Obama's Mindless Message of Change

Obama’s Mindless Message of Change

The following is a quote from Charles R. Kesler, a professor of government at California's Claremont College. "Of all the presidential contenders' slogans this year, Barack Obama's have been the most interesting. His campaign creed is: 'Yes, we can.' To which any reasonable person would ask: "Can what?" The answer, of course, is: 'Hope." But again, a reasonable person might ask: 'Hope for what?' To which the answer confidently comes back from the Obama campaign: 'For change.' Indeed, Obama's signs say: 'Change We Can Believe In,' as opposed, one supposes, to the unbelievable changes. But the elementary problem with this -- which any student of logic might raise -- is that change can be for the better or the worse."

Charles Kesler continues: “Democrats in general . . . confuse change with improvement. They fail to weigh the costs and benefits of change, to consider its unintended consequences, or to worry about what we need to conserve and how we might go about doing that faithfully. They ask Americans to embrace change for its own sake, in the faith that history is governed by a law of progress, which guarantees that change is almost always an improvement. The ability to bring about historical change, then, becomes the highest mark of the liberal leader.”

For Americans concerned about the direction of our country, Kesler’s comments are alarming. Basically, he’s saying that Barack is conducting a campaign based on mindless slogans – on “feel good” language. Obama seems to have no clear awareness that some changes, such as the dramatic rise in out-of-wedlock births, are detrimental. The change Obama wants is one where all of us become much more dependent on government – at the cost of bankrupting taxpayers.

As the “Saturday Night Live” parodies have shown, the national media doesn’t want to ask Barack Obama hard questions about what changes he proposes. Media types appears to be afraid either of offending the candidate or earning the disapproval of their social group. Thus, the mindlessness of the Obama Campaign lurches on.

Thus, tens of millions of Americans are supporting Barack Obama without any idea what his “message of change” means. As John McCain noted, Obama's message is much less one of principles than of platitudes. It’s not exactly a sound way of determining a presidential nominee.


Charles Kesler’s comment above are from Imprimis, an important publication at Hillsdale College in Michigan. You can subscribe by going to http://hillsdalecollege.edu or by e-mailing at: imprimis@hillsdale.edu. Leave your name and address. Imprimis is consistently one of the best academic publications in the U.S.

OBAMA'S CUBAN FLAG, EMPTY RHETORIC

Picture from NewsBusters (via Race42008) of an Obama campaign office in Houston. Note the Cuban flag with the picture of Communist fanatic Che Guevara superimposed.

I'VE BEEN GETTING QUESTIONS ON THE FLAG ABOVE. THE LINKS BELOW WILL ALLOW YOU TO SEE THE DETAILS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL. I'LL BE WRITING MORE ON THIS SUBJECT WEDNESDAY.


http://www.myfoxhouston.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=5700252&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1

It [[the flag story] was on the news in Houston. Above is the video from Fox Houston showing the flag in the background of Obama's office that was linked from Newsbusters at http://newsbusters.org/blogs/d-s-hube/2008/02/11/another-flag-issue-obama

THIS IS THE SAME OBAMA THAT REFUSES TO WEAR AN AMERICAN FLAG PIN ON HIS LAPEL. HE ALSO HAS A PROBLEM PUTTING HIS HAND OVER HIS HEART DURING THE PLAYING OF THE NATIONAL ANTHEM.


I'll build on this column throughout Tuesday, February 12, 2008 and will be writing the entire week on the two Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I've been writing for nearly a year about how Hillary Clinton will be the nominee. However, I'm much (much, much) less certain of that. Frankly, if Mrs. Clinton doesn't win in Ohio and Texas next month, she probably won't get the nomination.

The numbers are working against her. When she loses all three races today (MD, VA, and DC) in the "Potomac Primaries," that will be TEN losses in a row. When you're on that kind of losing streak, it's hard to see the trend coming to an end. The Democratic Establishment recognizes Obama's limitations, and they don't really want him to be the standard-bearer, but in the end they might not have a choice.

As a speaker, Mrs. Clinton reminds us of the proverbial fingernail scratching on a blackboard (now apparently known as "whiteboards"). In contrast, Barack Obama comes across as the silver-tongued orator. Where he fails is in what Martin Luther King called "the content of his character." His main commitment seems to be bamboozling the American people with pretty words. He relies on feel-good rhetoric to sell himself politically. He talks the talk but he doesn't truly walk the walk.

For example, Obama's stump speech begins with these words: "We are at a defining moment in our history." Some Democrats seem to find that statement to be profound. Actually, it's a clanking cliche that foreshadows presentations light on content and heavy on sanctimony.

Obama drenches his Democratic audiences in rhetorical syrup ("Yes we can!"), and they lap it up. But what do the pretty words actually mean? Do his stirring speeches stand up to any kind of examination?



Yesterday on TV, he said, "Change does not happen from the top down. Change happens from the bottom up."



A cynic (like me) might say, "I guess his belief in generating from the bottom-up is why he's running for a low-level office like President of the United States." His statement certainly doesn't apply to the candidate himself.




He likes to tell us that "Washington is broken," implying that he (and his Party) have little if anything to do with Washington, DC. He forgets to add that he -- and his main political allies -- are charter members of the Beltway Gang. He doesn't delve into how people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are part of the fractured government.




Obama always begins his stump speech with the following words: "We are at a defining moment in our history." Oh, really? A few unsophisticated people might regard that hoary cliche as somehow uplifting. In fact, every generation has heard the same thing from politicians. It's like Macbeth's "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."





Senator Obama has made himself a very wealthy man by giving speeches and selling books, particularly his The Audacity of Hope, for which he received an advance payment of $1.9 million. However audacious his own hopes, Obama's main characteristic is the emptiness of his rhetoric.



Granted, he never quite reaches the total inauthenticity of Hillary Clinton, but he comes close. The more one examines what Obama says, the less content there is. Without specifics, his stock-in-trade concepts like "hope" and "change" have no meaning. He's floating to the top on a stream of vast emptiness.








OBAMA WEARING THE FLIP-FLOPS ON TIME-TABLES:

Team McCain is chuckling over a comment from Barack Obama last night on "60 Minutes": http://cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/07/60minutes/main3804268_page2.shtml


"At a time when American casualties are down, at a time when the violence is down, particularly affecting the Iraqi population, is that the right time to try and set time tables for withdrawing all American troops? I mean you talked about…the end of 2009," [Steve] Kroft remarked.

[Obama said] "Yeah, absolutely. I think now is precisely the time. I think that it is very important for us to send a clear signal to the Iraqis that we are not gonna be here permanently. We're not gonna set up permanent bases. That they are going to have to resolve their differences and get their country functioning."

"And you pull out according to that time table, regardless of the situation? Even if there’s serious sectarian violence?" Kroft asked.

"No, I always reserve as commander in chief, the right to assess the situation," Obama replied.


First he's for timetables, then he isn't. As one McCainiac just put it to me, "Shades of John Kerry. We already beat this guy. The last thing we need right now is indecisiveness."


Obama can ask Mitt Romney about how merciless McCain is when it comes to reading into his opponents' words on timetables.


Tomorrow's column on Barack Obama's supposed commitment to "universal health care." Question: if he's for it, why did he vote against mandating physician assistance in the case of "botched" abortions when a child is born alive? I hope it's not "audacious" to ask that obvious question.