Other Candidates Have Come As Far

The Weekly Standard: Enthusiastic Supporters Naively Put Obama On A Pedestal

(Weekly Standard)  This column was written by Dean Barnett

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During Fox News’ Coverage of last night's Pennsylvania primary, the Keystone State's favorite son and prominent Barack Obama supporter Senator Bob Casey Jr. made an appearance. Like many Obama supporters, Casey didn't shy away from hyperbole when discussing his candidate. Referring to Obama, Casey flatly stated, "No candidate's ever come so far."

Perhaps, if one were inclined to be charitable to Casey, one could forgive his apparent forgetfulness regarding Abraham Lincoln, who merely emerged from a log cabin to save the Union. By any objective measure, Lincoln at the very least "came as far" as Obama.

But you don't have to look back to relatively ancient American history to find candidates who have come as far as Obama. Obama's journey is remarkable, but it's not particularly anomalous. Obama grew up in a middle class household and attended his state's most exclusive boarding school. Those facts don't diminish how far he has come -- anyone who comes as close to the presidency as Obama now is has by definition "come far."

But in recent history, other leaders came farther. Bill Clinton, like Obama, grew up in a non-traditional household. Additionally, Clinton had to deal with poverty and an abusive step-father. Ronald Reagan grew up in grinding poverty and without the advantage of a world class education from the time he was out of short pants. In other words, every president of the last generation not named Bush has "come so far" as Barack Obama.

Admittedly, no one has yet accused Bob Casey of being the shrewdest or most thoughtful member of the Senate. But his tiny piece of hyperbole fits in well with the kind of stuff Obama supporters typically sling. In their telling, Obama is something brand new, and the inability of the as-yet-unconverted to acknowledge Obama's uniqueness speaks poorly of them.

Chances are, this enthusiasm engenders a fair amount of hostility from people who have yet to accept Obama as their political savior. Given the fact that late deciding voters in Pennsylvania broke for Hillary Clinton in a big way, there's the distinct possibility that this consistent strain of rhetoric isn't just turning off people who oppose Obama, but also undecided voters.

But there's still a bigger problem with the Obama supporters who have placed him on a pedestal as something completely new. As we near the end of the primary season, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama is merely a politician, a fellow who chases votes for a living. And there's nothing new about that.

Several months ago, I dusted off my rolodex from the 1990's and began calling people who had attended law school with Barack Obama. (Because of my prior profession, I had made the acquaintance of dozens of Obama's former classmates.)

The results of my mini survey surprised me. Everyone I spoke with knew Obama. Even more surprisingly, everyone I spoke with adored him. Not a single person had a negative thing to say about him. And yes, there were some conservatives in the sample group.

The uniformly pro-Obama sentiments were surprising. Law schools are full of future lawyers, and needless to say many lawyers are small and petty people. Since Obama did exceptionally well at Harvard Law, graduating magna cum laude and serving as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law Review, you would have expected his accomplishments to engender some hostility among his classmates. But they didn't.

In the past, I've taken the results of my personal poll as an assurance that Barack Obama is a decent guy. Harvard Law School is a pretty intimate place, and there's no way anyone could fool not only so many people but apparently all the people over a three year period. As this campaign has wore on and Obama has progressively become a less attractive figure, I still take comfort from his former classmates' high regard for him.

But there's another side to such uniform popularity. Remaining in virtually everyone's good graces requires a fair amount of work. It requires a form of day-to-day politicking that most people eschew. People who achieve such popularity have to work at it.

They also have to be not particularly choosy about who they pal around with. They have to be non-judgmental. One thing we've seen in Barack Obama's past associations is a surfeit of non-judgmentalism. Most people would decline to adopt someone like Jeremiah Wright as their crazy uncle. Still more would refuse to have anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist like William Ayers. But Obama apparently never takes a stand with such individuals and, as we've seen, never cuts ties with them. In this way, he's much like the typical politician who feeds on the fondness of others in a way that would be foreign to normal people.

Because Obama’s champions in the media have determined that he is unlike any politician who has come before him, no one has bothered to make a rather obvious comparison between Obama and Ronald Reagan. A few months ago, when some courageous scribes had the unmitigated chutzpah to notice a significant fall-off in Obama's performance when he didn't have a teleprompter feeding him the words to say, the left protested in outrage. Since then, it has become conventional wisdom to note that Obama struggles when speaking extemporaneously. The Obama campaign itself has acknowledged this fact by making Obama unavailable to the press and canceling any future debates with Hillary Clinton after his calamitous performance in Pennsylvania's last tussle.

