Sea Street

Savior or Demagogue

SAVIOR OR DEMAGOGUE

            On Tuesday, March 18, Senator Obama stood on a stage in Philadelphia across from Constitution Hall with eight large American flags behind him.  He was there to try to deal with remarks made by his Pastor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright, remarks that are well known to everyone, remarks that include Pastor Wright's blaming the United States Government for AIDS, saying that 911 was a case of the "chickens coming home to roost" and; in addition to this, shouting from the pulpit, "God damn America."

            He said much more of the same over a twenty-year period while Senator Obama was a regular congregant in his church.  Pastor Wright married Obama and his wife, Michelle, and baptized their two children; he was Obama's mentor.  Obama had to deal with this and he gave a speech about race in America that was highly applauded, especially in the liberal community.  Chris Matthews of Hardball gushed like a schoolgirl; Bob Herbert of the New York Times swooned.  Julian Bond said the speech "moved him to tears".  Orlando Patterson, a Harvard professor said he believed the speech would go down as one of the "great, magnificent and moving speeches in the American political tradition."  Many others likened his speech to speeches by John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln.

            But unfortunately, his speech lacked the essential ingredient of great speeches-honesty.  In the speech Senator Obama tried to move the subject away from the central issue and, according to many, he succeeded.  But the issue is not race, the issue would be the same if Pastor Wright were white.  The central issue is Obama's honesty, his character, his judgment and his strength. 

            I have asked myself what I would do if I were in Obama's situation.  Imagine that I was Cantor in a Synagogue where the Rabbi gave me lots of liturgical advice, imagine that the same Rabbi Bar Mitzvahed my son, imagine also that he was a racist who made disparaging remarks about black people from the pulpit (beama).  Imagine also that he cursed America.  What would I do?  Would I put self-interest above principle?  Would I have the character and strength to stand up to him?  If the Rabbi did not respond to my concerns would I have the decency to leave the Synagogue and if I didn't have the strength to do what was right and stayed on until I ran for public office, would I say upon the Rabbi's exposure, that in twenty years I never heard him say anything that was caught on videotape.  Would you believe me if I said that?  Jews gossip as much as black people; there's no way in hell I wouldn't have known about it. 

Of course such a Rabbi and such a Synagogue doesn't exist in the Jewish community so I can only judge Barack Obama against what I would have done and I'm not running for President.  What is a President without character?  What is a President without honesty, without judgment, without strength.  Barack Obama's judgment in all of this has been abysmal. 

Obama's campaign has made honesty a by-word; now we know his honesty is fake.   This is a man who knows who the president of Kazakhstan is, who knows the finer points of the gross national product, but who claims ignorance of what was common knowledge to any church member in Pastor Wright's church. 

Why didn't Obama object to Wright's racist comments?  Why didn't he object to Wright's comments about America?  "God damn America," is fighting words to most Americans but found no objection from Senator Obama.  When he did not rebuke Rev. Wright for his anti-Semitic remarks, he rebuked me and my wife and my four children and my five grandchildren. 

            Why didn't it bother Barack that Wright and Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite, visited Libya together.  When Rev. Wright met with Omar Kadafi, did he ever think about his freedom of speech in America.  Imagine him saying, "God damn Libya."

            Many of the talking heads have come to Obama's defense.  The liberal establishment, of which I have always been a member, is so enamored of Barack Obama that they can't think straight.  I saw Jack Cafferty and Jeff Toobin on the CNN Situation Room "poo-pooing" what Rev. Wright said.  Cafferty's own words were, "I have been going to the same church for eighteen years and every once in a while I hear the Priest say something that I disagree with.  "Cafferty, has your Priest ever stood behind the pulpit and said, ‘God damn America!'"  The same thing applies in Toobin's case, "Has your Rabbi ever stood on the beama and said, ‘God damn America!'"      

Sometimes the media bias takes on strange manifestations.  Roland Martin, a black talking head on CNN says that Rev. Wright's outrageous remarks were "taken out of context."  There is failed logic in this claim.  Adolph Hitler's remarks about Jews, which were only in a handful of his speeches, can be explained (according to Roland) by saying they were "taken out of context."

Roland, whose wife is a minister to a black congregation, also posits the idea that Wright's kind of language is commonplace in black churches; that's total bull.

Obama has said in campaign speech after campaign speech, "Words Count," quoting from the words of Governor Deval Patrick. You can't have it both ways.  Rev. Wright's words cannot be dismissed, they count too. 

Sean Hannity on FOX (a network I don't watch) must be applauded for bringing the Rev. Wright matter to public attention.  I never agree with Hannity but this was a brave thing on his part.

A couple of things occur to me as I write this, since Senator Obama said he could not make a break with Rev. Wright, who he described as being like an uncle, I would like to know if Rev. Wright will be invited to the White House if, per chance, Obama becomes president.  I would like to know if Obama will still be influenced by Rev. Wright if he becomes president.  I am sure the Jewish community and the citizens of Israel are anxiously awaiting an answer to those questions. 

Indeed, all of this calls into question our image of Obama.  We all know he is inexperienced.  In fact, he is so inexperienced as a politician that he let this issue come up in the first place. 

