The Political Psychology of Barack Obama

Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the CUNY Graduate Center, offers an outstanding examination of Barack Obama's political psychology at the new Political Science Quarterly.

Renshon's article is a penetrating, rigorous peace of research, and he's fair in analyzing both Obama and John McCain, laying out the implications of both candidates' psychological profiles for the American presidency during the next fours years. Naturally, I'm interested in Barack Obama, not only because I think he's far outside the mainstream of society, but also because he's such a favorite to win on Tuesday.

The introduction to Renshon's discussion of Obama is startling in its demonstration of the Democratic nominee's unbridled ambition:

To call Barack Obama's political rise meteoric may be the true definition of understatement. Born in 1961 into a racially mixed family, he spent his early life in Indonesia and Hawaii and graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He worked in New York for four years, first for a business consulting firm and then for a public interest research group. He then moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years before entering Harvard Law School in 1988. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review in his first year, and as its president in his second year at the age of 28. He graduated in 1991 and then returned to Chicago where, in 1993, he joined the firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland at the age of 32. In 1994, at the age of 33 his book, Dreams of My Father, was published. In 1996, he won election to the Illinois State Senate and served there from 1996 to 2004, ran for a seat in the House of Representatives in 2002 and lost, then ran successfully for a U.S. Senate seat in 2004. He announced his candidacy for the presidency in February 2007 at the age of 41. The Senator has been on a very fast track indeed.

A little further down in the text, Renshon cites Craig Robinson, Michelle Obama's brother, who in an interview in 1989 relayed that Barack Obama stated early-on, and surprisingly, that he wanted to run for the presidency.

Readers should know that I read Renshon's, High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and the Politics of Ambition, during Bill Clinton's impeachment, and I was really struck then by the single most powerful variable in Clinton's self-destruction: blinding ambition. We cannot know what will happen in an Obama administration, but Renshon's discussion of Obama's drive reminds me not only of Bill Clinton's, but of Richard Nixon's as well.

Renshon provides additional background information on Obama's upbringing and training, etc., but I found his discussion of Obama's temperament rather troubling:

Calm, tempered, cool, deliberative, detached, laid-back, and serious are all terms that have been used to describe Obama by people who have known him at various periods in his life....

Obama's calm external demeanor leads to the question of what he does with the normal passions that animate people. I raise this point not to suggest that buried underneath that calm exterior is a seething cauldron of intense emotions, but to simply ask the question as it has been stated. One hint of an answer is that Obama's seemingly detached equanimity does not mean that he is incapable of tough, even harsh attacks on others. Of Hillary Clinton he said that she “says and does whatever it takes to win the next election.”

Toward Republicans, he has been even harsher. In a 1995 interview speaking of the success of Christian conservatives in building communities he said, “It's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia.” Eight years later, in speaking of Republicans more generally, he said, “What I'm certain about is that people are disenchanted with a highly ideological Republican Party that believes tax cuts are the answer to every problem, and lack of regulation and oversight is always going to generate economic growth, and unilateral intervention around the world is the best approach to foreign policy”....

Another question that arises with regard to Obama's stylistic equanimity is its impact on his decision making and judgment. Obama has repeatedly touted the high quality of his judgment and rests that case on what he sees as his prescient opposition to the war; “on the most important foreign policy issue of a generation, I got it right and others did not.” It is somewhat unclear, however, just how strategically accurate the basis of his opposition was. He argued that Saddam Hussein posed no imminent threat to the United States or its neighbors, but what about a gathering threat? His opposition was premised on the view that Saddam could be contained; others made strong arguments that containment was failing. That argument rests on plausible analysis that either side could marshal, not on the superior judgment of Obama's side of the debate.

Obama also framed his criticism of the war with direct personal attacks on members of the administration and their motives. “I am opposed to the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income—to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.” So is the basis of his good judgment prescient geo-strategic analysis or a progressive's animus toward a conservative agenda?

This passage reveals (1) that much of Obama's explicit message of pragmatism and post-partisanship is mostly a shrewdly calculated political choreography geared to winning the office of the presidency (which doesn't lend much credibility to the "change" mantra we've heard all year). But (2) the latter part of the quote is particularly informative, in that it squares with the record of Obama's positions on the Iraq war: As Peter Wehner has detailed to devastating effect, Obama supported sending more troops when the war was going badly - and while the Bush administration's policy was in disarray - but then opposed the surge of troops in 2007, precisely when the administration had changed course strategically, and when security in Iraq had improved to the point that the American goal of leaving behind a stable and victorious nation came into focus.

Thus, while Barack Obama's cool temperament may indeed serve him well as a political asset, his deliberate style and calm detachment serve to mask a much larger decision-making liability that could put national security at risk.

Renshon continues next with a discussion of Obama's substantive political positions and objective ideological orientation. Obama is something of an ideological chameleon (he's an accomplished flip-flopper on the issues), and while his bedrock positions are found to the far left of the political spectrum, his willingness to compromise his positions for rank political interest elicits the conundrum of not so much "where's the beef?" but what the heck does he stand for?, to borrow from Renshon's formulation.

Probably the most problematic issue for Barack Obama is the Olympus-level expectations he's set and the unlikeliness that he'll be able to meet them.

Renshon explains:

Among the most important and obvious skills that sustain Obama's success and ambition is his ability to deliver speeches that his adherents view as soaring and inspiring. His speech on race relations, for example, was hailed, even exalted. “One for the history books,” “brilliant,” and “unequivocal and healing” are some of the accolades heaped upon it. This praise reflects the extraordinary rhetorical skill and power that Obama can bring to bear.

