Ten new regulations for the 2008 election
Barack Obama is a gifted politician who has led an exemplary life. His run for Presidency for many offers redemption that America has finally moved beyond race. But that laudable proposition is beginning to foster surreal rules of campaigning from both the media and Obama himself that do no one any good.
1. The 2008 campaign must stick to concrete issues and detailed policies. That said, Barack Obama can continue to speak only in vague terms of “hope and change.”
2. Rev. Wright’s racist tirades must be contextualized and only understood in their proper historic milieu of white racism—that is, unless he suddenly turns on Barack Obama, in which case one is now free to deride him as “mean-spirited,” “malicious” and on a “vendetta.”
3. Rev. Wright is like “an old uncle” and his church “not particularly controversial.” Those who insist otherwise are using “snippets” and “loops” out of context for cheap political advantage. But should the Rev. repeat his serial lunacies at the National Press Club on national television, and insult the sympathetic liberal DC press corps, then he is suddenly expendable and inexplicably not the same pastor that Barack Obama knew for 20 years—and so now to be freely derided as a “spoiler”.
4. It is assumed that Barack Obama’s exotic middle name Hussein can provide authentic multicultural fides and hope of projecting a new, more globally sympathetic American image abroad, but to voice ‘Hussein’ aloud is assumed to be nefarious.
5. It is legitimate to appeal to, and thus win en masse 90% of African-Americans of all classes over a rival liberal candidate, but it is absolutely illegitimate and a sign of a racialist strategy should someone else win two-thirds of that total of the white working-class vote—and, worse, acknowledge it as such.
6. John McCain can be written off as “losing his bearings” and wanting U.S. troops in Iraq for “100 years.” But to repeat the fact that a Hamas advisor has praised Obama, or that one of his own foreign policy advisors has met with officials of that terrorist organization, is “divisive,” “a distraction,” and the “old politics as usual.” McCain’s fuzzy references to Shiite/Sunni terrorist cooperation are signs of his senility. Obama’s repeated confusion over how many states there are in the Union (48? or is it 58?) is proof of exhaustion and lack of sleep.
7. Racial generalizations of any type in connection with the candidacy of Barack Obama are out of order. Barack Obama is free to characterize his grandmother as a “typical white person” and to lump the middle-class voters of Pennsylvania together as nativists, racists, and superstitious in their reliance on religion and guns. Only endemic white racism—never anger over Obama’s overt racialist stereotyping of the white middle class and his Reverend’s slurs—can explain that group’s rejection of him at the primary polls.
8. Substantial campaign contributions and the money nexus in politics are pernicious, proof of the “old politics” with a long history of distorting campaigns. The record fund-raising and enormous war-chest of Barack Obama are instead proof of a healthy American democracy and preclude any need for public campaign financing.
9. If a zealous pastor endorses John McCain, then his past illiberal talk about Catholicism demands a formal rebuke. If Barack Obama’s spiritual advisor of some twenty years addresses a meeting of a branch of the NAACP and announces that blacks and whites have genetically different brain chemistries and learning abilities, then one simply keeps quiet about it.
10. For conservatives to have suggested that the media was biased in favor of the Clintons in the 1990s was McCarthyesque. For Clintonites to suggest that it is now even more biased toward Obama is even more McCarthyesque.
This is the new political landscape that we are in, and those who object to it should expect to face hysterical outrage—in the manner of anyone who suggests that a messiah should at least try to practice what he preaches. And the problem is that those he will face as President—whether an Iranian religious nut, a Hamas terrorist, a Chinese communist, a Castro, Chavez, or North Korean extortionist—will follow no such Obama rules.
Someone has to be sitting in the Oval Office in January. Yet despite the madness on the left, influential people on the right still deride McCain.
True. McCain isn’t quite that Republicans want. But sometimes you take what you can get. And he’s the only one left.
On top of that, he’s being modest. This isn’t the time to be modest. I’ve heard he’s got a temper. I hope we see some fire.
And like waiting for the calvary or waiting for reinforcements to come, I’m hoping for some cool 527′s. Where’s Scaife or Pickens when you need them?
Obama’s story reminds me the story of the Roman demagogue Catiline who wanted to destroy the Roman Republic and the Senate becoming the absolute Master of the State. All dregs of society (slaves, insolvents, common criminals, gladiators, whores etc.) united to his host of rebels. All means were good to reach his goal, and no moral scruple could pull him up. Catiline, like now Obama that leads the host of dregs of American society, is one of an endless line of political adventurers, but all of them have and had a common believe that where others failed, they will succeed. It is an illusion, but without illusions and hallucinations the human History would be too boring. That is why we (I think), like spectators in a theatre, are watching this old comedy, where Obama-Arlecchino makes his acrobatic numbers and ends with “culo rotto”.
