Stuart Taylor's disillusionment with Barack Obama

By Michael Gaynor

Reality: Obama is a typical politician who happens to be half-white and half-black posing as America's savior.

Stuart Taylor, Jr., America's best legal commentator, insightful independent centrist, leading member of the mainstream media who boldly pointed out that the mainstream media had jumped to the wrong conclusion and vilified innocent young men falsely accused of rape, sexual offense and kidnapping by Crystal Gail Mangum in an egregious example of political correctness extremism wishful thinking and co-author (with KC Johnson) of the best book on the Duke case (Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and The Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case), confessed to concern that his faith in rookie United States Senator and presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. might be misplaced.

Ironically, Senator Obama was the only presidential hopeful to publicly support the call for a federal investigation of former Durham County, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong, a white politician who sold his soul for the black bloc vote.

Until Proven Innocent: "it is unheard of for the Justice Department to go after a state prosecutor. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did not immediately rule out that possibility. And seven other House members, along with democratic senators Bob Menendez and Barack Obama, would later join [U.S. Congressman Walter] Jones in calling for a Justice Department investigation of Nifong. Conspicuously absent from this list was Durham's congressman, David Price. He said through a spokesperson that it "would be premature and inappropriate" to comment on the matter. A Democrat on leave from a Duke professorship in political science. Price had depended on the African American vote to win his seat."

It's not fair to criticize Congressman Jones for being a gutless (white) political opportunist and then give Senator Obama a pass for uncritically allying himself with Rev. Jeremiah A. "God damn America" Wright, Jr. for twenty years, so Mr. Taylor did NOT give Senator Obama a pass for that, even though he had been an Obama supporter.

In his latest column, "Obama's Wife and Their Spiritual Adviser," Mr. Taylor acknowledged that "[w]eeks of brooding over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama eruptions have severely shaken the hope [he] expressed in January: 'If Barack Obama can show he is tough enough and pragmatic enough to win the presidency and serve with distinction, it would be the best thing that could happen to America and the world.'"

The admittedly "severely shaken" Mr. Taylor was stirred to ask, "What should we learn about Obama's judgment and fortitude from the fact that he sat passively in the pews for 20 years and gave money and took his children while Wright, his friend and 'spiritual adviser,' spewed far-left, America-hating, white-bashing, conspiracy-theorizing, loony, 'God damn America' vitriol from the pulpit?"

The answer is that Senator Obama is a typical political opportunist who happened to have a black father and a white mother, he decided that joining Rev. Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois was critical to his political aspirations, and he could not afford to be critical of Rev. Wright if he was going to become an Illinois state senator and then pursue higher political office. (Obama lost a race for Congress after becoming a state senator, but eventually won the Democrat nomination for junior United States Senator from Illinois, was tapped by Senator John Kerry to give the keynote speech at the 2004 Democrat national convention, won the Senate race and quickly set his sights on the White House, first as a candidate trying to transcend race and, after Rev. Wright's sermons became nationally known, the bi-racial candidate uniquely able to resolve America's racial problems.)

Mr. Taylor further acknowledged that his "concern is not entirely dispelled by Obama's shifting explanations, including his mostly admirable March 18 speech about Wright and the issue of race."

What does "shifting explanations" mean?

In plain English, Obama lied about what he knew and when he knew it and then gave a nuanced Race in America speech that shifted attention from the question Mr. Taylor and many others had asked — why did Obama sit "passively in the pews for 20 years and g[i]ve money and t[ake] his children while Wright, his friend and 'spiritual adviser,' spewed far-left, America-hating, white-bashing, conspiracy-theorizing, loony, 'God damn America' vitriol from the pulpit?" — to America's racial problems.

Obama's connection to Rev. Wright is very distressing, to be sure, but it is hardly his only distressing connection.

Mr. Taylor:

"Also disturbing is the bleak picture of America painted by Obama's closest adviser, his wife, Michelle, in highly newsworthy comments, most of which the media have chosen to ignore.

