One Step Up, Redux

And five more back. Just when I was beginning to tire of politics and polemics, our favorite Central Valley hack, Victor Davis Hanson, has decided to open his yap and spew idiotic garbage. This time, about Barack Obama. In his National Review ('nuff said) op-ed piece this morning, Hanson equates Obama to the 1972 Robert Redford character, "The Candidate" from the film of the same name. Except that Obama's worse, because he's propped himself up on lies.

(Hanson):
But how different in real terms is the Obama candidacy?

Obama’s father was from Kenya, and he grew up for a time in Indonesia. But, otherwise, Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents in a middle-class suburb in Hawaii — a unique upbringing in the 1970s but hardly so in today’s multiracial and itinerant America.
At private school, he was sometimes known as Barry. Perhaps had he taken the name of his maternal family who raised him — Dunham — a Sen. Barry Dunham of mixed ancestry from Illinois would now not be causing quite the same sensation.

Indeed, a Sen. Dunham may have been viewed as a minority candidate to the same limited degree that a similar staid-sounding Gov. Bill Richardson resonated as a Mexican American.Take away the exotic name and Sen. Obama’s early background is not all that different from millions in an increasingly racially mixed and diverse America, in which a woman, a Latino, an Italian-American, a Mormon, a popular TV actor, and a 71-year-old all ran for president this year"


Chasing the red herring, Hanson focusses on the one aspect that Obama has NOT emphasized this campaign, his racial background. Obama's not the black-white-livedallovertheworldvoteforme-candidate; he simply has pitched a progressive platform that's attractive to many people. The fact that he's black is irrelevant. The fact that he attended Harvard and not Fresno State is irrelevant, though I'm personally much more attracted to a middle class kid hitting the Ivies rather than a state school, but I'm an elitist snob, and that's not a part of this discussion.

As it turns out, there are not all that many handsome, young natural speakers, with a hint of mystery and the promise of racial harmony — at least none who speak inspirationally, respond to criticism with humor, and are genuinely nice guys.


Hanson finishes his article with a condescending and blatantly false attack on Obama's platform, calling it "vague", with "generalities", and not that different from his Democratic opponents. Reading the candidate's web site and latest book, which was written with the purpose of launching a presidential campagin, Obama's candidacy does seem to be built on outlined programs. Why else are people supporting Hillary? Many agree with her health care plans or programs to assist the middle class and not Obama's because they disagree with the details, not the vague generalities. So people dig Obama because we're drawn solely to his words, his veil of multiculturalism and orientalism, the "mystery" of his personality. Mr. Hanson, this claim you purport is either consciously or unconsciously racist and bigoted. Would Hanson have written these words eight years ago about the man from Texas who came across as friendly; a man with an Ivy League education but a rural and "rooted" adult and professional life? A man who spoke in vague generalities without a true platform? I think not. Especially since the Texan's racial or ethnic background didn't seem to be an issue for Mr. Hanson. Bush was the people's candidate; Obama's simply the alluring black man. This is not racist?
As Hanson believes that Obama's candidacy is built on a house of cards as he doesn't believe the candidate can actually transform words into policies, I simply challenge him to remind us of his own candidate's words and policies from 2000. Regardless of Obama's political platforms, let's look at Bush's - a man with six years of regional political experience in a position that was not full-time, no experience on a national level. Whether Obama has the experience or the ability to establish connections and political networks is one only to be seen; should we believe that nepotism and rehashed politics is truly the desired form of leadership in this country? Based on Hanson's bigotry, skepticism and myopical politics, this is apparently so.