Obama: Does Anyone See a Pattern Here?

By Alan Caruba

It’s getting more and more difficult to keep up with the number of people with whom Barack Obama has been or is associated who have either resigned, as in the case of James Johnson, selected to lead his search for a vice president on his ticket, or who he has to denounce and distance himself from in some fashion.

The most famous is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the leader of the Chicago church Obama attended for twenty years. First he rid himself of this troublesome pastor and then he resigned from the church. He later had to renounce the words of a priest delivering an oration in the same church who was uncharitable to his then-opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Earlier he referred to his grandmother as a typical white woman despite the fact that she took him in and raised him as her own. Then later he decided she had been an inspiration.

Putting distance between himself and a variety of shady characters such as ex-Weathermen, Willliam Ayres and Bernadine Dohrn, Obama fell back on the now-familiar excuse that these were bad people a long time ago. The same cannot be said of the recently convicted Chicago real estate magnate, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who helped bankroll his political career and find a million-dollar home for him.

We have from now until next November to learn more about Obama’s choice of friends, supporters, and advisors, but it’s already becoming difficult to keep track of those with bad attitudes or shady backgrounds.

Does anyone see a pattern here?

We are being asked to elect a man to be the next president of the United States who has demonstrated incredibly bad judgment in the choice of these people. Moreover, he has set himself to be a moral paragon ready to clean up Washington, D.C. by avoiding lobbyists and cracking down on evil capitalist corporations.

Has he put lobbyists on his own staff, said to be some 700 persons at this point, the most of any presidential candidate in the history of the nation? The short answer is yes. Lobbyists and others paid to influence legislation routinely move back and forth to work in the campaigns of candidates.

You cannot choose your family, but you can select the company you keep in church and in public and private life. Sooner or later, though, a lot of people are going to wonder about those choices, particularly in light of the continual necessity to get away from an ever increasing number of them.

Finally, I keep asking people who say they are going to vote for Obama what his policies are other than getting out of Iraq? Most of them have no real idea. One problem is the way he seems to reverse course from week to week. Obama may well be the most misunderstand candidate ever to run for public office. This is bad enough if he was a member of some small township council, but he is a Senator who wants to be a President.

A check of his voting record reveals a hardcore devotion to every liberal piece of legislation Democrats proposed. There isn’t even a hint of bipartisanship here.

Apparently he’s against millionaires and for blue collar workers, but the latter did not vote for him in large numbers during the Democrat primaries. Neither did women. People who own guns are surely not going to vote for him. Evangelicals are not likely either. A lot of very young, very ecstatic people are enthralled by him, but the young do not vote that much come Election Day.

Electing a President involves a lot more than mass hysteria. Character and judgment are the defining aspects of those we elect to lead the nation.

As the issue of Iraq fades and the rising cost of gasoline and food moves to the top of national priorities, Obama’s “solutions” to these problems provide no solution at all, nor will America’s enemies disappear or be enraptured by his eloquence.

The fatigue of keeping track of those whom he no longer calls friends, advisors, and supporters will begin to take its toll by November.