"Her stunning February 18 statement that 'for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country' did get some attention, but just two mentions buried in The Washington Post and three buried in the news columns of The New York Times. The news columns of both papers, and almost all others, have ignored Michelle Obama's assertions that this country is 'just downright mean' and 'guided by fear'; that 'our souls are broken'; and that most Americans' lives have 'gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.'

"All this from a woman whose own life doesn't seem so rough: She went from a working-class background to Princeton, Harvard Law School, and a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago. That's the mansion that the Obamas bought with a little help from their friend Tony Rezko, now on trial on unrelated corruption charges, months after Obama's 2004 election to the Senate. Meanwhile, Michelle's salary at the University of Chicago hospitals soared from $122,000 to $317,000."

That's the same Michelle who wrote in his senior thesis at Princeton that she puts "the Black Community first and foremost" (which is bad news for non-Black Americans and only "good" news for blacks who want favoritism based on race).

Is THAT what the Obamas mean by "transcending race"?

As an independent centrist, Mr. Taylor chided partisans on each side for hypocrisy:

"Many Democrats dismiss the Wright controversy as much ado about 'bupkus,' as one puts it. Many Republicans see clear proof of unfitness for high office in Obama's choice of Wright as his spiritual adviser and his equivocations about why he condoned the reverend's vicious rhetoric for so long.

"These confident reactions strike me as resting on partisan double standards. All or almost all of the Democrats who shrug off Obama's Wright connection would (and should) be apoplectic about any prominent Republican whose 20-year spiritual adviser was known for bashing black people as a group, casting them as villains in paranoid conspiracy theories, glorifying the Ku Klux Klan (as Wright has gloried Louis Farrakhan), and the like.

"Indeed, prominent in the chorus of demands last April for the firing of radio host Don Imus, for using racial slurs that seem mild compared with Wright's sermons, was the voice of Barack Obama himself: 'There is nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group.'"

Equivocation seems to be a euphemism for lie, unfortunately, and, as Mr. Taylor concluded, "To be sure, McCain's bouts of cynical pandering are much less troublesome than Obama's enthusiastic embrace for two decades of a minister who was preaching to thousands of black men, women, and children stuff such as: 'The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.' And the 9/11 mass murders were 'America's chickens coming home to roost.' And 'racism is how this country ... is still run.' And America is 'a Eurocentric wasteland of lily-white lies.' And 'white folks' greed runs a world in need.'"

Nevertheless, Mr. Taylor gave Obama the benefit of the doubt and concluded, in essence. that Obama was too cowardly (Obama's not THAT oblivious to have missed Rev. Wright's messages) to confront Rev. Wright instead of complicit with him: "Nobody believes that Obama shares Wright's extremist views. His March 18 speech won praise not only from liberals but also from some thoughtful conservatives...."

Whether craven or complicit, Obama is not fit to be President of the United States.

Mr. Taylor noted that the Obama Race in America speech was 'bold...for any liberal black politician," but not that Obama appeared to be doing the same thing that he had done for twenty years in the pews of Trinity United Church of Christ: what he needed to do to personally advance. If Obama had embraced those Rev. Wright sermons, he would not have been a viable presidential candidate, obviously. In the absence of evidence of Obama doing politically unpopular things when it would have hurt him politically (his opposition to the liberation of Iraq did not jeopardize his Illinois state senate seat and his answers of political questionnaires when he was running for the state senate show him to be an unnuanced leftist), treating his Race in America speech as an act of political courage instead of a politically expedient exercise in damage control is only politically correct, not factually correct.

Mr. Taylor: "Similarly impressive were Obama's statement that blacks need to face 'our own complicity in our condition' and his empathy for 'working- and middle-class white Americans [who] don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race' and who resent being tarred as prejudiced."

