The Democrats’ heir presumptive is already making his name for ignorance and gaffes. Now he has added a touch of petulant egotism. From his speech last night as he stumbled across the primary finish line:
In just a few short months, the Republican Party will arrive in St. Paul with a very different agenda. They will come here to nominate John McCain, a man who has served this country heroically. I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine [emphasis added].
The last clause would be obnoxious coming from someone with achievements to match his opponent’s. From thin-résuméed Barry, it’s near to pathetic. Power Line thoughtfully composed a speech that gives due recognition to all that the Illinois solon has done in public life:
Senator Obama, I honor your work in the private sector for a year or two after you graduated from college, and I honor your work for three years as a community organizer in Chicago. I understand that as a community organizer you pressured city authorities to remove asbestos from the Altgeld Gardens apartments in 1986 with at least partial success.
When the on-site manager of the apartments didn’t take action, you nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings downtown. These generated “a victory of sorts,” you said later, as workers soon began sealing the asbestos in the buildings, even if the project gradually ran out of steam and money and even if some tenants still have asbestos in their homes, according to current resident Linda Randle, who worked with you in the ’86 anti-asbestos campaign.
When you chose to quit organizing the South Side of Chicago after three years, your good deeds did not stop. You rendered valiant service by attending Harvard Law School and winning your first election as the president of the Harvard Law Review.
Your service to the Harvard Law Review did not bring an end to your remarkable benefactions. You returned to Chicago, where you won election to the Ilinois state legislature before the triumph that brought you to the Senate for the past three-and-a-half years. We all know your accomplishments in the Senate.
And last, but far from least, I honor your authorship of Dreams From My Father, a memoir that has spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. You, sir, have served our country with uncommon distinction.
This is one of those cases where honest praise would be the cruelest mockery. Or are we expected to laud what Savior-President Obama is going to do?
As another Power Line post asked (rhetorically, of course) a couple of weeks ago, “Can someone explain why it is, exactly, that Barack Obama is not a laughingstock?”
Why is Obama not a laughingstock? That is a very easy question with a simple answer. We are not allowed to laugh at him because if we did it would be denounced as racist and demeaning. It will certainly be interesting if he does make it to the W.H., what the cartoonists and the satirists and the late night comedians are going to do, how they will handle this. Anything, anything that smacks at all of a put-down or ridicule will be met with outrage from somebody. That of course is not the real problem. The real problem is what the Republicans in Congress will do, how they will handle a principled opposition and avoid the racism tag. This is assuming there will be any Republicans in Congress after November.
Posted by: Sally | Thursday, June 05, 2008 at 07:46 PM