An Obama Scandal? Nope

If Insight, a right-of-center magazine, obtained the material for this story from Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opposition research team, as it asserts, Senator Clinton needs a staff shake-up. I’m no Barack Obama fan; he’s the most vacuous presidentabile since Liddy Dole. But, as the story itself eventually makes plain (and pace Jim Geraghty), there’s less than nothing interesting in the period that he spent as a pupil in an Indonesian madrassa before his tenth birthday.

The story starts promisingly for the Illinoisan’s non-admirers:

An investigation of Mr. Obama by political opponents within the Democratic Party has discovered that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia. Sources close to the background check, which has not yet been released, said Mr. Obama, 45, spent at least four years in a so-called Madrassa, or Muslim seminary, in Indonesia.

“He was a Muslim, but he concealed it,” the source said. “His opponents within the Democrats hope this will become a major issue in the campaign.”

When contacted by Insight, Mr. Obama’s press secretary said he would consult with “his boss” and call back. He did not.

Sources said the background check, conducted by researchers connected to Senator Clinton, disclosed details of Mr. Obama’s Muslim past. The sources said the Clinton camp concluded the Illinois Democrat concealed his prior Muslim faith and education.

Except that we learn a few paragraphs later that, following her divorce from young Barack’s father,

Mr. Obama’s mother married an Indonesian student and the family moved to Jakarta. Mr. Obama returned to Hawaii when he was 10 [emphasis added] to live with his maternal grandparents. . . .

In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a Madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim. Although Indonesia is regarded as a moderate Muslim state, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that today [emphasis added] most of these schools are financed by the Saudi Arabian government and they teach a Wahhabi doctrine that denies the rights of non-Muslims.

It seems rather doubtful that whatever the lad learned in approximately second through fifth grade played a decisive role in forming his political outlook, and the reference to Saudi financing is weaselly. It refers to the present situation, not that of 35 years ago.

Furthermore, Senator Obama hasn’t “concealed” his past to any meaningful extent.

In [his autobiography, The Audacity of Hope], Mr. Obama briefly addresses his education in Indonesia. “During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin’s call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.”

How much more does one expect to learn about anybody’s elementary education? That he was sent to schools of two different faiths tends to confirm his statements, quoted in the article, about the essential irreligiosity of his mother and stepfather. If they didn’t take either Christianity or Islam seriously, it’s unlikely that their boy paid close attention to doctrinal instruction or remembered much that was worth relating in a campaign-oriented memoir.

If there’s a real story here, it’s about Senator Clinton: not about her well-known ruthlessness but, rather, about the ham-handedness that so notably marked her blundering leadership of her husband’s socialized medicine initiative. If she’s this inept at dealing with Barack Obama, do we want her confronting North Korea, Venezuela and Iran?