There can be no doubt about the power of Obama's oratory to inspire his followers. His rhetorical skills have been noted and praised by persons from both sides of the political aisle, although there are some dissents. Some have pointed out that his charisma has the trappings of a “cult of personality.” Others, both on the left and the right, have pointed to the gap between “inspiration and substance.”94 Some have wondered whether eloquence is “overrated”....

Obama has the unique ability to offer doctrinaire liberal positions in a way that avoids the stridency of many recent Democratic candidates....

If elected, Obama will be among the youngest presidents ever to serve in that office. His resume will also be among the thinnest of those who have served. This being the case it is not easy to reconcile the record that does exist, as the most liberal Senator in that chamber in 2007, with the primary rhetorical emphasis of his campaign, which is pragmatic but transformational change. Even those last two terms seem contradictory, but it is in the gap between Obama's messianic rhetoric and his moderate, pragmatic political persona that some real presidential leadership contradictions come plainly into view.

Obama has made wide use of soaring rhetoric often of apocryphal and biblical dimensions. Building to the rhetorical climax in the speech in which he claimed victory in his quest for the Democratic Party's nomination, he said,

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal...

Close your eyes and you can easily imagine Obama as a new world prophet forecasting a spiritual and political awakening. Indeed that is how many of his adherents view him and herein is an enormous problem for him, should he gain the presidency [bold emphasis added].

This is an extremely fascinating passage, because the implications of this discussion not only confirm many of the most common criticisms of "The One" from the blogosphere, but because Obama's expectations are so lofty that the actual job of governing will be tremendously complicated by the impossible rhetoric.

If the Democrats regain and expand their congressional majority - particularly with a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate - there will be little in the way of structural impediments to prevent the passage of landmark legislation firmly in the tradition of Great Society liberalism and beyond. Such a development will pacify the Democratic Party's radical base, but it will alienate GOP partisans who will be both marginalized and disabused of Obama's high-minded calls to bipartisanship.

In other words, for personal and political reasons, a sweeping Democratic victory will essentially nullify Obama's two-year campaign of post-partisan transformation. By seeking to transcend national divisions, an Obama presidency would risk alienating core constituencies who feel desperately aggrieved and damaged by eight years of Republican rule. But by repudiating his own claims to be a healer and uniter, Obama will radicalize the other side by confirming the expectations conservatives have had all along for a Democratic candidate baptized in the left's revolution of rights and redistribution of the post-1960s era.

Revolutionaries Must Be Community Organizers

Zombietime has published excerpts from Osawatomie, a publication of the Weather Underground in 1975:

There are serious antiracist organizers building a revolutionary base in working class communities — in neighborhoods, shops, mills, mines, social institutions. There are those who are working among women, GI’s, vets, prisoners, among youth, students and the unemployed in every part of the country. There are some who have been at it for years and some who have just begun. Thousands more are needed; and each particular piece of work will have to be linked up into a whole. We need to out-organize the sophisticated and well-financed forces of George Meany, Louise Day Hicks, Ronald Reagan, George Wallace and Albert Shanker. Organizers need to crush this reactionary leadership with a revolutionized torrent of people.

There are more photo-captures and transcriptions at the link. I especially like this passage:

DON’T MOURN, ORGANIZE!

Now comes a time of decision for the left. Can we overcome the small points that divide us? Can we come together to confront the enemy? Can we build a revolutionary practice firmly rooted among masses of people? Can we transform our lives in order to play our part in the developing storm?

These are the questions that press in on the left today. These are the questions because of this contradiction: millions of people are suffering from the crisis and conflicts generated by the imperialist system, and yet the left is small, dispersed and divided, not a visible force in the lives of the people. Revolutionary politics do not have a strong voice. The left is not situated to fulfill its historic mission — to focus and lead and make sense of mass discontent — to carry the present situation to its furthest limits.

...the system itself is inhuman, and socialism is a real alternative; the energy crisis is the fault of Rockefeller and the oil companies, not the Arab people; unemployment is caused by capitalism not “illegal aliens” stealing jobs; war in Indochina or the Mideast is part of the problem, not the solution; political and social action can change things.

Zombietime notes that this edition of Osawatomie was written just as Weathermen like William Ayers were making the transition from terrorism to “working from the inside” for revolution.

Meanwhile, there's no word yet on whether Ayers will be getting an assistant secretary post in an Obama Department of Education.

Proposition 8 Preserves Traditional Social Institution

Here's the new ad buy from the Yes on 8 campaign:

See also Maggie Gallagher's essay at today's Los Angeles Times:

Marriage is a union of husband and wife because these kinds of unions are distinctive and necessary to the whole society.

If Californians vote no on Proposition 8, the great historical cross-cultural meaning of marriage will be replaced by the new government dogma on which gay marriage is based: There is no difference between same-sex unions and opposite-sex unions; anyone who thinks otherwise is just a bigot.

Our children will imbibe this new dogma in hundreds of ways, and the old marriage idea -- marriage matters because children need a mother and a father, long for a mother and a father, deserve a mother and a father -- will be publicly discredited as discriminatory.

A victory for Proposition 8 will not deprive same-sex couples of a single practical right or benefit under California state laws. Civil unions will continue to provide legal protections for same-sex families. But the people of California will reclaim from four state Supreme Court justices the right to define marriage as a union of husband and wife, for generations to come.

The Known Unknowns on Racial Voting

I don't normally cite Bob Herbert of the New York Times, but he makes a good point today on the unknown shape of potential racial voting Tuesday, i.e., the possibility of a Bradley Effect:

The most significant factor vying with the economy in this election is also the greatest unknown: the race issue. The election would likely be a runaway if not for Senator Obama’s race. He’s leading, but the question is whether the poll numbers accurately reflect what is going on with the electorate.