VDH — Brilliant summation! It’s frustrating that a candidate of so little substance should have such a grip on the public imagination that he can set these absurd standards. Republicans will have to break Obama’s spell. I would have thought the Rev. Wright material would have done so, but so far not.
Perhaps Obama is like a stone that must be struck repeatedly with no apparent effect until it finally shatters.
I am in complete agreement, so long as “extravagant spending” is added to Item 8′s “record fund-raising and enormous war-chest.”
“McCain’s fuzzy references to Shiite/Sunni terrorist cooperation are signs of his senility.”
I read McCain’s stumbles on this issue as being a serious gaffe. Not, as usually supposed, an error of saying something untrue…
…instead, I suspect that McCain’s understanding is accurate, but that it substantially came from classified sources.
That explains why McCain continues to rub salt in his wound. He is being attacked for uttering falsehoods, but actually was talking about things that were true…
An articulate leftist charismatic up against an ageing centrist charismatic? Who would you rather have a beer with? -I’m not so sure, but the last four elections have rewarded campaigns that aim for the middle. While Obama is smooth, his platform is way out in the left boondocks. And while the far left generally relies on the poor vote (along with the college-campus vote) Obama has made unsympathetic characterizations toward the majority of the poor who also happen to be white. The One who has hoped to focus on issues that do not include race has inadvertantly revealed that his sympathies are with the black half of his heritage and sees levels of nuance in the explanation of his prior pastor’s blurts while the shortcomings of his grandmother are plain and simple fodder for use in public speaking. In his vaunted speech on race, he also painted the poor white as an avaricious bunch with his lazy suggestion that they (all?) see their struggle as a zero-sum game. Now that the african-american community appears to have rallied around him in almost embarrasing numbers, his campaign is being forced toward race.
Very well stated Dr. Hanson,
For me, Obama has proven himself to a very skillful politician. He has also proven to me that he can only take us backwards and divide us. I say this not based on his words (which are usually elegant) but by his deeds, and also by whom he chooses to associate with, and by how he has handled the Wright affair.
Also, I don’t see any hope for a better America with Obama as President largely because after 16 years of marriage to Michelle there is no proof that he has been unable to give her hope for America’s future either. She currently and continually only speaks of victimization and grievance.
Martin Luther King taught me, taught us all that we should judge a man by the content of his character not the color of his skin. I believe in those words and that’s why I’m not voting for Obama.
Some observations about the “rules”:
These Liberal-leftists are obsessed to establish rules for the others, but not for themselves. They consider themselves free from any rule, even from their own when they deal with “unbelievers”. Liberal-leftist, like Muslim, “owes everything to the ummah (sect, nation, group), very little to others. He has no obligations, moral or spiritual, toward non-Muslims (read non-Liberals) as part of the human race … For example, sincerity is a universal human value, and we should exercise it in our relations with one another irrespective of creed and nationality. But in Islam (read Leftism), it is limited to Muslims (read Liberal-leftists)” (Ram Swarup “Understanding Islam through Hadis”: read “Understanding Liberal-leftism through Liberal media”).
So all non-Liberal-leftists are excluded from any human and moral consideration. Any action, even the most abominable and repugnant, will be devout and praiseworthy, if it is done in the name of an idea that is fixed as mandatory. This identity of “ethical” principles explains Liberal-leftists fervent support of Islamofascists and all kind of criminals that present themselves as fighters against “American Imperialism”.
I am not a member of this “liberal” sect, and therefore I keep to another rule, that is of the ancient Hindus: “One should behave towards another just as that other behaveth towards him. Even this is consistent with social polity. One may behave deceitfully towards him that behaveth deceitfully, but honestly towards him that is honest in his behaviour.” (Mahabharata V, 37)
So he who does “double count” of the ethical principles (for himself and for the others) excludes himself from any moral consideration. His “rules” turn against him as in Disney’s story of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Mickey Mouse puts on the magic cap believing to command the elements and sinks in the water of his grandiose dreams. I find only difficulty in imaging vulgar Obama with Mickey’s beautiful round ears.
mccain is something, but he’s not a charismatic. he’s no sycophant, either. perhaps that long in such wretched captivity creates a pure contrarian.
liberals have a hard time, these days, identifying totalitarianism when is comes in from the left. they took forever to acknowledge that stalin was a baaaad thing. some are remaining willfully obtuse about stalin and communism to this very day. this is partly why they are still stuck in between gears over islamofascism.
Trudy B. Taylor-
We contrarians think McCain is charismatic. That said we don’t entirely agree with him, of course.