QC Examiner

One of the best articles I’ve ever read about Barack Obama was published today in The New York Times.

The article clearly explains how Obama went from a nobody to POTUS nominee is just a few years, and they make clear he has had his eye on the prize for a very long time.

The authors describe Obama’s politics as “the politics of maximum unity”, and this is how they describe it:

“He moved from his leftist Hyde Park base to more centrist circles; he forged early alliances with the good-government reform crowd only to be embraced later by the city’s all-powerful Democratic bosses; he railed against pork-barrel politics but engaged in it when needed; and he empathized with the views of his Palestinian friends before adroitly courting the city’s politically potent Jewish community.

To broaden his appeal to African-Americans, Mr. Obama had to assiduously court older black leaders entrenched in Chicago’s ward politics while selling himself as a young, multicultural bridge to the wider political world.”

This is a fascinating and fair study of a man who is able to win supporters, but discard them when it becomes politically inconvenient, as we have seen with his treatment of Rev. Wright.

Be sure to read the part about his famous anti-war speech in ‘02. The speech was given before a crowd of frothing anti-war activists, but rather than just throw them the red meat they craved, he threw in a little “all wars are not bad” so he could cover himself if the war turned out to be a good thing and popular. This sort of calculation is typical of his rise to prominence.

This is must read because it explains how Obama is about everything and nothing and why he is able to convince so many people that he shares their beliefs and concerns—-even beliefs and concerns that are mutually exclusive.

Bob Novak’s book The Prince of Darkness is a fascinating read for any political/press junkie. He tells all the political inside juicy stuff from the past 50 years, when most of us weren’t born, weren’t politically aware or were distracted with other things in life.

As I’ve mentioned here from time to time, in ‘00 I backed John McCain for POTUS but I was only vaguely aware of what was happening with his national campaign—-all I knew was that by the time the Illinois primary rolled around, he had already been knocked out of the race.

At the beginning, George Bush was the “anointed one” even though no one knew much about him, but McCain knocked out the four other candidates and was coming on like gangbusters winning a string of primaries and eroding Bush’s support and it looked like he might win the nomination.

But just as he was positioned to make the break through by winning the Virginia primary, he did something incredibly stupid. The night before the primary, he denounced the religious Right, particularly Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, calling them “agents of intolerance”. Unfortunately for him, both men were Virginians and religious conservatives were and are a major voting bloc for the GOP.

Needless to say, his campaign was over.

So now we come to ‘08 where once again McCain came back from behind and back from the dead to be the nominee. So what does he do? It seems he over-learned his lesson from his ‘00 “agents of intolerance” screed and is now embracing “agents of intolerance” like the Rev. Hagee.

Sheesh!

I just finished Bob Novak’s 638 page book The Prince of Darkness and there was lots of juicy information spanning the 50 years that Novak has been a reporter and pundit.

Around page 494, I had this strange sensation of deja vu. Novak was writing about the Clinton campaign in ‘92 when the “bimbo eruptions” began in the tabloid press—this time concerning Clinton’s long term affair with Gennifer Flowers.

In a style that is now far too familiar, Clinton denounced what turned out to be the truth as Republicans spreading “a pack of lies” and adding the kicker that “(t)he American people are sick and tired of that kind of politics”. The truth was until then, a politician’s sex life had mostly been off limits for the press and as Novak says, “I had not seen the press corps so excited by a presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy forty-two years earlier. They did not want Clinton brought down by the tabloid press.”

Kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A POTUS candidate who is the darling of the national press, which will do everything in their power to protect their chosen one, including keeping information from the public.

But aside from that, what grabbed my attention was Novak’s account of what Clinton said at a rally to counter the truth that he had been bonking Flowers:

“Flanked by his wife, Hillary, and their 11 year-old daughter, Chelsea, Clinton declared: ‘We can be one country again’.”

Good plan! When confronted with inconvenient truths—-call the truth divisive. Obama has lately used this Horndog Bill spin when McCain told the truth about how Hamas wanted Obama to be POTUS.

Obama is doing nothing new or original—he has ripped a page from the Clinton playbook and is making it the cornerstone of his campaign.

Novak’s book ends after the ‘06 election, so he did not know that Obama would be the new American Idol for the national press in ‘08, just as the press idolized Clinton in ‘92. There is a lot we don’t know about Obama and history shows we cannot depend on the press to tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Obama—-it just ain’t in ‘em.

When I read pages 494-495 of Novak’s book, it just reinforced my opinion that the only thing Obama is capable of changing is his underwear.