The Other Side: Book challenges Obama’s progressive image
Published: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Last Modified: Tuesday, October 14, 2008, 11:10:37pm
Ashley Herzog / Staff Writer / ah103304@ohiou.edu
I just finished reading David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama. While some portions of the book have been challenged by the Obama campaign, there’s one fact they can’t argue: Obama’s vision of himself as a reformer has no basis in reality.
When Obama first ran for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, he hired a consultant to help him throw his three opponents off the ballot, including longtime black activist and incumbent Sen. Alice Palmer.
“One by one, Obama’s ‘petitions guru’ disqualified Palmer’s signatures,” Freddoso writes. “While they were at it, Obama’s campaign got the other three candidates disqualified as well.”
As one of Obama’s opponents in the race told the Chicago Tribune, “He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free?”
For years, Obama stood by John Stroger, the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, whose administration was so corrupt that it eventually came under federal court supervision. When a true reformer, a progressive Democrat supported by both conservatives and liberals, challenged Stroger in 2006, Obama refused to support him.
“Chicago’s voices of reform were speaking in unison, but Obama’s was not among them,” Freddoso writes.Obama said earlier this week that he wants to fight for families “who are worried about affording coats for their children this winter.” But back in 1997, he was hobnobbing with Tony Rezko, one of Chicago’s worst slum lords. Between December 1996 and February 1997, Rezko’s company claimed it couldn’t afford to heat a low-income housing project located in Obama’s Senate district. However, that January, the allegedly broke Rezko cut a check for Obama’s campaign fund. Obama claims he never knew his constituents went without heat that winter.
Obama now says his mission is to change Washington. However, he has never once cast a controversial vote or challenged his fellow Democrats since he got here. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Sen. Tom Coburn proposed pulling funding for some of the senators’ pet projects (known as earmarks) and redirecting the money toward New Orleans. Obama voted against it. As Freddoso explains, “Voting to strip a colleague’s earmark violates the enshrined rules of the old boys’ club.” Far from being a voice of change, Obama is a typical go-along, get-along politician who knows how to please the right people to advance his career.
Compare him to John McCain. Obama has never stood up to his party; McCain frequently does. He spoke out against using torture on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. He crossed party lines to sponsor the Campaign Finance Reform Bill. And in 2007, when amnesty hysteria was sweeping the nation, McCain had the courage to point out that true immigration reform would require more than attempting to deport 20 million people. He could have pandered to the conservative base on any of these issues, but he refused — even when he knew it would hurt his chances of winning the Republican nomination.
As Freddoso notes, “A disappointingly small number of those who run for office are true reformers. The ones who are usually lose.”
If Obama becomes president, it won’t be because he’s done anything to reform Washington. Instead, he’ll win the way most politicians win: by saying all the right things to get elected, then returning to politics as usual once he’s in office.Last year, when asked about his decision to throw his opponents of the ballot in his first race, Obama didn’t apologize. Instead, he laughed. “Well, I think they ended up with a very good state senator.”
And this guy is going to shake up Washington? I don’t think so.
Ashley Herzog is a senior studying journalism. This quarter, she writes from Washington, D.C. Send her an e-mail at ah103304@ohiou.edu.
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