Posted by
Garnet92 on Friday, October 10, 2008 1:18:41 AM
There are a couple of subtle aspects of Obama’s associations that seem to have slipped beneath the radar. Yet both contribute to the Barack Hussein Obama that we’re all trying so desperately to know.
First, you’re familiar with these names: William Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rev. Jerimiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi, Tony Rezko, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, RevMichael Pfleger, and Frank Davis. These people are not candidates for sainthood, but they are the people that he associated himself with over many years.
Where are the testimonials from his good-guy friends. Where are his beer-drinking buddies, his bowling buddies, his poker buddies, his basketball buddies, etc.? Where are Michelle’s girlfriends? Do these people have any friends who weren’t politically expedient?
There doesn’t appear to be a long line of friends who will stand up and say that Obama is an honest, forthright, stand-up, guy who will always look out for you.
And secondly, everyone keeps asking why was Obama hanging out with that long list of ne’er-do-wells if he didn’t have something to benefit by the association – what was it, socially, financially, politically, philosophically, or just the enjoyment of their company?
Personally, I think that’s only half of the question. Why did they hang around with him? Was he a kindred spirit? A political brother? An apprentice? A partner in crime? A long-standing relationship has to be a two-way street - both parties have to benefit in some way. What benefit accrued (or will now accrue) to them?
Oh, the burning questions …
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E. J. Dionne, Jr., of the Washington Post, wrote about this transition in a 1999 column after Daley was reelected.
Dionne wrote about a young Barack Obama, who artfully explained how the new pinstripe patronage worked: a politician rewards the law firms, developers, and brokerage houses with contracts, and in return they pay for the new ad campaigns necessary for reelection. “They do well, and you get a $5 million to $10 million war chest,” Obama told Dionne.
It was a classic Obamaism: superficially critical of some unseemly aspect of the political process without necessarily forswearing the practice itself. In other words, do as I say, not as I do.
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