Richard Whalen

Barack Obama, the most unexpected presidential candidate in recent U.S. history, is gliding toward the Democratic nomination and possible election without facing any of the tough questions.

A political career scarcely begun by conventional standards, what we know about Obama comes mainly from own writings and speeches. He spent seven years in the Illinois legislature and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He came to national attention with his riveting 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech.

Obama is no conventional politician. Everything he says and writes, everything written about him by his admirers, radiates extraordinary optimism. His adherents have extravagant visions of what he can accomplish and have transformed him into a messiah-like “President of Peace.” He is especially hailed by those eager to forget the war-making incumbent in the White House.

Liberal columnist Michael Kinsley praises Obama’s “valuable experience…. as what you might call a ‘world man’ – Kenyan father, American mother, four formative years living in Indonesia, more years in the ethnic stew of Hawaii, a middle name of Hussein, and so on – in an increasingly globalized world.” Like so many enthusiasts, Kinsley displays the symptoms of a “man crush” on Obama and the glorious dreams he stirs as the savior of the corrupt, decadent Democratic Party, even the corrupt, decadent American political system and perhaps, all of America itself.

I repeat: We know less about Obama than any other popular presidential candidate in at least a half-century. He is the stealth frontrunner. And most of what we think we know about this “world man” comes from his own agitprop – his books and speeches. Beyond his attractive wife Michelle, we know none of his admirers and aides. It is surely time to get Barack Obama in sharp focus and examine who and what he is. For example, the right-wing weekly Human Events offered this week a special supplement illustrating the widespread lack of knowledge of Obama’s career and public record. And, in the American Conservative (February 25), the London-based journalist Brendan O’Neill sees Obama not as an icon of peace, but one likely to be more bellicose than Bush.

He writes: “President Obama would be a war-monger. He would be a wide-eyed, zealous interventionist who would not think twice about using America’s ‘military muscle’ (his words) to overthrow ‘rogue states’ and to suppress America’s enemies, real and imagined. He would go farther even than President Bush in transforming the globe into America’s backyard and staffing it with spies and soldiers. He would relish the ‘American mission’ to police the world and topple tyrannical regimes.”

Much is made of Obama’s October 2002 speech at an antiwar rally in Chicago, in which he called the planned invasion of Iraq “dumb” and “rash.” But he repeatedly told his audience that Bush was damaging the legitimate American case for wars of intervention and making it harder for future, perhaps Democratic administrations to deploy troops overseas to depose unfriendly regimes.

When he got to Washington, Senator Obama joined the lopsided bipartisan majority to fund the war in Iraq and opposed the withdrawal of American troops. In 2004, he talked approvingly of sending more troops to Iraq. He and Senator Clinton both voted “no” to ordering President Bush to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007. Both also voted against a June 2006 amendment proposed by Senator John Kerry for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq. Not until May 2007 did Clinton and Obama vote to cut off war funds.

Obama is by far the most impressive candidate the Democrats have presented since John F. Kennedy in 1960. His wife, Michelle, is well-cast as the 21st Century Jackie. But who are Obama’s Joe Kennedy (money), John Bailey (strategy), Ted Sorenson (speech and image making) and Kenny O’Donnell (political organization)?