That's fair enough, and Herbert notes that polling experts discount the likelihood of anti-Obama racial voting (and recall that some have suggested that race may actually help Obama among guilty whites).

Still, check out Mark Danner's discussion of the issue at the New York Review:

It is no accident that the largest single polling disparity between McCain and Obama voters, apart from race itself, is age. Obama's candidacy is in large part a rebellion of the young, for whom race has much less saliency, and one of the great indeterminacies of the election is how many young people will turn out to vote. Another is whether the increase in those who will vote for Obama in part because of his race—most notably, African-Americans, who are registering in large numbers—will offset or exceed those who will vote against him in part for the same reason. This immensely complex question, which goes far beyond the debate over the so-called "Bradley Effect" (the disparity between what voters tell pollsters and what they actually do in the voting booth), turns at its heart on whether race can be used effectively as a kind of "ignition switch" to make of Obama, for a critical subset of voters in a handful of critical states, a figure too culturally "different" and "foreign" and "elite" to seem in the end a plausible leader.

The potential is certainly there, for one sees persistent signs of it in everyday life. "I could never vote for Obama"—I've heard variations of this line a great many times over the last few weeks, most recently from a waiter who noticed me paging through the newspaper's political coverage. "I could never vote for a Muslim," he went on, smiling apologetically; and what struck me about the ensuing exchange was my inability to convince this man, whom I've known for years, that Obama is Christian—"He only converted when he was twelve," he insisted—or that he hadn't "changed his position, on everything, almost every day." Whether or not such disinformation is planted or actively encouraged, and however much its persistence might owe to race, it is clear that it flows like a subterranean stream through much of the country and the extent and depth of that stream are impossible to quantify.

What is not in doubt is that this substratum of concern or discomfort about race, and complementary worries about Obama as a foreigner or outsider for whom a vote would thus become a perilous gamble, have provided a prime target for Republican political and media operatives. Their delicate task in the weeks ahead will be to blend race with more traditional Republican "hot-button" "culture war" themes—worries about patriotism, elitism, sex education, abortion, gay marriage—and construct out of this mix a series of potent images and symbols intended to peel off from the Democratic coalition so-called "Reagan Democrats," conservative, often "ethnic" urban and suburban working- and middle-class voters.

Voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Colorado and a handful of other states will likely hear much about Reverend Wright and his call to "God Damn America!" and about Senator Obama's supposed support for "teaching kindergartners about sex before we teach them to read." These thirty-second pieces of political art, whether produced by the McCain campaign itself, the Republican National Committee, or "independent" groups, will be aimed at a subset of the 12 percent or so of voters who remain undecided, and are intended to lower the numbers of those who say they look positively on Obama and "identify" with his "values and background"—numbers that, as I write, have been declining even as the candidate's national numbers are rising.

That such ads will be denounced as distortions and lies will not necessarily blunt their effectiveness, for they are directed at a narrow audience that tends to distrust or ignore the "mainstream media." They work, when they do work, according to a logic of powerful symbols and images which tend to overwhelm facts, particularly when those facts come from a world of reporters and commentators viewed as inherently biased and "elite." And they are directed at an audience—the so-called "beer-drinking" or "lunch-pail" Democrats—which, having largely favored Hillary Clinton in the primaries, especially in the critical old industrial states of the Midwest that Obama lost, may be more than usually receptive to their appeal.

Whether or not John McCain's campaign will be able to exploit this vulnerability turns on whether, among these several million critical voters, fear of an unfamiliar African-American "elitist" can be made to overwhelm fear of an extension of Republican governance that few can now doubt has proved catastrophic for the country. Obama has hammered away on the latter theme, declaring at every opportunity that "the country cannot afford four more years of the same Bush policies"—and then the financial crisis, striking like a bolt of lightning, illuminated for all to see the ruins of the economic landscape. McCain, who has been struggling to present himself as a populist (and, implicitly, anti-Bush) "maverick" who would lead the country on a very different course, understood the danger the crisis posed for him but fumbled badly in his attempt to exploit it. Even as Republicans unleash a new onslaught designed to increase his opponent's "negatives," McCain must somehow make his "maverick" argument credible, not least by joining it to a positive economic vision for the country; only thus is he likely to persuade enough voters who are disgusted with Republican policies and deeply worried about the economy—but who still fear, or can be made to fear, a President Obama.

There's a lot of doubt on the validity of the Bradley effect, but we'll know better after the results come in on Tuesday. If we see a dramatic difference in actual ballot returns compared to preliminary polling data, prepare for a long night of racial recrimination from the angry left.

Aunt Zeituni's November Surprise!

Barack Obama's Zeituni Onyango double-illegal alien and campaign donor scandal won't be enough to slow down the Democratic nominee's snowball effect.

It's great, though, that the story's getting mainstream play, in any case: Don't you know, with Barack Hussein Obama - our man! - it's a bottomless pit of lies, improprieties, skeletons (aunts)?

I must say admit that I LOVE how the story's just pissing off the left.

And keep in mind, while the lefties are alleging that the Bush administration broke the law to help John McCain, there's not a peep among the radicals about how old Zeituni successfully resisted a deportation order from the federal government, staying in the U.S. illegally on the public's dime in a subsidized apartment-unit recently refurbished with a HUD-HOPE block grant to Zeituni's Boston public-housing complex.

Folks what you're looking at is the future shape of politics-as-usual under a Barack Obama administration.

