Blue Crab Boulevard

Associations

Charles Krauthammer points out that Barack Obama’s long associations with extremely questionable people like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers speak directly to Obama’s character. What they say is not good.

First, his cynicism and ruthlessness. He found these men useful, and use them he did. Would you attend a church whose pastor was spreading racial animosity from the pulpit? Would you even shake hands with — let alone serve on two boards with — an unrepentant terrorist, whether he bombed U.S. military installations or abortion clinics?

Most Americans would not, on the grounds of sheer indecency. Yet Obama did, if not out of conviction then out of expediency. He was a young man on the make, an unknown outsider working his way into Chicago politics. He played the game with everyone, without qualms and with obvious success.

Obama is not the first politician to rise through a corrupt political machine. But he is one of the rare few to then have the audacity to present himself as a transcendent healer, hovering above and bringing redemption to the “old politics” — of the kind he had enthusiastically embraced in Chicago in the service of his own ambition.

Second, and even more disturbing than the cynicism, is the window these associations give on Obama’s core beliefs. He doesn’t share the Rev. Wright’s poisonous views of race nor Ayers’s views, past and present, about the evil that is American society. But Obama clearly did not consider these views beyond the pale. For many years he swam easily and without protest in that fetid pond.

Yes, these associations do matter. Obama only abandoned these men when they became a political liability to him. Up until then, he cheerfully used them to advance his own career. Obama’s choice of friends tell us of the utter self-absorption, the ruthlessness and the blind ambition of Barack Obama. The media is obviously in the tank for Obama and are drowning out the McCain campaign almost entirely now, but these things still matter.

Politics | Gaius October 10, 2008

By Anthony (Los Angeles), October 10, 2008 @ 8:57 am

Excellent article by Charles. I’ve been hammering the same point in my own way: elections are about policy and character, and what Obama’s associations tell in his case about both is disturbing, and should be to a lot more people.
By JSinAZ, October 10, 2008 @ 8:14 pm

My transformative moment with respect to Obama occurred during the primaries, when the truely dispicable nature of Wright became apparent. My conclusions were exactly those of Charles’ – either Obama is the ideological match of these creeps with whom he associates, or Obama is a mendacious manipulator coasting in politcal life on a frictionless surface of charisma and Chicago poli-grease.

Personally, the universe shifted mightly for me when I realized there was a candidate that I disliked more than Clinton or Huckabee.

Obama is a racialist shill put forth by corrupt associates of a system which has been considered an archetype of corrupt monoclonal political cultures (cf. Daleyosis – a pernicious proliferation of parasitical rent-seekers in government).
By Barack, October 11, 2008 @ 2:09 am

I just wish McCain were a better politician and less of a flake. Damn it. I’ll vote for him anyway but I’m not happy about the choices this election.
By Mwalimu Daudi, October 11, 2008 @ 3:08 am

As Krauthammer pointed out in the above linked column, several months ago the North Carolina GOP ran an ad criticizing Rev. Wright. McCain went ballistic and demanded that Republicans stop running it.

Now McCain is running his Ayers ad. Where were these several months ago, when they might have done some good? By waiting until now McCain looks like a frightened, bumbling candidate. Which unfortunately he is.

I think that McCain’s biggest weakness – the one that will sink his presidential ambitions – is his desire to reclaim his beloved “maverick Republican” status and go back to being worshipped by the MSM. Will. Not. Happen.

There is a rumor that Palin will appear on Saturday Night Live. This is the same show that tried to suggest that Palin’s husband had sex with their oldest daughter. Who the heck thought this one up? Did Howard Dean take over McCain’s campaign when no one was looking?

If Palin does appear on SNL, it makes one wonder what McCain’s flailing campaign will do next. Have McCain announce that he is converting to radical Islam and call for jihad against America? Order Palin to pose nude for Playboy? Why does the McCain campaign seem determined to lose in a 57-state landslide?
By yuri, October 11, 2008 @ 8:49 am

Been a while since I read this blog…

Since I last did, Obama proved that he indeed IS a politician (and politics, as we know, is art of the possible), and not a naif dreaming of a better America. Good, I say.

As for Ayers – this line of attack on him is really silly. I guess about as laughable as Palin asking “do we know real Obama?”. As if we know “real her”…

I used to like McCain. I still miss his circa 2000 performance. Back then he had an air of a guy who wants the office to DO something. Now it seems he just wants the office, and is willing to do anything to get it. Choice of Palin for me was the final proof of that.
If he wanted to achieve anything he’d pick Romney (as much as I do not like Romney, it would have been an intellectually honest choice)

I want an intelligent person to run this country for a change. Seems like the GOP ran out of them. I guess it was bound to happen if you label “intelligence” as “elitist”. God help America.