Of course, Ronald Reagan had a similar pattern in his later public performances. Unfortunately for the Gipper, the press wasn't quite so pliant. The media loved to point out how Reagan's efforts during Michael Deaver-orchestrated set-pieces differed from his stumbling performances when he had to speak off the cuff at press conferences. Late in his second term, the press relished the chance to describe in some detail how much Reagan had to prepare for press conferences, lest he (in their telling) make a fool of himself. Reagan's media critics used his relative struggles with extemporaneous speaking as prima facie evidence that Reagan was a dullard.

Of course, there is a major difference between Reagan and Obama. Before entering presidential politics, Reagan had spent decades refining and expressing his political philosophy. Obama's political philosophy remains something of a cipher. Often, Obama's views seem like they're half-baked, and that Obama hasn't carefully considered the issues that he expounds on. When Obama discussed the capital gains tax at the Pennsylvania debate, he came across as surprisingly ill-informed. His promise to tour the world and chat up our enemies sounded more like a knee-jerk reaction than a policy he arrived at after careful reflection.

And then there's the frequent whiff of political opportunism that Obama's posturing gives off. For much of the campaign, Obama posed as a tireless enemy of free trade deals. Then, when amongst friends in San Francisco, he suggested that hostility to free trade is merely the product of hard times. Earlier, an Obama advisor had made a trip to Canada where he urged our hockey-breathing trade partners to not believe Obama's campaign rhetoric on trade issues.

Such antics aren't in themselves a hanging offense. Americans expect their politicians to opportunistically pursue office. The problem is that Obama's supporters insist he is something different, a trans-partisan figure who has entered the political arena only with the loftiest of motives.

Who knows? Perhaps they're right. But one can reasonably doubt that they're correct until proven otherwise. The conclusion that Obama is a vote-chasing machine like other office-seekers is not a manifestly unreasonable one.

The credulity of the most ardent Obama supporters is unbecoming. Their hostility to those who refuse to share their credulity is even less attractive. Yet perhaps the ultimate irony is that their shrill advocacy actually damages their candidate. As this long campaign continues to reveal Obama as a traditional politician, his candidacy suffers from the comparison between the mythical Obama who purportedly practices a new form of politics and the real Obama, a politician who pursues office with the same zeal and in much the same manner as his predecessors and contemporaries.

[majhik]

Obama did not grow up in a middle class household. he lived in Hawaii with his grandparents, and single mother. His grand father worked as a furniture salesman and his grandmother as a bank clerk. His mother herself was a teacher who worked mostly overseas in countries like Indonesia where Obama lived with her and his step-dad for a few years. He had limited contact with his biological dad, and had to learn the ropes of manhood for himself. He went to an ordinary high school in Hawaii upon his return, had ordinary friends, but had an extraordinary talent, which is why the people now consider him the man best suited to lead this country.

Please stop spreading lies. This is not only bad reporting, it is false and wreckless. The people deserve better than journalistic manipulation. Or is it shocking incompetence? I''m not sure. They went from falsely calling him a Muslim, revealing their bigotry, to calling him an out-of-touch elitist. Quite a change of tune wouldn''t you say. For once, just do your jobs. Non-slanted reportage. I''d be happy with that.

[mysycophant]

Man, now Obama sucks because he''s just so well liked by the folks he went to school with, liberal and conservative.
Give it a rest you hack.
Isn''t it becoming more and more obvious how hard people have to try to bash the man?
Next time, why not save everyone some time and pare it down to "I just hate Barack Obama- so there!"
Pathetic.

[buckglo]

Majhik , IF YOU ARE SO GOOD ON THE COMPUTER . FIND OUT SOME REAL FACTS ABOUT OBAMA ! WHAT I MEAN , LOOK UP THE YEARS THAT HE RAN FOR U.S SENATOR . 2004 , YOU WILL READ THAT . THE REPUBLICAN CANIDATE SENATOR KEYS . WAS GOING THROUGH A DIVORCE TRIAL . THEY WANTED HIM TO PUT FACTS ABOUT HIS CHILD IN THE PAPER ! HE QUIT , THE REBULICANS BROUGHT A BLACK CARPET BAGGER FROM D.C.

THIS MAN WAS NOT KNOWN , ALSO HE ONLY HAD 3 MONTHS TO CAMPAIN ! OBAMA GETS A FREE RIDE IN ! ALSO WHEN HE RAN FOR STATE SENATOR . THE CANIDATE QUIT BECAUSE OF A REASON . HE CHALAGED OTHERS ON HIS TICKET . GIVING HIM THE FIRST FREE RIDE !

I DON''T FEAL THAT HE SHOULD HAVE ANOTHER IN PRESIDENT ! I''M FROM PA , WHEN PA SAW WHAT HE SAID ABOUT THE ONES WITH THEIR GUNS & RELIGION . THAT WAS WHY PA WENT HILLARY , 63 % .

