I feel sorry for Barack Obama. He is the Tiger Woods of American politics – mixed up, afraid of his lineage and anxious for white acceptance and Black understanding. Just last week this Democratic presidential hopeful shocked the world by sounding very much like Republican Vice President Dick Cheney and President George Bush – a sharp departure from his measured political responses to date. Obama’s comments that he would launch a military campaign inside Pakistan without that country’s approval if as president he was confronted by “actionable intelligence” as to where terror mastermind Osama bin Laden is has drawn sharp criticism and evoked memories of a hawk in dove’s feathers.
And if this was not enough the other Democratic presidential contender, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, refused to take “the nuclear option off the table” if the military gave her a general idea as where Osama bin laden was located. By out Obamaing Obama Senator Clinton sought to consolidate her hold as the pack leader among the Democrats vying for the White House job.
Heck, that’s scary stuff. Obama would trample the sovereign rights of an independent nation and invade it to hunt down Osama bin Laden – with or without its permission – without regard for the consequences and the impact on the war on terror. Ms. Clinton is prepared to drop a nuclear bomb to try and kill bin Laden without regard for the collateral damage and potential loss of life in the high thousands that is bound to occur.
That’s not being tough on foreign policy or tough on terrorism but patently stupid and ridiculous. Such reckless, off-the barn near-lunatic statements are not the kinds of sensible and objective utterances that one expects from presidential candidates. While Obama’s position flies in the face of international relations and laws between states on the planet and behaves like the big bad wolf, Ms. Clinton could care less about the impact and consequences of launching a nuclear attack to kill one terrorist and thousands of innocent people in the process. This is not what should pass for sound, carefully thought out foreign policy decisions but the kinds of quackery that fringe radicals espouse.
Obama had the sense not to do a Hillary Clinton and stay away from the so-called “nuclear option” that is something that only the clinically insane would contemplate in this modern world. Ms. Clinton’s immorality is evident since she feels that annihilating thousands of innocent people – just as Osama bin Laden and his goons did on 9-11 – is justified “if” intelligence says that “he might be” in a certain place.
Maybe it’s the summer heat and folks are really not thinking very clearly. Things have become very fuzzy in recent times and I find myself wondering exactly who is Barack Obama. It appears that the more he seeks to woo Black people, his natural base, is the more he gets farther and farther from them. He speaks in careful “big tent” tones of “we the people” leaving the interpretation open, ambiguous and fluid.
And when it comes to Black people Obama presents himself as offering some “tough love” criticisms, advice, and recommendations that obviously find appeal with some white voters. He carefully avoids any linkages with instutionalized racism, bigotry and systemic and endemic prejudices that are at the roots of Black socio-economic problems while obliquely suggesting that the sum total of today’s Black problems stem from individual failures and a lack of personal application and ambition.
That’s very safe territory but politically stupid because this partly explains why he’s struggling to overtake Hillary Clinton in a constituency that should be easily his own. The fact is that Blacks are not hearing anything from Barack Obama that would encourage them to rally to his side in the numbers that he so badly needs to be a viable presidential contender.
While he sand-dances and vacillates when it come to Black people Obama in March of this year told a powerful Jewish lobby group that the state of Israel has his full and unconditional support. His militaristic rhetoric and staunch pro-Israel stance made him out to be cut from the same bolt of cloth as President George Bush. It is either Obama’s grasp on Middle East issues, especially the Israel/Palestinian conflict, is limited since his unconditional support for Israel bordered on religious reverence while he displayed a complete and total disrespect for Arabs and Palestinians.
Such naked pandering is the stuff of presidential politics but it clearly shows where Obama’s head is. He’s said very little about the problems of Black Africa, the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, in particular. By generalizing Black problems and issues Obama believes that his right-wing foreign policy rant and bullying of Blacks to “get their act together” is going to endear him to voters in the Bible Belt and in the so-called “red states.”
He’ll be a complete fool to believe that this will win him political currency – to borrow President Bush’s term – among a hard core neo-conservative, borderline racist clique whose allegiance to the Republican Party is nearly fanatical and absolute and who will not vote for him no matter how temporarily right-wing he becomes. Obama also thinks that by giving the neo-conservatives one war instead of two is going to win him points with the “Pax Americana” group. So he’s in favor of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan – no matter how long it takes.
That’s real political cunning. By criticizing the much more high-profile, unpopular and deadly war in Iraq Obama hopes to satisfy the vast majority of Americans who want the war to end and cash in on the wave of unpopularity that the war has generated among the American population. But he also has to appear tough and able to handle military and national security issues – long the perceived domain of the Republican Party. So what does he do? He talks tough on Osama bin Laden and Pakistan and says that the war in Afghanistan will continue and suggests that the war in Iraq is going badly without calling for immediate troop withdrawals.
But there is something to be said for Obama’s strategy to win the white vote. His new-found appeal among white voters is not what he says but what he does not say. His domestic policy positions are not revolutionary but Band Aid, albeit a larger Band Aid. But it’s enough of a cover to entice white voters who see him as bringing fresh hope to a corrupted and flawed political process due to the fact that he carries no excess political baggage as the rest of the pack. He offers just that ray of hope.
He is comfortable in this position because he essentially leaves everybody guessing about what he really stands for while declaring that things have to get better without saying how and why they got bad in the first place. Obama has projected the “nice guy” image by not really apportioning blame, well in the strictest sense of doing so, but in a creative, sleigh-of-hand way that results in everybody being blamed. So that Black voters don’t know what to think, coming away from Obama’s pronouncements as little confused and miffed and some white voters feeling sanitized and cleansed for past and present transgressions and wrong doings against Blacks.
But this has also placed Obama between a rock and a hard place in relation to Senator Hillary Clinton. He has to be very careful how he treads the treacherous political waters of race and politics. Obama has to appeal to the white majority while maintaining some sense of fairness, understanding and principle when it comes to the problems facing Black Americans. Senator Clinton is hobbled by no such fetters and that is the reason why she has assumed the role of the Black candidate in a way that Obama cannot.
Ms. Clinton can connect and show solidarity with Black causes and be passionate about them without riling up her white base of support. She will never be labeled “the Black candidate” as Obama most certainly will if he radically articulates any of the issues and problems facing the Black community. The last thing he wants – just like Tiger Woods in golf – is to be thought of and perceived as a Black politician in a presidential campaign season in much the same way that Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson were thought of.
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