Obama’s Quandary
- 04.04.2008 - 7:51 AMMargaret Carlson contends that Barack Obama has made two big errors in his campaign. One was failing to recognize the impact of Rev. Wright’s incendiary language The other was his failure at bowling. She makes a good case that, in working-class, primarily white suburbs, Obama “is having a hard time passing himself off as ordinary folk” and his 37 (a really abysmal score) just made it worse.
One might argue, as many of us here have, that his association with Wright was more than a failure to anticipate public reaction: it was a moral and intellectual failing. (Juan Williams, as he has before, explains this in today’s Wall Street Journal with searing clarity.) Yet she has a point: does Obama lack a “feel” for ordinary voters’ sensibilities?
Well, of course. His life experience is utterly unlike the average voter’s. On his journey from Hawaii to Indonesia to Hawaii to Harvard, he probably ran into a lot of critiques of American culture and not very much bowling. He hasn’t, it looks like, developed an internal compass that warns him when something may be offensive or off-putting to ordinary Americans.
So while Clinton has morphed from a former First Lady and Yale-educated feminist lawyer to a champion of working class voters (”her ‘Rocky’ doggedness has grabbed the sympathy of people so unlike her yet drawn by what looks like a hard-luck story”), Obama is still grasping for a connection to the people whose votes will be critical in November.
That is the downside of continually criticizing your country and fellow countrymen. It makes it that much harder to turn around and tell them you’re one of them.
| »Back to Contentions | »Back to Commentary |
April 4th, 2008 at 9:00 AM
The left has internalized the anti-American criticism that saturates the academy and is particularly virulent in the English departments and social sciences. The more elite the university, the greater the problem. As the beneficiary, if that is the right word, of this sort of education, BO is particularly prone to its analystical failings and rhetorical excesses.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:07 AM
With his campaign coffers bursting with money, it’s time for Barack to hire a personal bowling coach.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:44 AM
The problem for Obama is not that he is unlike most Americans. The best political leaders are not necessarily the ones who are like “average Americans.” Was Reagan like an average American after spending decades in Hollywood, for goodness sake?
I personally do not want a leader who is average anything. Neither do most Americans although they may not say it that way. You want somebody who has high integrity, intelligence, relevant experience to run a superpower and very good judgment. Average people don’t have any of these things, because if they did they wouldn’t be average.
What makes Obama so out of whack with most people is that he has immersed himself for 20 years in two subcultures - academic left and inner-city black - whose basic assumptions about America go directly against almost everybody else’s. This is the essence of his problem. He now must draw a picture of himself for the rest of the society that is largely artificial and contrived in order to cover up his real self of the previous 20 years (although that probably wasn’t real either). If people thought Hillary was a phony, Obama is much, much worse. He is a much better phony and therefore much more deceitful than Hillary with her petty, see-through lies.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:21 AM
Come on!
Obama is a Third Worlder trying to pass as an American.
He is tethered to little, if anything, of America’s traditions, culture, & beliefs except in an artifical way, but he’s steeped in Thrid World multiculturalism and the victimization culture of the inner city ghettos.
Hillary’s argument is correct. If B. Hussein Obama wins the Democratic nomination, it’ll be McCain by a landslide. Obama will even sink many marginal Democrats further down the ticket.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:56 PM
The commie media will back him no matter what he saya or does or has done in the past. The things going for him are he is black, liberal democrat hats America wants to give away every thing and the liberals esp white liberals want to show the world how they are not prejudice and nned to expiate it to salv their conscious.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:57 PM
I don’t think I can add anything to that, Ellen S. Very astute.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:42 PM
Ellen S, I don’t disagree with you, but perhaps I could add some clarity to your comments. I agree in that I don’t want some regular Joe Schmo to be our President. However, I feel better about the person at least being able to RELATE to the Joe Schmos of the country. A friend of mine had a connection with the Bush daughters and ran into them in DC. They invited him to the WH for dinner. I asked my friend what GWB was like and he said that GWB was a totally normal guy. He seems that way to me. He’s a big baseball fan, likes to work on his ranch when he gets away to Crawford, etc….
So while he is above the norm (as all Presidents are) in regards to the qualities you mentioned above, he can relate to the rest of us. Maybe the best way to say it is that he is above the average American professionally, but is the same as most of us personally. Unlike someone like Obama and John Kerry, who are above the average person professionally, but they are also above the rest of us personally too - or such is their demeanor. That’s a difference that voters tend to notice I think.
April 4th, 2008 at 1:44 PM
The most disturbing thing about Obama is not even that he “doesn’t get it,” but that he doesn’t understand that he needs to “get it,” and has consequently surrounded himself with people who won’t tell him what he needs to hear.
April 4th, 2008 at 2:00 PM
It’s true, Hillary’s doggedness has conquered the gender issue. Whereas Obama’s forked tongue on the racial issue has opened up a can of worms that was supposed to be in the garbage already. We have made racial progress and I believe Americans will refuse to risk going back to the old divisions preached by Rev. Wrong. I just hope they get clear about that in time to nominate “Rocky.”
April 4th, 2008 at 3:46 PM
Stop dancing around the truth of this. The reason he can sit in church and listen to hate-filled, racist rants for 20 years without walking out is because he is a racist. Duh. A sophistsicated manner and a good vocabulary is just camoflage. The only reason this fraud isn’t shredded and driven out of the race for this is because he’s black, and black racism isn’t just tolerated by the black community - and by our poisonous media culture - it is accepted as the norm. The Wright tapes exposed for the world to see what those 8500 ( ! ) congregants think and feel every day. That’s why they go and listen to him every week. That’s the plain truth of it, ugly though it be. Grow up. Face it. Deal with it.