Mickey Kaus summarizes the four major problems with Barack Obama’s ruminations:
- It lumps together things Obama wants us to think he thinks are good (religion) with things he undoubtedly thinks are bad (racism, anti-immigrant sentiment)…
- Even if Obama wasn’t equating anything on his list with anything else, he did openly accuse Pennsylvanians of being racists…
- He’s contradicted his own positions–at least on trade and (says Instapundit) guns…
- Yes, he’s condescending. It’s not just that in explaining everyone to everyone Obama winds up patronizing everyone. He doesn’t patronize everyone equally… Superiority of this sort–not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject’s views–is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality…
I’ve truncated Mickey’s arguments, but the entire piece is well worth a read. The collective drip, drip, drip of Obama’s mini-scandals seem to be very effectively taking the shine off the Obama package. A few months ago, when Obama was universally seen as the most charismatic and genuine national leader since Kennedy, it was difficult for opponents to combat his candidacy. After all, you have to be a pretty nasty person to criticize the second coming. Now that problems like Wright, Rezko, and elitism (and Abramoff money?) have come into the public eye, Clinton and McCain can attack Obama — and rebut attacks from him — much more effectively. Expect scandals like Rezko to do more damage the second time around — now that they fit better into the overall picture than before. And also expect that criticisms of Obama’s readiness for the job to do more damage now that people see the problems he has running a campaign.