But wait! Here we see Obama thowing his aunt under the bus, and - don't you know it?!! - he's being slammed for it by the nihilists!

Man, this is going to be an interesting 4 years - and mark my words, it's going to be four-in-and-four-out for the shady socialist fist-bumping bandolier-wearing radicals taking over Pennsylvania Avenue.

Barack Hussein Obama: The Redistributor

I've been posting pretty much all day on "Barack the Redistributor," so I might as well call it a night on a unified note:

Here's some definitional matter:

Redistribution of Wealth

Act of returning world's resources to rightful owners, the People. Must be performed regardless of one's input in order better to erase the false concept of private property. It is constantly under attack by the right-wing ideologues for threatening capitalism's vile celebration of self-interest and individualism. A model of a world-wide wealth redistribution system is being successfully implemented by the United Nations. Equitable society of the future will have no redistribution of wealth because there will be nothing to distribute. The government, the People's only employer, will have a simple distribution system that will reward obedience and punish dissent.

Definition and Image Credit: The Peoples Cube

The Future of this Country

Via The Real World, here's Dr. Slogan's, "Nov 4: Your Country. Your Call":

On November 4th it all really boils down a very simple thing: the Future of our country. And here is why.

When I started this blog about a month ago I wasn’t thrilled about Sen. Obama’s presidency, but it was hardly a grave concern. I didn’t like his track record, I didn’t like his lack of meaningful experience, I thought he had been flip-flopping too much on key issues, I was annoyed by open bias of mass media. Worst case, I thought, it’d be 4 years of a demagogue with strong left views. We can live through that. Countries swing from right to left and back — it’s a cycle. This is how democracies work. You can easily see this on my blog – just four weeks ago I wanted to keep it light and funny, pointing out things like the fact that the “change” VP pick had been a Senator for 35 years. But as I looked more and more into Sen. Obama’s past and his recent actions, I started to realize that we’ve been dealing with something entirely different — something that America has never seen, at least not on such scale.

It’s been almost like unclogging a sink — you open it, you take something out, then you take out more, and what starts coming out after that makes you wish you never opened that thing in the first place. Forget “change” VPs with decades of Senate history. How about close relationships with people involved in international terror? Or laser sharp focus on indoctrinating children? Or a laundry list of every modern-day tyrant openly expressing support? Or persistent suppression of free speech? Or going for twenty years (and bringing children) into a church that openly promotes hate of white people, just as openly supports Hamas and condemns our country on regular basis? Or campaigning for a radical with Islamic ties who threw a stable country into a bloody mess? Or close ties with people who led an organizaiton that unapologetically bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and a police station and who were on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List? Or vote fraud of monstrous proportions? Or accepting a flow of donations from unidentified foreign sources? All of above — and more – is on Sen. Obama’s resume. It’s not in some classified files, it’s not locked in some FBI closet, it out in the open. I’m not talking about GOP sponsored books, I’m talking about media — the same media that’s been so curiously and unapologetically supporting him. Sen. Obama’s own actions and sentiments (especially those he made before running for President) speak louder than any Republican paid advertisement. A resume like this would’ve been a road block for someone running for a seat on a city council. Here we’re talking about the most powerful post in the world – and people choose to ignore all of this, lulled by the promise of change.

This is what I love about the blogosphere. You find such interesting, and astonishingly lucid, plain old folks (more at the link).

Lulled by the promise of change? That's pretty much a hole in one.

Thanks Dr. Slogan!

Praise Obama! I Won't Have to Work Any More!

This video's making the rounds this afternoon, featuring an outwardly enthusiastic Barack Obama supporter, who exclaims:

I never thought this day would happen. I won’t have to worry on puttin’ gas in my car. I won’t have to worry at payin’ my mortgage.

Meanwhile, via Patterico, a man jumped to his death from a freeway overpass in El Paso today.

Police found a note in the man's car, which said, "Obama take care of my family."

I hope this man rests in peace.

And while we should ask not for whom the bell tolls, this is a particularly tragic crime knowing that this man went to his death - abandoning his familial responsibilities - with the "hope" that Barack Obama would provide care and comfort for those left behind.

Obama's Reconfiguration of the American Dream

Here's Lynn Forester de Rothschild's, "Barack Obama's America":

In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama stated that "eking out a bare Democratic majority isn't good enough." Indeed, if the pollsters are correct and the Democrats win overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate, Senator Obama, if elected, would easily implement both his promises for $307 billion of new federal spending per year and his punitive tax policies. The truth is that with the level of spending in the Obama plan, either taxpayers between $40,000 and $250,000 per year will have to fund the massive costs for the new programs he is promising, or the promises will be abandoned.

Perhaps more sinister is Obama's reconfiguration of the American Dream. My father made an inflation adjusted income of about $50,000 per year. He never took a handout but he worked two jobs. He taught us that if we worked hard and played by the rules there was no limit to what we could become in America. Now, Barack Obama is changing that compact with America. In Barack Obama's America, there is a ceiling to the American Dream. He decides the level at which our money becomes the government's money.

There is a reason why immigrants fly to America to achieve their dream. Now, in the guise of a "middle class tax cut" Barack Obama is threatening that dream. If he succeeds, Barack Obama will bring the kind of radical transformation that this country does not need and never has. And the country will be in for a shock.

See also, "Obama's Class War "So Wrong for America."

