Obama's Invitation to Consider His Views on Race

Inexplicably the media and the GOP in the 2008 election eventually gave Barrack Obama a pass on his personal history of association with radicals, including race-baiter Reverend Wright. The GOP candidate urged Republicans not to run the videos and use the quotes. All of this despite that fact that this racist Wright character was Obama's minister for 20 years, married the Obamas, that Michelle stated she and the daughters never missed a Sunday service, and that Obama wrote in his book that he took tapes of Wright's sermons to college to study them. Obama even described Wright as his "spiritual advisor" and had him on the campaign in an official capacity before someone figured out who he was.

Now after his apparently premeditated support for Professor Henry Lewis Gates, President Obama has opened up the issue again in my opinion. All of the evidence now slowly emerging indicates that Professor Gates was an arrogant jerk who himself made racist remarks about the police trying to protect his home. Less we get too excited about his Harvard-Cambridge credentials, let's remember his "your mama" epithet.

We know less about Obama than any man elected to the Presidency in modern times (maybe ever). These little windows into who he is and where he is coming from offer more significance than they might otherwise. While his personal history of leftist radicalism, association with domestic terrorists from the Left and black racists, and other extremists were deemed forbidden topics by political correctness during the campaign amidst the hype about "hope and change," this veneer of protection is now gone.

Pragmatically, anyone raising fundamental issues about Obama's background and personal choices of mentors and associates was viewed as sour grapes over the last twelve months. How could a conscientious person inject this nasty stuff into a celebration of "hope and change"? Doesn't the white man's guilt require that we use a separate standard for evaluating black politicians that excuses their indulgence in anti-American and extremist ideologies? Can't we use affirmative action in election campaigns as well as hiring?

Well, the chickens have come home to roost. Obama has opened the door to an examination of his views on black racism. How much of his "redistribution of the wealth" (in his words "spreading it around") schemes are anchored in this radical personal history?The "new car smell" is gone from the continuous, relentless and sophisticated Obama campaign... a campaign that has never stopped. Had we looked harder at the candidate Obama, the public and media would have seen a guy who was the extreme "tax and spend liberal" at the least. Maybe they would have seen a guy whose closest colleagues had an agenda fundamentally different from 90% of the country. Maybe they would have asked why Rev. Wright was so important to Obama when he needed political acceptance in the black Chicago community and was so expendable when he sought national office?

Well, now we can ask. "Hope and change" have proven to be poor measures of governance. Using broad, fuzzy-headed legislative objectives, while giving the detail work to be to the Democratic standard bearers on the Hill, has been an abysmal failure (the stimulus bill, the cap-and-trade bill, and the heath care bill). 24/7 public relations in a campaign mode has not got the job done from anyone's perspective. Approval ratings have flipped. It is a Democratic "brand" that, in only six months, is now a liability. There is no new paradigm that makes old "labels" irrelevant and the old political framework may be more appropriate than ever for viewing the current controversies.

Lead by locally-organized "Tea Parties," the public is resisting the irresponsible growth of government, debt and regulation. While Americans are finally seeing Barrack Obama as another "tax and spend" liberal at best and maybe a real extremist.

Into this setting, the Professor Gates controversy may emerge as one of the defining moments of the Obama presidency. Fate is funny that way. Gates is infinitely more sophisticated and mainstream than Wright. But the common element shared is that both have a black racist slant to their views of reality. Black separatism is a fundament premsie of Henry Gates' view of culture. Can anyone imagine an expert on Caucasian literature? How about the Congressional White Caucus? The majority of Americans have accepted these reverse racism notions out of white guilt. They have nothing in common with Martin Luther King's color-blind dream.

The collective culture that endorses reverse racism has a firm tenet that society owes them. That government should be in the position of picking winners and losers. That government must correct the things that society has wrought. This is the very core of Barrack Obama's personal history and political context.

The Gates controversy is a very small matter. It got "legs" because intuitively folks saw it as a window into a room that they had been locked out of. At minimum, it opens the door to the review of Obama's personal history and the choices that he has made, including Rev. Wright. In a deeper sense, it illustrates how his view of the role of government is fundamentally at odds with the sense of most Americans. With plummeting poll numbers, even the media is now asking more questions of "The One." When we finally start evaluating Obama with the same crieria that we use for white politicians, we will have achieved no small victory.