Barack Obama is struggling to contain his anger and frustration over the constant barrage of questions about his character and judgment, his wife has revealed.How nice! He's sacrificing his ulcers for you to be safe from the future!
Michelle Obama lifted the lid on the irritation felt by the leading Democrat candidate for the White House at the way anti-American outbursts by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have dogged his campaign.
He is said to be itching to turn all his fire on John McCain, the Republican candidate, who is benefiting most from Mr Obama's protracted tussle with Hillary Clinton.
Mrs Obama told a rally in Durham, North Carolina, on Friday that only her husband's desire to change US politics had helped him to control his feelings: "Barack is always thinking three steps ahead – what do we need to do to make change."
Of course, it would be really nice if, instead of hiding what he's plannning, he actually sat down and told us specifically what he intends to do, how he intends to exercise his judgement and...
Oops! There's that word "judgement" again!
What is it that Obama is not getting? Which part of "he was my pastor for twenty years" is inconsistent with weighing heavily in how people are going to look at his ability to find counsel when things are a little above his head?
I watched Obama on the Today Show, with Matt Lauer asking some softball questions, and Obama kind of came off as lost already when Lauer asked the same thing that Charles Krauthammer asked: "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?...As if the character and beliefs of a man who would be president are less important than the 'issues.' "
These are more important issues than might at first glance seem, some of these questions. If John Kerry had been vociferous early on in his defense against the Swift Boat smears, the 2004 election might have been very different: it would have been far harder for Bush to paint Kerry as "out of touch with real Americans, this elitist product of Ivy League colleges who took the easy way out in Nam so he could windsurf off Martha's Vineyard during the summer recess."
Nevermind that the actual picture of Kerry was very different.
See, here's the thing: since 1960, there have been only four elected Democratic presidents. Of the four, three out-Bubbaed the Bubba the Republicans put up against him!And even JFK was a certified war hero who had a strong case to be made that he was a man of the people.
A Democrat who can be shown to be out of touch with the American people is going to lose a general election, period. Further, the elections of 2006 showed that Democrats made the greatest gains in red states and red territories running on a centrist, populist platform of guns, spending, and judgement/values/religion.
None of which Obama has frankly embraced fully, except religion, but that issue's now in peril from Wright. Even his ridiculous stance on the gas tax, which I might normally agree with him on, is running the risk of coming off as pedagoguery, a lecture to us peons from our betters.
I believe where Blogtopia (© Skippy the Bush Kangaroo) gets it wrong is in believing that after eight years of George W. Bush, the nation is ready to swing around completely.
It's not. The country's mood is on a pendulum, not a roundabout, which means we'll have to content ourselves with small steps in a conservative country where people DO have guns and DO go to church and if you want to be elected nationally, you damned well better not poo-poo that!
Or lose your temper at it. Or send your wife out to ask for our pity.
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