The Content Of Obamas Character - Road to the Middle Class

It’s telling that 47 years ago, when Reverend King made his great speech on the Washington Mall, he did not say that he had a dream that one day, an African American would become president. King’s vision on August 28, 1963 was less ambitious:

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Even so, Barack Obama was elected president based on the color of his skin. African Americans on the night of November 4, 2008 wept with joy because one of their own had become president, against all that they had been told and feared about a racist America. Liberals rejoiced because of the “first,” that America had answered the question: Was it ready for a black president?

Some Americans voted for Barack Obama for non-racial reasons. Independents and disgruntled Republicans were voting against the mistakes and the corruption of the Bush era.

Now that Obama is president he is no longer being judged by the color of his skin. Now the vast majority of Americans will judge him on the content of his character. It is his character, of course, that is the great unknown, as Charles Krauthammer has written:

Obama is a man of first-class intellect and first-class temperament. But his character remains highly suspect.

But word is starting to dribble out. Reports Hugh Hewitt on the latest campaign page-turner, Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilmann:

The portrait of the president is really an effort in poison-pen pointillism, where hundreds and hundreds of razor sharp paragraphs combine to create a deeply disquieting picture of the new president. President Obama is presented as insecure and needy of reassurance (p. 25), self-important, cynical and megalomaniacal (pp 30-31), petulant and spoiled (p. 111), touchy and vain (p. 112), hypocritical (p. 119), overweening (p. 184) and deceptive (p. 120.)

Another disquieting note is the overarching theme of Obama’s first year of governance, the determination to govern against the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, that government gains its just powers from the consent of the governed. The American people do not consent to the $787 billion stimulus. They do not consent to the cap-and-trade bill. They do not consent to the federalization of health care.

The comparison to the character and governance of President George W. Bush is telling. We knew, before we elected him to be president, a lot about his character: his fight against business failure and alcoholism. His character was confirmed in the challenges of his presidency when President Bush submitted to a political immolation in his second term as the price of getting the war on terror right.

The awful chasm opening before us today after the first year of Obama is the realization that we have no knowledge of President Obama’s character. If President Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, President Obama has been spoon-fed royal jelly by the worker bees in the liberal hive all his adult life. Even now, we know of no occasion in a charmed life when Barack Obama has risen above the shibboleths and routine thuggeries of political faction.

Yet President Obama is called to lead the nation out of a nasty recession provoked by his party’s compulsive manipulation of the credit system, a history that reaches from the $400 billion losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac all the way back to Andrew Jackson’s war with the Second United States Bank.

In the year ahead, as unemployment stays high and as isolated desertions in the Democratic ranks metastasize into headlong routs of whole battalions, President Obama will face challenges that test every fiber of his being. Sensing his insecurity and need for reassurance, cunning men and women will suggest ways of using his political power to get back in the game. Will he sacrifice his party and his presidency and do the right thing, or will he sacrifice the American people on the altar of political expediency?

I fear the answer to that question.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Comments:

Posted by: Jeffrey on 02/02/10 9:57am

Nothing but his own skin is sacred to Mr. Obama. He is a liar and right now is leading a party of liars bent on destroying America.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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