EVENING UPDATE:  MAY 2,  2008

Posted at 7:58 p.m. ET

STILL CLUELESS

Still clueless after all these weeks - Barack Obama still doesn't get it.  At a meeting with reporters today, he said this:

“Obviously, we’ve had to fight through over the last week an awful lot of noise – that’s just a fact,” Mr. Obama told reporters. He added, “I think the American voters don’t want a whole bunch of drama. What they’re looking for is can you solve my problems?”

Is he dense, arrogant, or just the product of an "elite" education?  It's pretty clear he doesn't understand the importance Americans attach to values.  And, by the way, what's "a whole bunch of drama"?  Did he write that way in English class?  Or didn't the educators require him to take English, citing it as the language of the oppressor?

Obama went on:

“I do think one of the ironies of the past two or three weeks is this idea that Michelle and I are elitist, intellectual pointy-head types. The fact is our lives more closely approximate the lives of the average voters than any of the other candidates,” he said. “We didn’t recognize the caricature that was being painted of us over the last couple of weeks.”

Pointy-headed intellectuals?  Wasn't that George Wallace's phrase?  Well, Obama certainly isn't choosy about his sources.

He and Michelle have led the lives of average voters?  Income in the millions.  Degrees from Columbia, Princeton, Harvard Law.  Just two average people tryin' to make ends meet.

Another press conference like this and the Obama campaign will be banning recording devices and cameras.

May 2, 2008.      Permalink          

THE NEW RELIGION

Anti-Americanism, that is. The New York Sun runs an excellent piece by Daniel Johnson about a recent debate in London on whether America has lost its moral authority.  Johnson writes:

LONDON — Anti-Americanism is not only the world’s most pernicious and ubiquitous ideology — it is also the most tenacious. In fact, it has taken on some aspects of a religion.

Richard Dawkins thinks God is a delusion. He is mistaken, of course: people are deluded when they worship idols. But the worst idol of our time is anti-Americanism. Its devotees will fit any facts into their all-embracing faith in the unique wickedness of the Americans — the people that, of all the nations on earth, least deserves to be demonized in this way.

Johnson points out that the debate was sponsored by a right-of-center magazine, and that the audience wasn't made up of leftists.  Yet, votes taken in the audience showed heavy anti-Americanism, and most of the panelists despised America:

So the Royal Geographical Society theatre was not full of Noam Chomsky wannabes. Yet before the debate even began they voted for the motion (i.e., against America) by 431 to 143, with 176 undecided.

Yet, America's defenders put up a spirited argument:

By the end of the debate, the case for the defense had won. If it was not an actual victory, at least it was a moral one. The final voting figures were: 433 for the motion, 291 against. So the pro-American camp had won over almost all the undecideds (including my 16-year-old daughter Edith), more than doubling their vote. Not a single one of the anti-Americans had been persuaded, and they were still in the large majority.

That is a measure of the problem we Atlanticists face: here in Britain, in Europe, and around the world. It is not a problem that a new president will solve by him or herself.

He concludes:

Anti-Americanism is a pathological symptom, not a rational analysis. It would be a grave mistake for Americans to cast their votes for the candidate they thought would make America more likeable abroad. That would be a blow to the respect for which America still holds from its many friends and admirers.

Very well said.  But we must ask why anti-Americanism has become such a widespread religion.  The answer, it seems to me, is pretty obvious.  We don't get our news directly from events, we get it through media, and the world's media is decidedly leftist, and often casually pro-totalitarian.  In turn, journalists, especially in the West, are educated in decadent universities that long ago lost any moral compass they may have had.  Students are taught that all cultures have validity, that they are equal, and that we must not be judgmental - unless of course the target is the United States. 

I've long believed that a disturbing number of intellectuals actually despise freedom.  They despise it because it makes the common man equal in power to the intellectual, and the elites can't stand the thought.  For more on this, see our post this morning, "The Obama Watch," suggesting what George Orwell could teach Barack Obama. 

This is a good, enraging piece.  Recommended.

May 2, 2008.      Permalink          

OUTRAGEOUS

I find plenty of bad journalism, but rarely in The Wall Street Journal. I'm outraged, though, by a piece today on the Indiana primary that includes this passage:

Razor-edge expectations have not only made for some unusual campaign movements but also have provided a backdrop for questions of race and electability. Indiana has a history of racial tensions and Ku Klux Klan activity, and the Obama candidacy is seen as one new test of how much attitudes have changed here.