OBAMA THOUGHT THERE WAS NO REPORTERS , SO HE SAYS THAT TO PEOPLE AT A MONEY RISING . BECAUSE , HE DON''T THINK ABOUT THE NEW TECK THINGS . LIKE MY SISTER SAID , HE IS NOT BRIGHT ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT !

THIS IS JUST ONE OF THE THINGS THAT SHOWS YOU . THAT HE IS NOT FIT TO BE THE PRESIDENT .

ALSO HE IS NOT POOR NOW . HE OWNES A 3 MILLON DOLLAR HOME . MY SISTER SAID WHY DIDN''T HE TAKE IT A LITTLE LOWER & PAY HIS SCHOOL LOANS OFF ? ALSO HE MADE SURE TO MAKE THAT REV WRITE TO RETIRE , REV WRITE LIVES IN A 3 MILLON DOLLAR HOME , HA !

[dewardbowles]

The American public wants to hear about what is going to be done about the wars, the economy, health care and illegal immigration. Not this tripe.

Obama in 08.

[truthyness]

Either Obama has come far or the rest of us

have stepped back a bit. I tend to think

its the latter.

[inaru-2009]

Obama lived destitute in Indonesia with his mom, the first to get an advanced degree in his family. Working toward that degree with him, she got food stamps. He went to private schools in Hawaii with scholarships!

Obama''s aide didn%u2019t go to Canada, a Canadian came here! Hillary''s aide did go to Canada, first, to assure them Hillary%u2019s talk against NAFTA was for the primaries.

His supporters%u2019 enthusiasm turns people off? After earmarking millions of taxpayer $$ in exchange for political donations, she still has to pay people to phonebank and canvas!

Supporters%u2019 enthusiasm made millions of phone calls to convince voters, again to make sure those people get out and actually vote. That enthusiasm wears out lots of shoe leather, knocking on doors in all 50 states and the territories. It''s also responsible for almost doubling the level of registered Democrats.

Reagan came up in the world from poverty as an attractive white male actor in Hollywood. Bill had it rough, as an attractive white man in Arkansas. If he''d been an attractive black man in Arkansas, you could compare them. Or did that Clinton Harlem apartment and office, that taxpayers pay more for than the living and office expenses of Jimmy Carter and George Bush I combined, fool ya?

The enthusiasm is because Obama has fought for ethics in public service, for open government, and has made it possible for us to trace donations to earmarks - read the Rolling Stone May issue, "Hillary Clinton, Queen of Pork".

[oldlisa]

This is a perfect example of how MSM is becoming irrelevent. Bill Clinton''s childhood wasn''t the best but neither was mine. Barack Obama''s father was also an alcoholic and he was the first African American at the school(not private boarding school) he attended in Hawaii. His grandparents who raised him were working class.

As for Abraham Lincoln since you have to go back about 150 years in history to find such an amazing candidate, yes he was remarkable and came very far.

However, if CBS had existed back then he probably never would have been elected. The MSM would have found him unelectable based on his background and looks and slavery might still exist today.

The question shouldn''t be how far Obama has come. It should be how low can CBS go.

[melia8]

I don''t think anyone you could call from my law school would trash me. I guess that means I call them every day to make sure my "approval rating" remains high. You ability to draw such a negative conclusion from such an innocuous -- even positive -- sign of one''s congeniality is truly remarkable. Your "column" borders on the absurd and I am surprised CBS has given it the company''s imprimatur.

[melia8]

I don''t think anyone you could call from my law school would trash me. I guess that means I call them every day to make sure my "approval rating" remains high. You ability to draw such a negative conclusion from such an innocuous -- even positive -- sign of one''s congeniality is truly remarkable. Your "column" borders on the absurd and I am surprised CBS has given it the company''s imprimatur.

[kanobi11]

Interesting...

I see no facts in this article, but series of smears and uncertified fabricates. From the issue on NAFTA, the ABC debate(please check the capital gain issue again - You are wrong), the reason why the 27th April debate was canceled (I see you are not aware that the Clinton''s had canceled a previous debate slated for the 19th April), to the personality of Obama, I can say you are clearly on the wrong. But then you need to make up a story after calling up Obama''s former colleagues at school, to find a negative piece to support your already smeared-up disposition on Obama.

Clearly it''s not the American people that has lost enthusiasm for Obama, it''s people like the author of this piece who is yet to understand that our current policies needs retooling and restructuring to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. Moving on, I will suggest, you do your research before going to the press. It''s indeed writings like these that are divisive of our union, not the vision of Obama for the union. Oh btw, I am not an Obama supporter, but I look at the facts, not the spins from the MSM and op-eds of this sort.... Too bad...