What Senator Obama has done is back himself into the Nixon box.  It's a "loose-loose" situation.  Nixon said he didn't know anything about Watergate-at which point arose the question, "Why?"  As president he had the kind of access to intelligence that told him when a robin farted in Russia; but he didn't know what his own people were doing.  Ergo, either he was incompetent and not fit to be president or he was a liar.  Obama has placed himself in the same box.  If he attended Rev. Wright's church for twenty years and didn't know about Wright's outrageous comments, he's too "out of touch" to be president, of course, if he knew, he's a liar.  This is the real issue that Obama should have addressed and didn't address in his speech about race.

Just as I am writing this, I'm watching CNN and listening to Oriana Huffington say, "the cover up is always worse than the crime."  Obama's speech was a masterful attempt at a cover-up; it was a smokescreen and it fooled a lot of supposedly intelligent people; but my feeling about Obama is that his life is an invented life.  He has worked out a very good story and for the first time we've seen a little bit of it unravel.  Everyone who has ever owned a sweater knows-anything that begins to unravel just keeps on unraveling.  He doesn't describe his mother beyond saying she was young and on welfare.  He doesn't tell us she went on to become a renowned anthropologist and was a U.S. Agency for International Development Consultant.  She joined Indonesia's oldest bank to work on what is described as the world's largest substantial micro-finance program.  He lets us feel that he was disadvantaged when, in fact, he attended Punahou Prep School in Hawaii, a most prestigious prep school. 

He talks a lot about Kansas but he was in Kansas for the first time in January.  He referred in his speech to his grandmother's "prejudices" saying she feared black men on the street.  Her fear of black men may have very well been based on experience, not prejudice.  He talked about this as a way to balance out Rev. Wright's remarks.  His grandmother's remarks were private remarks made to a grandson; they were not shouted from a pulpit for all the world to hear and they echo similar remarks by Jesse Jackson.  Still he didn't hesitate to throw his grandmother under the bus.  What a cad! 

Last of all, where is Ophra in all of this; she used to be a member of the church in question.  Why doesn't she STAND BY HER MAN?

But none of this has dampened the ardor of certain liberals.  Larry King has had Obama on his program twice, giving him millions of dollars worth of exposure.

Much has been made of Obama's oratorical skills.  Oratory can be used for good.  Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill saved civilization with the spoken word.  In our own time, Martin Luther King defined the hope of America in four words, "I have a dream."  But oratorical skills are not a virtue in themselves alone.  Stephen A. Douglas, one of the great orators of the nineteenth century was bested in the end by Abraham Lincoln, a man with a thin, high-pitched voice. 

Oratory can be used in many ways.  Great orators can be very persuasive.  The main danger with great oratory is that it can easily become demagogic.  The main tool in a demagogue's inventory is charm and charisma. They start with a little bit of truth, the little bit of truth that everyone hungers for and they turn it and twist it to their own ends.  They promise and wave the flag of hope and change.  Governor Deval Patrick when he was elected the first black governor in Massachusetts history.  He was a great orator, so great that Barack Obama has incorporated parts of his speeches into his own but a year after becoming governor he has been stymied by the legislature.  His early "dazzle," to quote the New York Times, has fizzled out.  Obama will be stymied by Congress.

It's hard to tell from newsreel footage that a powerful twentieth century demagogue was charming and charismatic.  People loved him.  All age groups loved him.  He promised them change, not only for themselves but the entire world.  He promised them salvation and a thousand-year Reich. 

When I look at the crowds around Barack Obama, when I look into their eyes and their expressions I do not see anything that has to do with practical politics.  After all, on the practical level we know what the Cklinton's can do; they have already done it.  We don't know what Obama can do.  There's no practical aspect to his following; rather, they see him as a Messiah and he feeds their hunger, feeds their hunger by calling them the "Obama Generation" on his website (what conceit).  With homiletics learned at Rev. Wright's knee he leads them on.  For example Rev. Wright says to his congregation, "He that endureth to the end," And the congregation responds, "shall be saved."  Rev. Wright: "Let's say that one more time, he that endureth to the end,"  Congregation: "shall be saved."  Obama says, "They say we won't win, but I say,"  Audience: "Yes, we can."  Obama: "Let's hear that again, they say we won't win, but I say,"  Audience: "Yes, we can." 

When the adoring crowds chant, "Yes, we can."  I see love in their eyes and passion but we're not electing a lover, we're electing a president.  If your boyfriend lets you down, it's not the end of the world but if your president lets you down it can be the end of the world.

There is a moral here:  Beware of saviors, put your trust in those who can get the job done.  As for Hillary and her Bosnian adventure, she is ether hallucinating, exaggerating or lying; let's go with lying.  So what, Hillary told a lie about a twenty-minute event and Obama lied about a twenty-year event.  Only a child or a liberal would confuse the two. 

Obama has lied before.  He said the Kennedys were behind his father's education-not true.  He said his father and mother met and fell in love during the March to Selma.  The problem here is that Obama was four years old at the time.   

The Pastor Wright thing is not going away because it's a clue, just like you have in a criminal trial.  It's a clue to Obama, it's the key to what is inside of Obama.  If you open him up will you find a savior or a demagogue.