By Emmett Tyrrell
Thursday, April 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Anyone who has followed politics studiously over the
years is aware that there are gifted politicians who, for whatever
reason, eventually find their campaigns haunted. I do not mean haunted
by accidental events or by a clod or two at campaign headquarters. I
mean haunted . I mean visited by the weird, by supernatural
pranksters, by what our Islamic friends call jinn.
Clearly, after months of suave upward mobility, Sen. Barack Obama,
D-Ill., is now in this unfortunate condition. The bizarre is his
companion. The paranormal is a constant possibility. Though the
members of the press are too stuffy to mention it, recent setbacks to
his campaign are not normal.
The gifted young senator appears in San Francisco amongst his fellow
moral and intellectual colossi. For an instant, he lets down his
guard. In this closed meeting, he blurts out what he really thinks,
and somehow his remarks are taped. A "friendly" Web site posts his
remarks, and all hell breaks loose. Of a sudden, every politically
alert American knows that in San Francisco (of all places!), Obama
explained that religion is the opiate of the gun nuts, who have been
out of work and living angrily in jerkwater for "25 years."
How did that tape ever get out, and why would Obama's friends at that
Web site not recognize its potential for ruin? Or consider a more
recent and even more bizarre interlude. Obama is having breakfast in
Scranton, Pa. A reporter asks for his reaction to former president
Jimmy Carter's meeting with the thugs of Hamas, and Obama waffles.
Perhaps, that is not so surprising, for he has waffled frequently
along the campaign trail. But now comes the paranormal part. The
wretch waffled while actually eating a waffle -- reportedly a Belgian
waffle, not even an American waffle. Weirder still, Obama acknowledged
his waffle, exclaiming to the reporter: "Why can't I just eat my
waffle?" and "Just let me eat my waffle."
After the Pennsylvania primary, I suspect Obama's odd occurrences will
multiply. There will be freakish moments, as there have been with
other ill-starred leaders, reminiscent of Jimmy Carter being attacked
by an amphibious rabbit in 1979 or Richard Nixon photographed while
strolling along a sandy beach wearing wingtip shoes before impeachment
was even contemplated. The media's focus of Obama's campaign will
change from their recent absorption with his fabulously charismatic
inanity to speculation on his next calamitous occasion. When might he
next bump his head on a waffle or while exiting an airplane? Remember
when President Gerald Ford captured headlines by bumping his head? For
Ford, it was the best press he had gotten in months.
I do not anticipate that Obama's diabolical infestation will receive
the extensive media coverage that was accorded to Carter, Ford and
Nixon. The journalists esteem him. They believe he is different from
the common politician they encounter. He says he is, and they believe
it. He is for "change," for "community," for all Americans to "come
together." That does not sound very different from anyone else who has
sought the Democratic presidential nomination, but the mainstream
journalists forget things. They also ignore indelicacies, for
instance, the Obama supporters now under indictment, at least one of
whom has some disturbing Middle Eastern financial sources. The
journalists also have paid little attention to the fact that in 2005,
the newly elected senator from Illinois bought a $1.65 million dollar
house for $300,000 less than the asking price.
Actually, I dissent from my journalistic colleagues' belief that Obama
is different. He has been a political hustler all his life, much as
the Clintons have and many other Democratic miracle workers, too. When
he graduated from Columbia University, he came to Chicago and at 23
became a community organizer in a poor Chicago neighborhood, whose
residents viewed him as a slick outsider, which he was. Here, again,
we see him as not unlike the left-wing Clintons of the late 1960s or
Jean-Francois Kerry or Al Gore. Soon Obama returned east for a Harvard
Law School degree, after which he immediately entered Chicago
politics. He has been in politics all his adult life. How does that
make him different from other top Democrats?
Well, allow me to return to that Scranton waffle. Certainly the
Clintons, and probably most of the other erstwhile Democratic
presidential contenders, would have the good sense not to mention it
while waffling before the press. But then none of these contemporary
Democrats has Obama's problem with the paranormal. Perhaps this is a
matter for the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's professional services.
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R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is founder and editor in chief of The American
Spectator and co-author of Madame Hillary: The Dark Road to the White
House.
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