Obama’s America: A Letter from 2012

Check out, a "Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America," from Focus on the Family:

October 22, 2012

Dear friends,

I can hardly sing “The Star Spangled Banner” any more. When I hear the words,

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Now in October of 2012, after seeing what has happened in the last four years, I don’t think I can still answer, “Yes,” to that question. We are not “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more. The 2008 election was closer than anybody expected, but Barack Obama still won. Many Christians voted for Obama – younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed margin to defeat John McCain – but they didn’t think he would really follow through on the far left policies that had marked his entire previous career. They were wrong.

There's a long discussion of policy at the letter (via Memeorandum).

Note that the introduction indicates that "there are many evangelical Christians supporting Senator Obama as well as many supporting Senator McCain in this election," and thus I don't think the left's inevitable criticisms of Focus on the Family can be based on some theocratic-fascist argument, but folks will try, no doubt.

Barack Obama and Economic Selfishness

Should Americans share the wealth?

Are people greedy and selfish if they believe that what they've earned is not something goverment should be able to take away and give to others?

Apparently, Barack Obama answers yes to both questions:

Note something else as well: Recall Gallup's new survey showing that 75 percent of Democrats believe that "government should redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich."

That finding is actually a later item in the poll. Gallup also asked, "Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel money and wealth should be more evenly distributed among a larger percentage of the people?"

Fifty-eight percent of those polled agreed that money and wealth should be more evenly distributed.

There's a couple of points of significance here:

For one thing, the video provides more evidence that Obama's not been honest in stating his economic positions. He's speak of tax fairness (when his proposal is anything but), and turns around and says that those who work hard to earn a living are "selfish" if they refuse to let government confiscate their income for redistribution. Second, the response on the "money and wealth" question (58 percent) isn't necessarily an indication that the country has abandoned the traditional political culture of individual liberty and opportunity in favor of equality of result. The polling sample is going to have at least 35 percent Democratic respondents, who favor income distribution and roughly 25 percent or so independents, about half of which who are likely Democratic-leaners.

Those two groups combined constitute a majority in favor of economic redistribution. So while in some sense, the data show a shift of the "political center" farther to the left, the change is not a dramatic break with the notion of America as a moderate, center-right nation overall.

Economic crisis and worries about economic security are contributing to a greater sense that government should be more interventionist in providing an economic safety-net. Whether these findings mean the country is undergoing a fundamental leftward lurch remains in doubt (despite some arguments to the contrary).

The Choice We Are Facing

Kyle-Anne Shiver offers an essential take on the likely shift to a democratic-socialist state under a Barack Obama administration:

The choice we are facing in this election is simple. We have freedom only when we accept personal responsibility for ourselves and our children. If we want to divest ourselves from the responsibility to provide for ourselves, then we also forfeit our freedom to make our own decisions.

Great leaders have appeared from time to time to warn free people of the innate deceptiveness of the socialists' lures. Ronald Reagan saw the evil as clear as day. Reagan's "ten scariest words in the English language":

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

Winston Churchill expounded further on leftist ideology:

"Let them quit these gospels of envy, hate and malice. Let them eliminate them from their politics and programmes. Let them abandon the utter fallacy, the grotesque, erroneous fatal blunder of believing that by limiting the enterprise of man, by riveting the shackles of a false equality...they will increase the well-being of the world."

John McCain is a leader in the same mold as Reagan and Churchill when it comes to seeing the innate evil within the Marxist lure and its deceptive threat to real peace and any prosperity worth having. But of these three - Reagan, Churchill and McCain - McCain is the only one who has seen firsthand, from the inside, how it is that collective regimes may appear fair and just and unified.

McCain learned the hard way that socialist fairness is a carefully choreographed illusion, that socialist justice is a capricious commodity doled out on a whim by dictators with hard-core boots and clubs.

Unity? Unity is obtained through coercive means and by taking children very early into indoctrination as model, happy future workers for the collective "good."

So, Obama got his ideas by palling around with radical communist revolutionaries of the 60s. Obama chose these radicals as mentors and friends. Obama's own parents were from the same mold as well. Happy socialists all.

John McCain spent a good deal of his adult life with radical socialists too. Five and a half years to be precise. Only McCain got his education on the merits of communism from inside one of their "utopian" cells under force.

Perhaps never before have Americans had such an easy choice for our next President. Here's hoping we've raised more freedom-loving patriots than fools.

See also, An 'Endorsement' No Candidate Wants: Fidel Favors Barack."

Israeli Government Rejected Khalidi as PLO Negotiator

There's a big controversy running currently over the significance of Professor Rashid Khalidi and his relationship to Barack Obama. As I noted Wednesday, Obama supporters will work desperately to distort and downplay his political liabilities (more of that here), but Khalidi's relationship to Obama is of a piece with the Democratic nominee's long and comfortable relationship with America's enemies.

As Martin Kramer reports, Yitzhak Shamir, the prime minister of Israel at the time of the Madrid peace process in the early-1990s, refused to speak to a delegation of PLO representatives that included Rashid Khalidi. Kramer links to the New York Times' piece, "Israelis Deplore Advisory Panel Of Palestinians":

What troubles the Israelis now is a second Palestinian team, a six-person advisory panel that will also be in Madrid and will serve as a conduit between the official delegation and the P.L.O. It is this group that presumably will be calling the shots, and one way or another all its members violate Israel's guidelines for the sort of Palestinians with whom it is prepared to negotiate. In particular, they speak openly for the P.L.O....

As expected, the Palestinian delegation will be led by Haidar Abdel-Shafi, a 72-year-old physician from Gaza City, who said this week that he and his fellow members were prepared, if necessary, to pronounce themselves P.L.O. members.

Other members of the advisory team [include] ... Rashid al-Khalidi, a lecturer at Chicago State University.

