Last Minute Doubts About Obama
By: Melanie Scarborough
Examiner Columnist
November 3, 2008
Lines are going to be long at the polls tomorrow, so maybe there will be time to ask Barack Obama's supporters to clarify a couple of things.
For one, I'm confused by their notion of "economic justice." Last week, in defending his plan to "spread the wealth around," Obama said that "when everybody's got a little more money at the end of the month -- then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money. They decide, 'Maybe I can afford a new car; maybe I can afford a computer for my child.' They can buy the products and services that businesses are selling, and everybody is better off."
Everybody, that is, except the person who earned or saved the money that was redistributed.
Consider the retired gentleman who told me he took a brown-bag lunch to work every day to save the money it cost to eat out. If he saved an average of $5 every day, he accumulated more than $50,000 by the end of his 43-year career. By whose lights is it fair to redistribute those savings among individuals who chose to spend their money in restaurants?
I'd also like one of Obama's supporters to explain why they're eager to elect as president a man who says the Constitution is fundamentally flawed. Given that when a president takes the oath of office, he vows to do only one thing -- "protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution of the United States" -- doesn't Obama's willingness to take that oath make him either unprincipled or dishonest?
Perhaps I'll bump into one of the people who claim to be voting for Obama as a repudiation of George W. Bush and ask if they don't detect the same arrogance in Obama.
We've already seen him toss off his campaign plane reporters from newspapers that endorsed John McCain. His campaign instructed supporters to jam the phone lines of radio stations that give air time to Obama's critics.
On Halloween, Omaba got angry at being photographed while taking his daughter trick-or-treating and ordered the press to "leave us alone" and "get back on the bus." Monarchs can banish the media from their presence; presidents are supposed to tolerate coverage.
Most of all, I would like to know if Obama's supporters truly aren't the least bit concerned about electing as president a man with so little understanding of -- and perhaps even contempt for -- Americans' traditional way of life.
I know, I know; we're not supposed to talk about such things, but the facts speak for themselves. Only one of Obama's parents was an American, and she lived well outside the cultural mainstream.
Obama spent his grade-school years in his stepfather's native Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country. While his contemporaries in the United States sat in classrooms adorned by pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and performed school plays about the founding fathers -- perhaps even took a field trip to Washington, D.C. -- Obama recalls "puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin's call to evening prayer."
A child growing up in Indonesia would be unfamiliar with experiences common to youngsters raised in the United States: Trick-or-treating, Thanksgiving pageants, the Pledge of Allegiance, Fourth of July traditions. It is remarkable that out of 300 million Americans, about the only one not steeped in Americana is likely to be our next president.
Obama spent his teenage years being raised in Hawaii by grandparents -- hardly a typical arrangement. He moved to the mainland only after he was grown, settling in Chicago.
What could Obama possibly know of the nation's heartland -- of the small towns sustained by small businesses where most Americans live? No wonder people in rural and suburban areas are such an unknown quantity to him that he described them as "bitter" individuals who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...as a way to explain their frustrations." He doesn't understand them at all.
So…Obama is critical of both capitalism and the Constitution; he's not too keen on the First Amendment; his experience with small-town America is almost non-existent -- and what he knows of it, he doesn't like. Yet tomorrow the nation almost certainly will elect him to be our 44th president. Go figure.
Examiner columnist Melanie Scarborough is an award-winning commentary writer whose work has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers, magazines, and books.
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