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence. Take the easy option, hold hands and sing Kumbayya.

So what else is there? Really folks, isn’t this guy just an empty suit, aside from ego and mouth?

Obama’s sudden rise to leading contender has required him to project an entirely different image and persona from that of his past. The ease with which he has accomplished this chameleon-like change and entranced the left, some independents and most blacks is a tribute to the man’s talent. Yet is it not also a warning about his credibility? And how has he done this? As we have highlighted repeatedly, his run at the presidency is based more on the manipulation of white guilt than on substance. He gets a pass. He flatters whites; as the black scholar Shelby Steele explains, "he grants them racial innocence, and hopes to ascend on the back of their gratitude."

There can be no other explanation.

Finally, as Noonan mused the other day about an Obama victory - "Like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what?"

Robert Craven