The Palestine Liberation Organization was the main resistance group dedicated to the destruction of Israel through armed struggle.

The PLO, under Yassir Arafat's leadership beginning in 1969, launched a campaign of guerilla warfare led by the Fatah's militant fedayeen faction. The PLO launched artillery attacks on Israel and mounted terrorist ground incursions against Israeli citizens from strongholds in the West Bank, Lebanon and Jordan.

The PLO's "Black September" terrorists undertook what would become known as the very first attacks in the age of modern terrorism with the murders of 11 Israelis at the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, September 1972.

This background is key to the current controversy surrounding Barack Obama.

Rashid Khalidi is a key proponent of the Palestinian jihad against the Jewish states. As Mona Charen wrote this week:

Khalidi is not distancing himself from his past. Consistent with what you’d expect from someone who justified PLO attacks on civilians in Israel and Lebanon from 1976 to 1982, Khalidi routinely refers to Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid” state, and professes to believe in a “one-state” solution to the conflict. Guess which country would have to disappear for that “one” state to come into existence?

Khalidi's controversial background has been conveniently swept under the rug amid all the talk of Barack Obama's radical associations.

But if Barack Obama's claim to be a "friend of Israel" is to have any merit, the American public deserves to know the full extent of his relationship to a pro-Palestinian professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, the academic home of the largest anti-Israel movement in the United States.

Three-in-Four Democrats Favor Soaking the Rich

A new Gallup poll on economic fairness finds half of all Americans saying government should tax the rich to promote fairness in the distribution of wealth. Especially noteworthy, the survey finds 75 percent of Democrats agreeing with the statement that government should redistribute wealth by taxing the rich:

One of the more contentious points on the presidential campaign trail in recent weeks has been John McCain's continuing assertion that Barack Obama's tax plan, which would involve higher taxes for high-income families, is "redistributionist," with some McCain supporters going so far as to argue that Obama's tax plans would be "socialist." These disputes focus on the longtime argument in economic and political philosophy over government's ideal role, if any, in attempting to redistribute money and wealth through the use of taxes.

Gallup has from time to time asked a question that addresses this issue in part -- a question that Roper first asked in a Fortune Magazine survey conducted in March 1939, near the end of the Depression. The question is phrased as follows: "People feel differently about how far a government should go. Here is a phrase which some people believe in and some don't. Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich?"

This question is notable because it directly invokes the idea that government should intervene and redistribute wealth through taxes on the rich. The question phrase "heavy taxes on the rich" is certainly not one the Obama campaign would choose to describe its plan, which Obama repeatedly says would return high income tax rates only back to where they were under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, before the Bush administration tax cuts. Still, the question generally addresses the basic issue of taxing high-income individuals to transfer wealth in a society.

The main thing to take away from this particular component of the survey is the partisan split. While Americans in general seem to favor some governmental activism to redistribute wealth, Democrats do so overwhelmingly, and this fact has dramatic implications for government under a Democratic administration with large congressional majorities. As Gallup points out:

Although Obama has not advocated what he would call "heavy" taxes on the rich, the general sentiment that taxes on high-income families should be increased in order to help provide tax relief for those making less money is a part of his campaign platform.

John McCain has recently called Barack Obama "The Redistributor."

Left-wing partisans will resist the terminology, but Obama's tax plan is a classic model of economic distribution from those with more to those with less. That's socialism, and we may very well achieve it come January 2009.

Barack Obama's Critical Race Theory

In July, I published an essay, "Professor Obama's Radical Syllabus," in which I noted:

Critical race theory combines activism and scholarship in legal studies. Guiding questions in the genre focus on the nexus of race, racism, power, and privilege in civil rights and American history. The field is explicitly postmodernist, in that it takes issue with "conventional narratives" and seeks to unpack the social construction of white supremacy and black oppression. Critical race theorists are inherently radical; the goal of activist teaching and scholarhip is to break down all forms of subjugation, as well as the eradication of society's materialist edifices of elite hiearchy and classism.

The significance of Obama's pedagogy should be now become apparent.

Throughout the primaries Obama was battered with eruptions and revelations of controversal relationships with people way out of the mainstream of society.

Obama, if anyone could forget, was a parishioner at Trinity Unity Church of Christ, who's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, preached a theology of black liberation, a religious tradition of Marxist-based social justice and the empowerment of the marginalized. Some adherents of liberation theology, particularly in Latin America during the Cold War, explicitly advocated the revolutionary overthrow of conservative governmental regimes. Obama also held longstanding and troubling ties to '60s-era domestic revolutionaries, William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrn. In addition, the extent of Obama's relationship to radical groups such as ACORN are still being revealed.

The question for many people, who know little of such radicals and their front-organizations, is how could a U.S. Senator - and now presumptive Democratic nominee - have such extensive ties to extremists?

Well, it turns out that Mary Grabar has a new piece on this at Pajamas Media, "How Critical Race Theory Molded Obama":

Indicating a receptive attitude to such a view of justice, at least by his teaching and academic background, is presidential candidate Barack Obama. While at Harvard, Obama joined his professor, critical race theorist Derrick Bell, in mob pressures to hire a black female. Obama, during his richly remunerated stint as a part-time professor at the University of Chicago Law School, relied on his former professor’s writings, as his syllabus shows. (Issues of race seem to have been a specialty during Obama’s tenure, as I’ve described in previous columns.) The media points to his inclusion of a reading by conservative jurist Robert Bork, but the preponderance of far-left readings, as well as other evidence, like Obama’s contribution of a chapter to a volume devoted to the writings of radical socialist Saul Alinsky and his close ties to the New Party, strongly suggest that Obama as professor used the tactic of most left-wing professors: throw in one token conservative as a whipping boy. Obama’s academic associations and writings show him favoring theories of justice based on race, class, and gender. These have their roots in a socialist doctrine — and not in Western notions of equal and universal rights.

