No need to smear Obama

The last sentence of the article that follows from Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post Writer's Group notes that Obama is acting as if he doesn't expect anyone to question anything he says. What triggered this condemnation of the junior senator from Illinois was his arrogant attitude when first challenged about his choice of Jim Johnson as part of a three person team to select a VP. As usual, not only did Obama show disrespect for the reporters...implying that anyone with brains wouldn't waste time dealing with what he loves to call tangential issues...but also he made his trademark demand for the media to get back to the issues.

Therein lies the problem. Obama doesn't seem to understand that when it comes to voting for President, Americans generally place significant weight on matters of character. As to this point, Obama has had minimal executive level experience in either the private or Government sectors, and what little is out there has not received any attention from the mainstream media. This has left vast sections of the public with no choice but to focus on every decision he makes in order to get a peek as to what is going on inside his high IQ brain. He will need to demonstrate far more patience with us lesser mortals.

Having said that, to some degree, Obama can be forgiven for believing that everything he says would be treated as gospel by the media. Indeed until ABC News brought the Pastor Wright story to the mainstream media Obama had been given a free-ride. How else can it be explained why his ever-increasing list of character flaws was well known in the blogosphere for over 15 months, but didn't get airtime elsewhere?

Based on the treatment of the Johnson story, Team Obama seem to realize that the mainstream media may be opening the floodgates. Thats why in the last 72 hours, supporters of Obama have been desperately trying to create the illusion that since last week when he was "anointed" by the DNC, groups of naysayers are springing up to smear their perfect candidate with falsehoods. To achieve this goal they have sought out publicity overseas about websites they are setting up to stop the internet "rumors," and are using advanced internet web marketing, and allegedly old-fashioned criminal hacking to stop the facts being revealed, (the hackers are not invisible and Team Obama is on notice.)

But the American people are too smart to fall for more of Team Obama's illusions. If its true that the mainstream media has realized that there is indeed an overwhelming fact file suggesting that Obama is unfit to lead the Nation, Senator Obama can expect far more scrutiny. It wont be smearing. People opposed to Obama have long recognized that there is no need to smear the candidate with false rumors, and that such behavior would likely be viewed negatively by the vast majority of Americans. From experience, many such rumors which appear in our email inboxes are being sent from Obama supporters, They are as sensational as they are completely untrue, and designed solely to embarrass whoever falls for the ruse and publishes it....(the Deliberate Dan Rather play)

Looked at closely, his books, mentors,financial backers, speeches, votes and actions do a more than adequate job of revealing Obama's unsuitability to lead our great country. As for the mainstream media taking many months to get round to studying these facts, while highly frustrating and unquestionably unfair to certain other candidates, at this stage it's a case of better late than never. The time for inquests into the mainstream media's partisanship must be placed on hold until after November 4.

The unvetted vetter

Jim Hoagland |Washington Post Writers Group

June 12, 2008 Published in the Orlando Sentinel

WASHINGTON - Say this for Sen. Barack Obama: He is a lot quicker in these post-Jeremiah Wright days to walk away from controversy caused him by others. By the time he finished distancing himself from Jim Johnson, his former vice presidential vetter, Johnson must have felt like he was on Mars.

After Johnson was portrayed in the Wall Street Journal as having received favorable treatment from Countrywide Financial Corp., a mortgage company Obama has frequently attacked, the Democratic presidential candidate immediately labeled Johnson as being only "tangentially related to our campaign."

Shifting into overdrive, Obama added that "these aren't folks who are working for me," referring to Johnson and his two associates on the vice presidential vetting team, Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder.

It was enough to make you wonder if the three had somehow broken into Obama's office, stolen his letterhead stationery and appointed themselves to interview the capital's good and great about who should join Obama on the Democratic ticket.

But that was not all.

"First of all, I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages. . . . I would have to hire the vetter to vet the vetters." He was equally dismissive of questions about Holder's role in Bill Clinton's 2001 pardon of financier Marc Rich.

Johnson got the message and yesterday announced his resignation from what I guess had become his non-job.

None of this had anything to do with Obama himself, the candidate argued forcefully. And at one level, he is absolutely right. This so far is only a media scandal, not a matter of law-breaking or obvious moral depravity.


...The flap over Johnson's mortgages immediately revived investigative reporters' interest in his having served "on the board of five companies that granted lavish pay packages to their executives -- and often playing a key role in approving them," as the New York Times delicately put it in what appeared to be a warm-up pitch for additional digging.

It also brought new scrutiny to the curious decision by Obama to name Johnson to the job in the first place, given the candidate's fierce vows to transform Washington's insider culture and ways.

Johnson is a consummate political insider who, among other things, vetted vice presidential possibilities for John Kerry and played a key role in helping Walter Mondale settle on Geraldine Ferraro back in 1984 -- without, Johnson later told friends with impressive self-deprecating humor, ever imagining that her husband's business dealings could prove controversial in the campaign.

But what is important here is what this incident says about Obama, not about Johnson. The senator's initial reaction was to portray himself as too busy to keep up with the obscure financial doings of people who are not significant to the campaign and to belittle the media for asking him to "vet the vetters."

To treat Johnson, Holder and Kennedy suddenly as mere fact-checkers is as disingenuous as it is ungracious. Obama is clearly the most intelligent candidate of either party since Bill Clinton. But he can outsmart himself if he goes on expecting the media and the public to accept just about any explanation he gives.

Yes, he can.