Pretty much everyone is linking to this loony Andy McCarthy post at The Corner, in which he complains about John McCain’s decision not to play the “Obama is a secret terrorist” card in last night’s debate. Here’s the key graf:
Memo to McCain Campaign: Someone is either a terrorist sympathizer or he isn’t; someone is either disqualified as a terrorist sympathizer or he’s qualified for public office. You helped portray Obama as a clealy [sic] qualified presidential candidate who would fight terrorists.
Uhh … dude? That’s because that’s what Obama pretty “clealy” is: a man thoroughly qualified to be president who will have no qualms about fighting terrorists, especially if your definition of the latter commitment centers on a willingness to spy on American citizens, expand the military, and attack small Middle Eastern countries at a moment’s notice (yay!). Obama doesn’t “come from the radical Left”, unless by that you mean that he’s associated himself at various times with people who do: and as anyone who does identify as far-Left on either domestic or foreign matters will be happy to tell you, from that perspective the Obama campaign has consisted largely of a blow-by-blow repudiation of everything that such “radicals” stand for. Crucially, though, such repudiation is never explicit or aggressive, and – most importantly – is always peddled as the necessary outgrowth of Obama’s establishmentarianism “bipartisanship”: if the man is a radical, it is a well-kept secret indeed.
Hence Conor quotes Ryan Lizza’s ought-to-be-definitive New Yorker profile:
Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.
Or as Larison puts it:
… Obama is an aspiring member of the establishment, and Lizza’s story is filled with the accounts of the once-upon-a-time patrons and backers of Obama whom he left behind (at least as they see it) as he ascended ever higher. … This is the real reason why trying to portray him as the terrorist’s pal or as a raging anti-American black nationalist (and, again, I have to stress that it is the anti-Americanism of Ayers and Wright that agitates the people who obsess about them) is so profoundly stupid.
Could it be an act? Could the real, radical, terrorist-sympathizing Obama be hidden under this outwardly compromising and never-say-partisan demeanor? Sure – but conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen, and while it similarly could be the case that it’s all a dream, we don’t take that to be a reason to run into walls hoping that the laws of our imagination will suddenly change. It’s fine, of course, to argue – as I would – that Obama’s perfectly “centrist” and establishment-appeasing left-liberalism makes him an unacceptable presidential candidate, but quite another to stoke the fires of people’s irrational fears and hatreds by pretending he’s something more than that.
UPDATE: You ought to read Eric Martin, too.
Filed under: media/culture, politics
[...] I largely agree with John’s take on the whole Obama-as-closet-radical idea being pushed by the (increasingly desperate) McCain [...]
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Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them.
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Of course, that’s how you get power… have you ever read Sal Alinksky? He was all abut infiltrating the establishment…
Obama is a socialist
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/10/08/obama-and-the-socialists/
Obama supported gay marriage in 1996
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/10/08/obama-and-the-socialists/
search for obama on the page
Do you honestly believe that Obama didn’t know who the weathermen were till after he was hired by Ayers? Do you honestly believe that he first met Ayers in 1995?
[...] Comments Invasion of the left… on The Real ObamaJohn on Dinnerblogging: Spiced Pumpkin…Giordano Bruno on Who knows what evil lurks in [...]
So you’re going to give me a bunch of unsourced Internet rumors and tell me to conclude on that basis that Obama is a socialist? If that’s the way this game works, I’ve got some stories about Trig Palin to share with you …
Isn’t this a pretty plausible way to interpret the Lizza account: Obama is extremely ambitious and has done whatever necessary to win. So, yes, he has compromised, and not fought the establishment. But as President of the US there is nowhere higher to go. So, what should we expect out of an Obama president? If we look at his record and at his political allies, the people who have supported him over the years, the people he owes, the evidence points towards a very liberal president. In conjunction with a heavily Democratic Congress, then, we should think that an Obama presidency would sharply turn this country in a leftward direction.
By the way, one aspect of Lizza’s article that I found interesting was the description of how earmarks play a central role in neo-machine politics.
Well during the first four years at least he’d have to keep mainstreaming himself in order to get reelected. If you want to believe that after 2012 he’ll morph into a radical, then be my guest.
I agree, of course, that he’s a liberal, though I don’t think his relationship with Ayers is an important piece of evidence there. But I can pretty much promise you that he won’t, e.g., do anything to cut military spending, stand up to Israel, or resist unnecessary foreign intervention – hardly sounds like a “sharp” turn to me.
[...] Disappearing act and discusses the Invasion of the left-wing body snatchers. I largely agree with John’s take on the whole Obama-as-closet-radical idea being pushed by the (increasingly desperate) McCain [...]
Excellent comment. The McCain campaign is increasingly desperate; it’s an ugly spectacle.