That is awful.  Yes, it is true that Indiana did have Klan activity, and Indianapolis was, long ago, a place of racial divide.  But the idea, suggested in that paragraph, that people must vote for Obama as a "test" of how attitudes have changed is nothing short of racial extortion.  Plenty of other states, including liberal Connecticut, have had Klan activity.  And I find it fascinating that there is no discussion of Klan actions when journalists write about North Carolina, a Southern state.  Is that because Obama is ahead and the "test" has thus been passed?

I'm afraid this is a portent of things to come.  We'll be told, in the fall campaign, that we, as a nation, are being "tested," and that "the whole world is watching."

Sound familiar?  Welcome to 1968.

May 2, 2008.      Permalink          

EARLY AFTERNOON POSTING:  MAY 2,  2008

Posted at 2:41 p.m. ET

THE POLLS

The most interesting poll out today, taken by Rasmussen in North Carolina last night, shows Barack Obama losing support.  He's nine points ahead of Clinton, but early in the week Rasmussen had him up 14.  However, a Zogby poll in N.C. has Obama up 16.  Zogby, though, has not regularly polled in North Carolina and the explanation of its poll results places it at variance with what we've come to expect of certain groups.

UPDATE at 3:12 p.m.:  A new Insider Advantage poll shows Obama up by only five in North Carolina.

Zogby has Clinton and Obama tied in Indiana, also at variance with everyone else.

For the Democratic nomination, in polls out today, both Gallup and Ras have Clinton up two points.  The Democratic electorate is just not buckling under the onslaught of "advice" from the Obama side to wrap things up.  We keep hearing about the Democratic "base," but that base may be more complex than the political left believes.

National:  Rasmussen doesn't have a new result out yet, but Gallup has McCain up six over Obama, which matches Rasmussen's result of yesterday.  That is a solid lead.

Both Rasmussen and Gallup have McCain up only one over Clinton.  If the  results are accurate, they show clearly that Clinton is emerging as the stronger candidate to take on McCain in the fall.  But will it matter to the core of the Democratic Party, for whom suicide is a personal delight?  Probably not. 

May 2, 2008.      Permalink          

FRIDAY:  MAY 2, 2008

Posted at 7:12 a.m. ET

BRITAIN VOTES

Ah, the symbolism.  May Day. 

Britain voted in local elections throughout the realm yesterday, and gave Labor, or Labour if you prefer, its biggest drubbing in a generation.  The local contests are often seen, in British politics, as a harbinger of later national elections.

The most interesting race hasn't yet been called.  Ken Livingstone, also known as "Red" Ken for his Marxist leanings, and a good, warm friend of jihadists, was up for reelection as mayor of London.  The race is close, and results should be announced this afternoon, our Eastern time.  Early indications are that Livingstone lost to Boris Johnson, a conservative with some buffoonish qualities.  We favor the buffoon.

May 2, 2008.      Permalink          

THE OBAMA WATCH

It's fascinating, isn't it?  The more people learn about Barack Obama, the less they like, and the more superdelegates he picks up.  Does the term "out of touch" come to mind?   It may, of course, not matter.  Democrats are so heavily favored this year, and the press so in the tank for Obama, that he may win in November no matter what he says and does.  Add to that the abysmal state of education, and what our kids are being taught, and you have the makings of political mischief of a high order.

One thing that does hold Obama back is the growing sense that he's an elitist.  To cure himself of the malady, he might read Jeff Greenfield's excellent essay on George Orwell, which points out that democracy has been in this territory before.  Greenfield:

Elitism has bedeviled American liberalism for the better part of four decades. It undermined the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, and now it's making mischief in the Obama campaign every bit as much as the omnipresence of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The charge that liberal candidates don't connect with or understand the values and beliefs of regular Americans is embedded in old epithets like "limousine liberal," which I first heard aimed at New York Mayor John Lindsay in 1969. It was also at the core of "radical chic," the phrase made famous by Tom Wolfe in his savage 1970 account in New York magazine of a fund-raising party for the Black Panthers thrown by Leonard Bernstein and his wife in their Park Avenue duplex. (Wolfe didn't invent the term, but he gave it currency.)

There's also an even older and more illuminating antecedent from across the Atlantic: the writings of George Orwell in England in the late 1930s, which describe a version of elitism that echoes powerfully in our current political battle.

