Will Democrats Ever Recover From Obama?

Will Democrats Ever Recover From Obama?




By ERNEST S. CHRISTIAN | Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2008 4:30 PM PT

The Democrats have spent a year demonstrating yet again why they are unfit to lead the nation — and perhaps unfit any longer to be a major political party.

A year ago, they were the default option and seemed to have the '08 election in the bag. All they had to do was step up and act responsibly. Then along came Barack Obama starring in a self-produced one-act drama about a fictional hero named Barack Obama.

The New York Times and Washington Post swooned. They rushed out rave reviews and embellished the script with additional exaggerations of their own. So did CNN and the networks.

Soon, the high-octane prospect of a left-wing charismatic with bonus points for race and a claim to historic significance became irresistible. Before the rank and file caught on to the media hustle, Barack Obama walked off with the nomination and ownership of the Democratic Party.

Now the Democrats are compounding the fraud by foisting him off on the voters. The Barack Obama they are peddling is a media-created virtual person endowed by his creators with characteristics that do not represent the real Barack Obama. Millions of people are being duped.

The fictional Barack Obama may win the election in November, but if he does, it will be the real Barack Obama who will occupy the White House and exercise nearly untrammeled power over the lives and livelihoods of 300 million Americans. Therein lies the enormity of the trick the Democrats are playing on the American people.

Why should Americans of African heritage invest their hopes, dreams and identities in a Chicago pol with an unsavory past replete with radicals, racketeers and racists, a borderline Marxist agenda and a doubtful attitude toward America — and with whom they have nothing in common other than skin color?

How many Reagan Democrats want a left-wing collectivist in the White House, especially one who has no respect for them and their values? Even "liberals" do not actually like to pay high taxes or want the economic pie to be made smaller.

And nobody looks forward to a more authoritarian government. Who, for example, wants a government bureaucrat telling them which doctors to use, what medical care they can receive and when?

How do the real people of America, those who do the work, raise the families, pay the taxes, defend the nation and make America the truly exceptional place that it is, feel about an arrogant young man whose self-esteem is so much greater than his accomplishments?

Do they want a president who has seldom held a real job, never run a business or done much of anything other than promote himself? And what about the young idealists preparing to cast their first votes? Do they really intend to vote for an illusion? Do any Americans want a president who regards himself as a citizen of the world and may have mixed loyalties?

The potential downside consequences of an Obama presidency are enormous. And on the upside, what is to be gained? The frisson of having voted to elect an African-American president? A last-minute slap at President Bush, who will be out of office in January anyway? A pointless protest against a war that is now being won and will soon be over?

Does anyone seriously think that Barack Obama will do better than John McCain in keeping America safe and prosperous? Surely not. Risking a lot to gain nothing is a very bad bet — potentially even fatal — but that is exactly what the Democrats and the media are asking voters to do.

Democrats have for decades been short on both ideas and credible candidates. But they are great pretenders and, with the aid of the dominant media, have in the past often been successful in wrapping the banner of Roosevelt and Kennedy around some extraordinarily frail stand-ins.

Padding a resume is one thing — exaggeration is, after all, a part of politics — but it is quite another thing to paper over discomfiting parts of a candidate's resume and condemn those who ask or wonder why. The Democrats are insulting people's intelligence and making a mockery of the electoral process by asking them to vote for a figment of the media's imagination.

Christian, an attorney, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Ford administration.



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