He ventured forth to bring light to the world

Normally I'm not overtly political in this blog, but you may have noticed I'm making special dispensation for Obama. He's making it quite easy.

Gerard Baker has hit a home run with his satire, "He ventured forth to bring light to the world." Here it is, read by Baker himself:



Direct quotes from Obama:

• "A light will shine down... from somewhere. It will... it will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack!'"
  
• "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal!"
  
• "I have become a symbol of America returning to our best traditions."
  
• "We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
• "What Washington needs is adult supervision."
• "I honor -- we honor -- the service of John McCain, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine." (Obama is a first-term senator. McCain has been in Congress as a Representative and Senator since 1983... 25 years of accomplishment)
  
• And in the "Actions speak louder than words" category, he stood behind a mock presidential seal for a press conference on June 20th. He's not president. He dispensed with it when he was ridiculed.
  

Don't believe it? Look:


Well, a little arrogance is to be expected when you're a Super-Genius. Witness the following:

• "I had learned not to care. I blew a few smoke rings, remembering those years. Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though. ..." (Perhaps what he needed was adult supervision)
  
• "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died -- an entire town destroyed." (12 people died, not 10,000. Oh well, it's the thought that counts)
  
• "I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go." (video) (Wile E. Coyote... Sooooper genius! There are 50 states)
  
• "On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong." (Praise be! He's raised the fallen heroes to come stand before him!)
• May 13th, 2008, Obama explained a lack of Arabic translators in Afghanistan as a mis-allocation of resources: “We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” (Afghanis don't speak Arabic)
• Here are some more.
  

Listing the gaffes is fun, but it doesn't mean much. Anybody can make a slip of the tongue, and if you're speaking day after long day in a campaign, you're going to misspeak (as with the "57 states" quote. He obviously was thinking 50 states, then changed in mid-sentence because the actual number was 47. "One to go" would have made 48, and he didn't visit Hawaii or Alaska). Every public speaker has such statements on the record. They have nothing but entertainment value. They're like spelling mistakes in chat.

But in Obama's case, it's the premeditated statements in the speeches that are the big problem. This man is simply too arrogant and too inexperienced to be our President. In all seriousness, a President does not have to know everything. But he shouldn't place himself on a pedestal and should not look down his nose at the people he will depend upon to accomplish anything. A President accomplishes nothing of value except through the actions of others... that's what leadership is, and it takes a fair amount of humility to pull it off. Obama has none whatsoever.

Though it's of passing indifference to many of us, Obama seems to think his minority status is of primary importance, so let's not shy away from that. Firstly, it should be of passing indifference to everyone, Obama included, as he is every bit as Caucasian as he is African. If anybody has the right to straddle the fence and bring people together, it is he. Yet he's chosen not to do that; rather, he chooses one side over the other in a divisive way, as illustrated by his pre-emptive and unwarranted playing of the "race card" against McCain. This is exceptionally bad judgement. But what makes it worse is the way he's used it to plant a wedge between himself and the majority of people, whom he should be courting. Democracy is, in the end, a system of majority rule. To be elected he cannot eschew one group for another, even though he does it with flowery rhetoric about togetherness and change. It's not words that people react to... it's the meaning contained within them. With a little "adult supervision" perhaps Obama will learn that and be better prepared for a future election.