The real questions about Obama

This morning, the tag team of Charles Krauthammer and Peggy Noonan take on Barack Obama and the questions he won’t answer. From the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan writes a piece entitled “The View from Gate 14“;

Main thought. Hillary Clinton is not Barack Obama’s problem. America is Mr. Obama’s problem. He has been tagged as a snooty lefty, as the glamorous, ambivalent candidate from Men’s Vogue, the candidate who loves America because of the great progress it has made in terms of racial fairness. Fine, good. But has he ever gotten misty-eyed over . . . the Wright Brothers and what kind of country allowed them to go off on their own and change everything? How about D-Day, or George Washington, or Henry Ford, or the losers and brigands who flocked to Sutter’s Mill, who pushed their way west because there was gold in them thar hills? There’s gold in that history.

John McCain carries it in his bones. Mr. McCain learned it in school, in the Naval Academy, and, literally, at grandpa’s knee. Mrs. Clinton learned at least its importance in her long slog through Arkansas, circa 1977-92.

Mr. Obama? What does he think about all that history? Which is another way of saying: What does he think of America? That’s why people talk about the flag pin absent from the lapel. They wonder if it means something. Not that the presence of the pin proves love of country – any cynic can wear a pin, and many cynics do. But what about Obama and America? Who would have taught him to love it, and what did he learn was loveable, and what does he think about it all?

Another challenge. Snooty lefties get angry when you ask them to talk about these things. They get resentful. Who are you to question my patriotism? But no one is questioning his patriotism, they’re questioning its content, its fullness.

And in this corner, Charles Krauthammer, writing “Obama’s Distractions” in the Washington Post;

Because Obama understands that the real threat to his candidacy is less Hillary Clinton and John McCain than his own character and cultural attitudes. He came out of nowhere with his autobiography already written, then saw it embellished daily by the hagiographic coverage and kid-gloves questioning of a supine press. (Which is why those “Saturday Night Live” parodies were so devastatingly effective.)

Then came the three amigos: Tony Rezko, the indicted fixer; Jeremiah Wright, the racist reverend; William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. And then Obama’s own anthropological observation that “bitter” working-class whites cling to guns and religion because they misapprehend their real class interests.

In the now-famous Pennsylvania debate, Obama had extreme difficulty answering questions about these associations and attitudes. The difficulty is understandable. Some of the contradictions are inexplicable. How does one explain campaigning throughout 2007 on a platform of transcending racial divisions, while in that same year contributing $26,000 to a church whose pastor incites race hatred?

Obama claims the questions that have been put to him the last few weeks are “trivial”, but they’re central. Maybe his past missteps are fine for a Senator whose promises get diluted among the 99 others in the Senate, but we’re electing a president, a person has to LEAD the country, sometimes solely by the force of his will without caving into interests or personal preferences. A president has to do the right thing – every time. And how should we make the selection of that leader when his only discussion of himself has been limited to vacuous platitudes about “change” and “hope”?

Obama’s supporters are only interested in what Obama can do FOR them, with total disregard of what it’ll cost the rest of the nation. They’re no different from the Big Oil interests or the NRA or the myriad of other special interests headquartered on K Street. And he’s poised to fullfil all his promises to them. But the rest of us, the grown ups, what to know what he’ll be doing the rest of the time he’s not pandering to the mind numbed Obazombies.

If he can’t answer the questions we have over the next seven months, how can we consider him for the job?

Category: Politics, Society