It takes a regular Joe (the Plumber) asking an innocent question to reveal the Democratic candidate’s ideology, which, in faith to Marxism, is to “spread the wealth.” Joe the Plumber has likely been alienated by his schooling and the double talk reigning in the classroom. He, instead, relies on his God-given reason, just the way the Founding Fathers intended. Professor Obama on the campaign trail, however, mocked John McCain’s reference to him during the third debate.

Obama has garnered the support of Christopher Buckley, who seems to have forgotten his late father’s prescient words in his book about his college years, God and Man at Yale:

Marx himself … envisaged two broad lines of action that could be adopted to destroy the bourgeoisie: one was violent revolution; the other, a slow increase of state power, to a point where a smooth transition could be effected from an individualist to a collectivist society.

Our founding principles are based on the idea of natural law, clearly expressed in such language that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.” The Marxist and critical race theory notions espoused by Obama and by those in positions as intellectual opinion-makers are diametrically opposed to our democratic foundations.

Joe rightly feels threatened by a double standard of justice. He knows that he is endowed with reason by his Creator — and not the professors.

The only response that the professors have left to give to Joe, the aspiring small business owner, is ultimately the one Chairman Mao espoused in his 1949 speech, “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship”: “Communists the world over are wiser than the bourgeoisie.” Indeed, the professors, like Mao, have simply declared themselves smarter and excluded those who disagree with them. Unchallenged by the public or administrators, they have promulgated their ideology in the classrooms.

It is a plumber and not a Ph.D., though, who recognizes what Obama’s ideas mean for him, a small business owner, a member of the bourgeoisie: famine as a result of an ideology of “spreading the wealth” and guilt until proven innocent as a result of class-based justice.

I especially like Grabar's William Buckley quotation on the accretion of state power leading to the consolidation of collectivist society.

Understanding Barack Obama's pedagogy - not to mention his long-line of radical community activism and ties to untold left-wing personages and appendages - helps to demonstrate how Obama is not just an advocate of greater regulation or emergency relief, but of a full-blown ideological shift of power to the ideal socialist state.

The current mortgage crisis and John McCain's proposal for assistance to homeowners, reflects none of the same radical epistemology as Barack Obama's longstanding ideological program, despite how others might try to spin it.

No Democratic Supermajority in Senate?

I don't follow individual congressional races as closely as I should (and I expect to work on that in the coming years), but I have discussed the implications of a filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2009 (which aren't good, as a President Obama would be able to ram a radical agenda right down the throat of a center-right nation).

It turns out that Dems may come up short, as Michael Barone points out:

If, as seems likely but not quite certain, Barack Obama is elected next Tuesday, a key question for public policymaking will be how many Democrats are elected to the Senate. Currently, there are 51 Democrats there, including Joe Lieberman, but Democrats are seriously contesting 11 Republican-held seats, and there is a by-no-means-trivial chance that they could win each one...

Barone offers a state-by-state analysis after this, although the bottom line is that 5 of 11 of the seats are near-certain Democratic wins. Of the remaining 6 seats, 5 are toss-up races in which no candidate has been able to pull out a lead in public opinion - Oregon, North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, and Kentucky. Of these, Elisabeth Dole in North Carolina is barely hanging on, and RCP's current data looks a litte more grim for the GOP than Barone lets on.

One-in-Four Texans See Obama as Muslim, Poll Finds

A new University of Texas survey on the presidential horse race finds that 23 percent of those polled believe that Barack Obama is Muslim:

A University of Texas poll to be released today shows Republican presidential candidate John McCain and GOP Sen. John Cornyn leading by comfortable margins in Texas, as expected. But the statewide survey of 550 registered voters has one very surprising finding: 23 percent of Texans are convinced that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Obama is a Christian who was embroiled in a controversy earlier this year about his two-decade membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Yet just 45 percent of those polled identified the Illinois senator as a Protestant.

The Obama-is-a-Muslim confusion is caused by fallacious Internet rumors and radio talk-show gossip. McCain went so far at one of his town hall meetings to grab a microphone from a woman who claimed that Obama was an Arab.

The Texas numbers are unusual because most national polls show that just 5 to 10 percent of Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim — less than half the number of Texans who buy into the debunked theories.

Readers can interpret this as they see fit.

My sense is that a large numbers of conservative Texans see Obama as "the other," and when asked about indicators on Obama's profile, respondents grasp to find mainstream elements about the Illinois Senator.

A Time for Choosing, 2008

Here's Ronald Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech, from October 27, 1964:

Thing are serious, folks.

See also, "A Sobering Look Ahead to Barack Obama’s America":

By 2012 or 2016, the alteration of America’s fabric will be severe and profound as we will have socialism in our time. Even though political leftists abhor the word, socialism is entirely in keeping with their cherished preferences and initiatives. They salivate over the notion of omnipotent government and wish to regulate the citizenry in innumerable ways.

Neocons for Obama!

Jules Crittenden, neocon milblogging journalist extraordinaire, has endorsed Barack Obama!

You know, all those sober-minded Beltway Obamacons have me thinking. So far it’s all been good race-baiting, lefty-smearing fun, but we’ve come to the point in the campaign where it is time to mull things over and make a serious decision. As Bill might put it, go ahead, fall in lust for Moose-Huntin’ Mama’s hot red suit and boots, but …

We’re at the point where each of us needs to look around and say, hey, what’s everyone else doing? Should I think about doing it, too, so people don’t laugh at me or snicker behind my back and say stuff?

