Posted by
Real Guy on Sunday, February 11, 2007 4:05:43 PM
Well, we’ve got six hundred something days until the election and it feels like it’s already the primary season for the 2008 election. Senator Barack Obama announced his entry into the fray yesterday. Barack wouldn’t dare quote President Reagan, but that’s the image he’s trying to construct. He’s currently in the process of delivering this image in carefully orchestrated events – Oprah, “Sixty Minutes”, etc. The image we’re supposed to be getting is the image of an idealist gazing upon that shining city on a hill and trying to make us believe that he’s the guy who can lead us back there.
Before I get started I want to thank all the great thinkers who engineered our present campaign finance laws which set the conditions for an infinite number of Political Action Committees, advocacy groups, and hundreds of fund raisers. Endless phone calls, mail, and internet spam are employed in an attempt to drain the average individual contributors of their maximum contributions each of which will buy approximately 1.2 seconds of local market television time. What’s really great about this is that campaign fund raising is now continuous. Why do I keep thinking of the Laws of Unintended Consequences when I think about campaign finance reform? We’ll talk about that some other day.
Senator Obama, or “The Barackster” as my friends and I refer to him, said some interesting things yesterday. He mentioned the “smallness of our politics.” He said, “The time for that politics is over.” He said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
What’s interesting about this? What’s interesting is what is not there. What is interesting is the lack of content. What is interesting is the overuse of the term “Rock Star” when referring to the guy. (I wonder if Hillary thinks of him as a rock star).
What is also interesting is that he quoted Abraham Lincoln. You may have thought, as I did, that The Barackster would have quoted our first black president, Bill Clinton. Then again, one would have to look long and hard for anything quotable from Bill Clinton that trumps his “I Did Not Have Sex With That Woman” speech.
Okay, so this is a big PR rollout. After all Senator Obama, like any other presidential hopeful, has to start spending his campaign dollars to try and raise more campaign dollars at the rate of one small contribution at a time. He should do pretty well considering Senator Joe Biden’s endorsement of his cleanliness.
By the way, if there were any justice Senator Biden’s exploratory committee would be shut down by now. But, as we all know there’s a double standard at work here. Any Republican would have not only lost his or her chance at the presidency, but would be having trouble with a lot of people calling for their resignation. Senator Biden, however, is the beneficiary of the ThreeStupidityStrikesforDemocratsOnly rule. He’s guilty of plagiarism. He’s guilty of an obviously stupid remark that has a racial taint to it – much more directly than Senator Trent Lott’s praise of Senator Strom Thurmond which resulted in Senator Lott losing his leadership post. I can’t wait to see what’s next. Maybe it will thin the field if he just gets around to his third strike soon.
Okay all you tough young reporters out there here’s the question you need to ask Senator Obama on the campaign trail -- “What will you do?” What I’m referring to is just what will Senator Obama do (if he gets elected president) and we’re still in Iraq and he sets an arbitrary deadline to “get out of Iraq.” Then we see the rapid progression of a Middle East dominated by Iran as a virulent anti-U.S. influence which by then will have not only nuclear weapons but some capability to deliver them.
I think I know what Barack will do. He’ll be dealing with the Al Sharpton’s and Jesse Jackson’s of the world who will probably be appointees in his administration somewhere advising him that the racial imbalances of the country are the number one priority and a new Civil Rights bill has to be passed to solve our problems in much the same way Campaign Finance Reform has solved all of our campaign finance irregularities and problems. He’ll be listening to others telling him that health care for everybody, particularly for every illegal immigrant in the country, is our number one priority and it has to be either mandated or nationalized. He’ll be reminded by powerful interest groups who helped him get elected that gay rights and women’s rights are our number one priority and that we need a whole new affirmative action revitalization effort. Another group will try to convince him that energy independence is the answer to everything and a huge government bureaucracy will have to be established to improve the national security and global warming problems we now have because of our dependence on Big Oil which delivers Foreign Oil to our refineries. By the way, this new Energy Agency will spend several billion dollars a year and won’t produce one gallon of gasoline or ethanol.
Somewhere down about twentieth on his list will be national security. Barack will be trying to play catch up on global security commitments with about two thirds of the military we have now which will have been reduced due to military budget cuts intended to help us reduce the accumulation of national debt. (Never mind that seventy five percent of our unfunded liabilities are related to Social Security and Medicare and have nothing to do with our military expenditures which have not exceeded 5% of GDP at anytime recently including the costs of the ongoing battle in Iraq).
That’s what Barack will be doing in my opinion. When it comes to the “Audacity of Hope” let’s just hope that when Barack gazes on that shining city on the hill that he isn't looking at some kind of radioactive glow.