He’s Thin and So’s His Record
By SusanUnPC on March 2, 2008 at 6:13 PM in Barack Obama
He’s tall, but thin. So too is his record, write the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, D.C. policy analyst Steve Clemons, and History News Network’s Rick Shenkman. (What’s their problem? They need to get high on hope.)
Barack Obama told Ellen Degeneres the other day, “Well, first of all I think I’ll just go into the Oval Office and sit at the desk and say, ‘Wow, this is really cool’.”
Yeah. It’s cool. I dig it totally.
In endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, the Chronicle board — what a bunch of unbelievers – notes:
Seven years of the Bush administration have left us so hungry for change that we will accept almost any kind offered. Senator Obama says he is the agent of that change and proclaims that we are the change we seek, the change we’ve been waiting for.
Yet change alone is not enough. George Bush changed peace into war, surpluses into deficits and the respect this country enjoyed around the world into contempt. That was not what we had waited for.
Yet Obama will also keep us waiting. His thin legislative record — so thin even his Texas spokesperson was at a loss to name a single Senate accomplishment — reveals his avoidance of controversy and hard choices, including more than a hundred votes of “present” in the Illinois Legislature when others took a stand.
The U.S. Senate subcommittee he chairs on NATO, a key ally, has never met or acted. He touts ethics reform that requires only that congressmen stand while lobbyists buy their three-martini lunches [Me? I love buffets!] and offers a health care plan that doesn’t cover everybody [BUT! His "Harry & Louise" ads say so!]. Even his speech against the war in Iraq was not followed by action in the Senate. [WHAT? But, he gave a single speech. That's what counts. So what if he didn't do anything more than that one speech? So what if he didn't step up to defend the few on the national stage who spoke out against the war?]
Promising change alone, he delivers only change lite, change borne of the easy consensus that comes from political expedience and not asking for too much. …
Why, I’d have to say that the Houston Chronicle board speaks of Barack Obama with derision. Next up:
Here’s analyst Steve Clemons, today at his estimable blog, The Washington Note, writing “Obama’s Hearing Problem“:
In December, I did some research into how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each used legislative machinery at their disposal in the Senate to get some sense of their “executive abilities”. For some reason, I expected Hillary Clinton to be too busy for things like subcommittee hearings and Obama to be drilling in and learning as much as he could because his experience in federal level legislative affairs might be perceived as weak.
I found the opposite — and discovered that Barack Obama, despite his role as Chairman of the European Subcommittee on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had not held a single policy hearing during his tenure. In the Environment and Public Works Committee Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health, I found that Clinton had chaired and been actively engaged in a number of hearings during the same period.
When I discovered this, a number of Obama’s own foreign policy advisers called me — and one said, “I am as surprised as you are.”
Huh? One of his own foreign policy advisers didn’t vet his candidate? Was that adviser hopped up on the hope dope? Good lord.
Read all of “Obama’s Hearing Problem.”
Next up, there’s David Ignatius in today’s Washington Post, writing “Obama: A Thin Record For a Bridge Builder“:
strong>If Obama truly intends to unite America across party lines and break the Washington logjam, then why has he shown so little interest or aptitude for the hard work of bipartisan government?
This is the real “Where’s the beef?” about Obama, and it still doesn’t have a good answer. He gives a great speech, and he promises that he can heal the terrible partisan divisions that have enfeebled American politics over the past decade. This is a message of hope that the country clearly wants to hear.
But can he do it? The record is mixed, but it’s fair to say that Obama has not shown much willingness to take risks or make enemies to try to restore a working center in Washington. Clinton, for all her reputation as a divisive figure, has a much stronger record of bipartisan achievement. And the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, has a better record still.
Obama’s argument is that he can mobilize a new coalition that will embrace his proclamation that “yes, we can” break out of the straitjacket. But for voters to feel confident that he can achieve this transformation should he become president, they would need evidence that he has fought and won similar battles. The record here, to put it mildly, is thin.
What I hear from politicians who have worked with Obama, both in Illinois state politics and here in Washington, gives me pause. They describe someone with an extraordinary ability to work across racial lines but not someone who has earned any profiles in courage for standing up to special interests or divisive party activists. Indeed, the trait people remember best about Obama, in addition to his intellect, is his ambition.
This absence of evidence of bipartisan “hard work” is very worrisome. Obama is selling himself to millions based on the promise he can deliver. But, it’s obvious to the unbesotted that it’s speechifying designed to enrapture people just to get elected. Call me cynical but what I most see in his traits are his desires to get the “green” and to get the win. One more Ignatius quote, and this echoes what I’ve heard longtime Republican U.S. Senators say about the Obama they met in the U.S. Senate — that while they liked him, they never saw him make much of an effort at bipartisan work:
“The authentic Barack Obama? We just don’t know. The level of uncertainty is too high,” one Democratic senator told me last week. He noted that Obama hasn’t been involved in any “transformative battles” where he might anger any of the party’s interest groups. “If his voting record in the past is the real Barack Obama, then there isn’t going to be any bipartisanship,” this senator cautioned.
And here’s a link to Rick Shenkman’s new piece — “Obama Kool-Aid: Drink Slowly” — at History News Network. Shenkman notes:
Not even Reagan, with whom Obama is now being compared, claimed to be above politics. So when he ducked controversies or was caught playing politics — raising taxes, making peace overtures to the evil empire, and running up huge deficits — he could shrug off the charge of hypocrisy. What mattered was that his supporters believed in their hearts he hadn’t abandoned “the cause.”
Obama’s set himself a higher challenge. His cause is anti-politics. So he can’t be caught playing politics. This is a difficult situation for a politician to find himself in. For at times he will of course have to play politics.
[H]e took credit for the legislative achievements of others in the state legislature of Illinois (including his signature bill requiring the taping of jailhouse confessions) in order to advance his state profile and make a run for the US Senate. His helpmate in the enterprise was the state president, Emil Jones, who bragged that he was going to make a US Senator! In return for Jones’s support, Obama delivered millions in earmarks to Jones’s district. …
Earmarks. Huh. Well, just stay tuned in to 0-bam-a! 0-bam-a! 0-bam-a. (And try to get that irritating drivel out of your head after you watch it.)
by Ronald Scott
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