Impressively politically astute: "our condition" assures blacks that Obama considers himself one of them and telling Ameicans who have not "been particularly privileged by their race" that they are prejudiced is NOT a vote getter with them.

Curiously, Mr. Taylor stated: "Far less admirable was Obama's equating Jeremiah Wright's hateful public preachings with the private expression by Obama's own grandmother of 'racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe' and with her 'fear of black men who passed by her on the street' — a fear that, Obama neglected to mention, has also been expressed by Jesse Jackson."

There was NOTHING admirable about Obama throwing his white grandmother under the bus and it was NOT politically astute (despite the media spin).

Mr. Taylor quickly rectified his mistake in suggesting that it was in any way admirable:

"This was an appalling exercise in moral equivalence, aggravated by the crass ignobility of exposing to undeserved public scorn the woman who helped raise Obama.

"Also unimpressive was Obama's facile blaming of Americans' problems on 'the special interests in Washington,' greedy corporations, rich people, and 'discrimination.' Is this tired old Democratic grievance-mongering the fresh new politics that Obama has promised?"

Reality: Obama is a typical politician who happens to be half-white and half-black posing as America's savior.

And, as Mr. Taylor duly noted, Obama "still has not adequately explained why he didn't walk away from Wright, or challenge his anti-American tirades, a long time ago."

Obama rationalizations did not satisfy Mr. Taylor:

"Yes, as Obama has said, Wright has redeeming qualities, including his programs for the needy, homeless, and sick. And yes, the minister's fiery sound bites are a bit less stark — though still surpassingly ugly — when seen in full context.

"But it also appears that Obama shares the unfortunate tendency of many liberals to see far-left extremists (and of many conservatives to see far-right extremists) as kindred spirits. And there may be some resonance between Wright's angry vitriol and Michelle Obama's bleak vision of America.

"Most important, perhaps, Obama's assertion that 'I can no more disown [Wright] than I can disown the black community,' together with his acknowledgment of 'shocking ignorance' among many blacks, implies what other Wright apologists have said more directly: White-bashing, far-left rhetoric, and paranoid racial conspiracy theories are commonplace in many black churches and among many otherwise sensible black people.

"Obama won't disown these people, because that would be inconsistent with his lifelong quest to belong to the black community, movingly detailed in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. And because he needs their votes."

Bottom line: Obama is a typical political opportunist who happens to be half-black and half-white.

And Obama's political opportunism naturally troubles Mr. Taylor (like Michelle Obama, Princeton College; like Barack Obama, Harvard Law Review):

"All of this is understandable. But would the same Obama who lacked the fortitude to break with Jeremiah Wright be a good bet, if elected, to take on his party's own special interests? To break, when circumstances warrant, with the across-the-board liberal orthodoxy he has long embraced? Curb entitlement spending? Temper excessive affirmative-action preferences? Tame the lawsuit lobby? Assign the teachers unions their share of the blame for what Obama calls 'crumbling schools that are stealing the future'?

"Could he get tough, when necessary, with fashionably leftist foreign dictators, highly politicized international institutions, and sanctimonious European America-bashers? Or would he instead heed such soothing platitudes as his wife's February 14 assertion that 'instead of protecting ourselves against terrorists,' we should be 'building diplomatic relationships'?

"I have a hard time believing at this point that Obama is up to these tasks. I would love to see him prove my doubts wrong. And, of course, he does not have to be flawless to be the best candidate. He just has to show that his flaws are less crippling than the all-too-apparent shortcomings of Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain."

Obviously Obama is fundamentally flawed, not flawless.

Mr. Taylor's article showed it powerfully and poignantly, despite his yearning for what he thinks would be possible if Obama was NOT fundamentally flawed.

Ironically, Obama is the candidate of the same political correctness extremists that vilified the Duke Three to whose defense Mr. Taylor rushed.

With McCain, Clinton and Obama, voters have a choice among bad, worse and worst, not good, better and best.

Obama is the worst.

© Michael Gaynor