It isn’t just about superficial high school things like that. There are some very serious considerations. Do we really want a trip-wire vet and a gap-toothed hick in the White House? Can America, no, can the world survive four more years of Bushitler Anschluss? ....

Unfortunately, America is still a fetid swamp of frothing racism, as the New York Times, the AP and even many credible media outlets have taken pains to point out. So maybe it is time for America to take the next step. Some people might say, yeah, OK, Obama’s black, but he’s not experienced enough. Community organizer, state senator, showed up on the national scene five minutes ago, no executive experience. I think you have to ask yourself, does that really matter? The issue, when you’re trying to end racism, isn’t whether he’s up to running the country and the world or not, or whether all his friends are left-wing wackjobs, or whether his ideas make any sense, or even whether he actually believes anything he says. It’s whether he’s black or not, and that’s pretty well been established. OK, biracial, same difference. What do you think the last 40 years of affirmative action have been all about? Anyway, Obama has a stodgy old white geezer in the jump seat to make sure he doesn’t do anything too radical or, I dunno, too young or too black, I guess. At least I think that’s why he picked Old Hairplugs.

So I was thinking, maybe it’s time to do what all the other guys are doing. Colin Powell, Ken Adelman, Douglas Kmiec, Christopher Hitchens … OK, he’s just going back where he came from … Charles Fried, Francis Fukuyama, Chuck Hagel, Bruce Bartlett kind of, Bill Weld, Lincoln Chafee, Scott McClellan, Christopher Buckley … damn, there’s a lot of them. Looking at that very long list of august names, considering where we stand at this important portal in history, I think the question anyone at all progressively minded should be asking is … hey Condi, why don’t you grow a set?

You know what Mom always said, if everyone else was jumping off a cliff …. But maybe it is time, right now, in 2008, to do what everyone else is doing. Shrug, say what the heck, get on the Bush-bashing wagon … you have to admit, that does look like fun … and finally acknowledge what the deep booming voice from that opening in the clouds with all the blinding rays of light has been telling us. Obama is the Anointed One.

Last night, Obama delivered his closer.

Which was the Obamania informercial, posted above.

More Crittenden at the link.

Necons for Obama!

Conservative Blogs and Electoral Politics

Last week I asked readers to join me in contributing to Michele Bachmann's reelection campaign.

That's a first for this blog, but Michele Bachmann's the first congressional candidate to whom I've contributed. Bachmann represents my ideals and values, and I'll be proud to have helped her across the finish line on election day.

I'm reminded of Bachmann's challenge in reading the Next Right's new post, "What It Will Take to Build a Rightroots Movement."

Can the conservative blogosphere adopt the left's model of Internet political activism? Are conservative bloggers comfortable in making cold calls for cash on the front page of their websites?

A lot of folks won't be interested in that kind of outreach, but it's going to have to happen if the right hopes to really mobilize the grassroots in support of their candidates and causes. Here's a key passage:

If you're a conservative blogger, the question you need to ask yourself is this. Is the main purpose of your blog to express your personal opinion? Or is its primary purpose to build political power for a cause? If you cannot answer yes to the latter, you're probably not going to be comfortable with making the changes necessary to make online conservatism a political force to be reckoned with.

This is not a criticism, but an observation. Most conservative blogs are still stuck in 2003 -- both in terms of the overwhelming focus on media criticism and punditry, and the tendency to outsource electoral politics to the Republican Party. This was in some ways legitimate response to what was happening in 2003-4, when media surrender-monkeys were undermining the War on Terror, Republicans had a kick-butt political operation, and Kos was going 0 for 16.

I don't fault bloggers for holding on to this point of view in 2003 and 2004. What is unfortunate is that they clinged to it in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 and failed to pivot to the new reality, leaving the Republican Party without a powerful enough force to rein in the self-destructive tendencies of its elite.

Sadly, it's human nature to cling to the frame in which you came up - traditional media people will never fully reconcile themselves to the blogosphere, talk radio people will always tend to view it as the center of the universe, and even denizens of the "new media" can become easily set in their ways. This is not unlike people who got rich on the housing bubble thinking it could never end. When things first start going wrong, it's always just a momentary blip, not a sign of an impending crash. Only a catastrophic collapse is usually enough to make people rethink matters.

Building critical mass behind an independent online movement on the right will probably require new people. The old blogs that have been with us since 2003 will not go away. But they'll need to be joined by people who care more about Indiana's 8th district than Islamofascism, and MN-SEN more than the MSM.

There's more at the link.

I started blogging, back in early-2006, as a writing outlet and a hobby. This year, however, blogging's become a second job as I've thrown my heart into supporting John McCain with my political commentary and activism.

I'm a changed man, or, more particularly, I'll be a changed man upon the election of Barack Obama and a Democratic congressional majority next Tuesday.

I plan to be more politically active. To the extent that family and job commitments permit, I hope to get out more, becoming involved on campaigns and issues. I'll be blogging, as always, but my goal will be to contribute even more to the conservative right, in both ideas and action.

I urge readers to send me an e-mail indicating what action they have done to support local candidates for office, or other activities, like contributing financially to political campaigns. I'll be blogging more about things like this as we move forward, and I'll share stories and help people network.

Looking ahead, I'm convinced that the Democratic Party will overreach, and that a Barack Obama administration will be repudiated at the polls in 2012. But for that to happen, the conservative base must get active, doing more than writing one more blog post at Memeorandum.