A candidate who accuses his opponent of wanting to prolong the war in Iraq for a hundred years and undermining Mississippi levees may not be in the best position to whine that the other side will “try to make you afraid of me”. But toujours de l'audace d’espoir:
“We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run,” said the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. “They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. ‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’”
In similar comments at a Chicago fundraiser last Thursday, Obama told supporters that Republicans would try to portray both him and his wife Michelle as “scary.”
“They’re going to try to make me into a scary guy,” he said last week. “They’re even trying to make Michelle into a scary person. Right? And so that drumbeat – ‘we’re not sure if he’s patriotic or not; we’re not sure if he is too black.’”
Well, I don’t think that Barack Obama is “scary” – not in the sense that anybody would run away from him in a dark alley. What I would call him is “cocky”:
Obama: From Promise to Power by DavidMendell . . . opens with an anecdote of then-senatorial candidate Barack Obama walking around the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, hours before he gave the speech that launched his national reputation.
Obama’s response to a comment that “he seemed to be impressing many people of influence in this rarefied atmosphere”: “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.”
At that point, Mr. Obama had achieved quite a bit less in politics than LeBron James in basketball, to put it mildly. He’s come up fast since then, but isn’t his ball handling still on a rookie level? He’s learning how to pivot but executes clumsily. Just this morning, he announced his support for amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, made urgently necessary by a judge’s decision that the current law doesn’t allow our government to eavesdrop on communications between foreigners, both on foreign soil, if their exchange is routed through the United States.
Backing that legislation was certainly an eminently sensible, non-scary stance. Then the Angry Left complained, and Senator Obama changed his mind. Now he will try to make the bill ineffective by deleting the provision protecting telecommunications companies from liability if they intercept calls in reliance on FISA orders. Without that safeguard, cooperative executives risk their shareholders’ money in costly litigation against the Left’s lawfare warriors. Even Senator Obama has enough economic savvy to know that making patriotism expensive isn’t the way to get more of it.
Still, I'm not scared. How can anybody be scared of a guy whom the likes of Daily Kos can intimidate? He knows he “can play on this level. I got some game.” Well, the Washington Generals had “some game”, too.
Addendum: The more I think about Senator Obama’s half-gainer double reverse bellyflop (to shift the sports analogy), the more absurdly amateurish it seems. Will his advisors tell us tomorrow that he didn’t know the telecom provision was the most controversial part of FISA reform, or that he didn’t realize it was included in the House bill that he (briefly) endorsed?
Were I a Democrat, I might be wondering whether my party would be well-advised to nominate a standard bearer who makes Jimmy Carter look astute. The convention isn’t over yet. In fact, it hasn’t begun. The delegates are legally free to vote for anyone. And there are Democratic presidentabiles who don’t sound like teenagers. (At least, some GOP stalwarts think so.)
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