Greenfield goes on:

The typical socialist, according to Orwell, "is either a youthful snob-Bolshevik who in five years time will quite probably have made a wealthy marriage and been converted to Roman Catholicism, or, still more typically, a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler, and often with vegetarian leanings … with a social position he has no intention of forfeiting. … One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist and feminist in England." (Think "organic food lover," "militant nonsmoker," and "environmentalist with a private jet" for a more contemporary list.)

Orwell also rails against the condescension many on the left display toward those they profess to care most about. Describing a gathering of leftists in London, he says, "every person there, male and female, bore the worst stigmata of sniffish middle-class superiority. If a real working man, a miner dirty from the pit, for instance, had suddenly walked into their midst, they would have been embarrassed, angry and disgusted; some, I should think, would have fled holding their noses."

Well said.  Orwell seemed to predict so many of the attitudes we see today.  One thing about the left, of course, is that it doesn't change very much.  It has morphed into a kind of civic religion, with its own liturgy and priesthood.  It even has its own houses of worship, with names like Harvard and Berkeley.

Read the whole piece.  Worth it.

May 2, 2008.       Permalink          

AXELROD

David Axelrod is Barack Obama's chief strategist, and he's profiled in a lengthy, detailed piece in The Washington Post. But it's the strangest thing.  Listening to Axelrod is like listening to Obama.  You hear a lot, and come away with so little.  See if you don't agree with me.  The piece goes on for pages, but we never learn exactly what Axelrod believes.  We do learn that he idolized Robert Kennedy, and that he's a sports fan.  I have no problem with the latter, but the Bobby thing bothers me.  It confirms, to me at least, that many of the Obamans want a return to the sixties.  In other words, despite their yapping about "change," they're essentially liberal reactionaries who yearn to go back to an illusionary era, symbolized by a Robert Kennedy who is recalled more as a symbol than for anything he did.  The writer of the piece makes this comment:

Robert Kennedy was the last Democratic politician who could make voters swoon.

Well, I don't know.  Some did swoon for Bobby because he wasn't Lyndon Johnson, and they hated Johnson because he wasn't Jack Kennedy.  But there were many other Democratic leaders of the time, figures in the party in the last era of its greatness, who were admired by more thoughtful folk:  Henry Jackson, Paul Douglas, Stuart Symington, Hubert Humphrey, to name a few.  Compare to today's party.

The piece quotes, apparently approvingly, Barack Obama in February of 2007, stating what Axelrod apparently believes is the heart of the Obama message:

The Obama message also has never changed. As he laid it out in the Feb. 10, 2007, speech announcing his candidacy, Obama blames the country's inability to deal with its many problems on "the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics -- the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems."

A bit chilling.  What he's saying is that if you believe something I don't believe, you're petty and trivial and scoring cheap political points.  That's the attitude Obama took toward Reverend Wright until he was forced to make a "tough decision," something he himself has always avoided. 

Be wary of politicians who want to tackle "big problems."  Get details.  In writing.  And be wary of their nostalgic advisers.

May 2, 2008.      Permalink          

ASKING AND TELLING

I mentioned Harvard before. There are big doings there as commencement approaches. Its new feminist president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has agreed to carry on the tradition of her distinguished, and deposed, predecessor, Larry Summers. She will address the commissioning ceremony for new ROTC officers. Now, do not be surprised. Harvard doesn't have ROTC, but students can participate at nearby campuses. But Faust wants to use her speech to denounce the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding gays. Some object to her politicizing a solemn ceremony, but, hey, it's the Ivy League.

Question:  Why is there so much anguish on the part of university officers over "don't ask, don't tell," but only silence when they accept massive funds from Arab countries that regard gay people as fit to murder?  Second question:  If the military abolished "don't ask, don't tell," does anyone seriously believe that ROTC would be welcomed to these leftist campuses?  They'd find another excuse to keep the soldiers out. 

Remarkably, there was a column in yesterday's Harvard Crimson actually called, "Why Harvard Hates America."  The writer apparently approves of at least part of the hatred, for America has "don't ask, don't tell."  One can debate the merits of that policy, but I'd like to include in that debate all the areas of prejudice, discrimination, affirmative action, and other quirks of modern universities that raise their own questions of unfairness.  Takers?  Anyone?  President Faust?

May 2, 2008.      Permalink