David Freddoso is a conservative political reporter for the right-wing website National Review Online. In his recent book The Case Against Barack Obama (subtitled The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate) Freddoso unsurprisingly outlines the case against Barack Obama which is essentially that Obama is not an idealistic reformer but in fact a shrewd and cynical political operator whose political career evolved from the milieu of corrupt Chicago-style machine politics.
David Freddoso is a conservative political reporter for the right-wing website National Review Online. In his recent book The Case Against Barack Obama (subtitled The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate) Freddoso unsurprisingly outlines the case against Barack Obama which is essentially that Obama is not an idealistic reformer but in fact a shrewd and cynical political operator whose political career evolved from the milieu of corrupt Chicago-style machine politics. It is fit and proper to examine all serious matters in context, including the political career of Obama. But looking at the character of a candidate is something that I consider to be irrelevant. I don't care about Obama's personality, if he's an unpleasant person that's a problem for Michelle not me. I am concerned about the likely future president's policies.
The main crux of Freddoso's argument against the substance of Obama's policy platform is that Obama is surreptitiously an ultra-liberal with ties to the radical left. Conservatives make the mistake of accusing liberals of actually being liberal as if that is a significantly pernicious accusation. Many conservatives come from the background of right-wing Christian fundamentalism and are just as fanatical about their conservative beliefs which leads them to accuse others of the "sin" of being an unbeliever in conservatism. It is not a crime, tort, venal or mortal sin to be a leftist, which is something that Obama really isn't in the first place. For conservatives, accusing someone of not being a good conservative is like accusing someone of not being a good Christian, it is a serious assault on the basic quality of a person which, much to their surprise, reasonable people will not take seriously.
Some of Freddoso's case should of course be taken seriously. Obama's political career began in earnest in Illinois. It's no secret that Illinois politics are extremely corrupt. In political science classes that I have taken we joke about the apparent rampant corruption in the Land of Lincoln and how most high-profile Illinois politicians in recent memory all seem to end up indicted (though it could be the case that investigators and prosecutors in Illinois are just more effective than they are elsewhere).
Freddoso states in the first chapter of his book (pp. 1-26) that Chicago Machine bosses John Stroger and his son Todd, both of whom have served as Presidents of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, have benefited from the support of Obama. Freddoso cites allegations that the Strogers have used public money to fund their campaigns, though it's hard to blame left-wing Democratic politicians for using public funds to finance their campaigns in order to compete with the heavily funded campaigns of Republicans and rightist Democrats who are financed by tax-cut-seeking private money. However the claims of patronage hiring by the Strogers are more plausible and a serious violation of law and just decent practice by American governments. If what Freddoso is saying is true, then Obama did enable a pervasive and pernicious practice of unfair patronage hiring to continue in Cook County.
The other major personal tie Obama has to the Chicago Machine is through his support for Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who Obama endorsed for re-election in 2007. Obama also has a Daley loyalist in his campaign David Axelrod who is Obama's chief political strategist. From the available facts, it would appear that Axelrod is far from a Karl Rove, but did try to do political damage control for Daley's office in 2005 when U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald went after the Daley government for patronage hiring. According to Freddoso, "The U.S. Attorney's office alleged that interviews for city jobs were routinely faked and interview scores inflated for candidates who appeared on the 'blessed' list of those who worked on the campaigns of Daley and his allies" (21). Obama was aware of the problems in Daley's office and even said that "some of the reports...give (him) huge pause" (22). That didn't deter him from his endorsement of Daley, who still hasn't been directly implicated in the patronage hiring scandal.
Obama also has personal ties to the insidious Springfield kingpin Emil Jones, the State Senate presidente. Freddoso intimates that it was Emil Jones the "Godfather" who "ma(d)e a U.S. senator" out of Barack Obama, in his role as the obsequious young protege of the elder statesman Jones. Freddoso writes that Jones handed legislation crafted by the intensely hard work of other legislators to Obama.
Jones gave Obama high-profile legislation in its late stages, sometimes taking bills away from their original sponsors. He gave Obama Committe assignments that would cement key constituencies for his Senate primary. The most important thing Jones gave Obama was probably the coveted chair of the senate's health committee in 2003, shortly after their conversation. This placed Obama in charge of legislation that affected the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has more than 100,000 members. (29)
Freddoso cites Obama biographer David Mendell who said that Obama used his position in Springfield to serve the SEIU's every win, including forcing hospitals to post their patient's mortality rates online in conjunction with their staffing levels. These unscrupulous tactics put the hospitals in a position to have to hire more SEIU workers. One wonders if there is indeed a negative correlation between staffing levels and mortality rates in hospitals. If such a relationship exists I would certainly rather take my family to a hospital with more SEIU staff, even though I have been well-informed that the free market is the best determinant of labor demand government interference by regulation is detrimental.
Jones' legislative valet work for Obama didn't end with union boosting.
Abner Mikva, a former congressman and federal judge, had recommended to Jones that he give Obama a popular piece of legislation barring political fundraising on state property and barring lobbyists and contractors from giving gifts to legislators. The bill had enough loopholes to be relatively harmless, but it was a step in the direction of reform. Jones gave it to Obama. Obama proposed it. It passed, 52-4. The...old ward-heeler (Jones), was even capable of making Obama look like a reformer. (30)
So Obama's friends in high places have created Barack the Reformer. But if Obama isn't the real architect of the ethics reform which is one of his most touted achievements, can we at least count on this shrewd, cynical, patron-seeking rational actor to be the architect of his own political campaign success? According to Freddoso the answer is no. So who's responsible for Obama's impressive campaign successes, which began with his early victory in Iowa. That person is twenty-year-old voter and accidental superdelegate Elle Jacobs. In fact Jacobs didn't even vote for Obama, she voted for Edwards, in spite of a less than rousing speech by an Edwards supporter.
Actually the Democrats' viability standard for candidates, with a threshold test of 15 percent, is responsible for the "improbable and improbably large victory" outcome for the child of providence Barack Hussein Obama (41). The iterative primary voter realignment process resulted in an erosion of the polarizing Hillary Clinton's initially strong. In the final analysis, Edwards edged out Clinton and Obama by seven county delegates to their respective six. "That single delegate, while it does not change the statewide result, does mean Clinton's final total of county delegates will not be rounded up to 30 percent (a virtual tie for second place with Edwards) but instead is rounded down to 29 percent--firmly in third place" (Ibid.).
That single delegate basically turned out to be Elle Jacobs. Could this young girl turn out to be the reason that Mr. Obama "the accidental candidate" goes to Washington, again--this time as POTUS? David Freddoso would have us believe this is the case.
All of this means that Obama is clearly not the optimistic, hope-filled reformer that his PR-driven campaign has presented him as, but these associations with patronage employers and contractors are relatively minor mistakes for a U.S. presidential candidate. Patronage hiring is certainly not a malaise endemic to Chicago or even Illinois. Chicago was Obama's path to Springfield which was Obama's path to Washington; all very dirty places where lots of nasty business takes place. Now that Obama wants to move from Capitol Hill to the White House he is still going to be a bit unclean from calling out of that long sewage pipe out of Shawshank. That sort of thing is a universal problem for U.S. politicians and one cannot think of any notable exceptions. Illinois politics is not anywhere near as dirty as Washington politics, which the Straight Talk Express has been neck-deep in for thirty years, and the stakes seem trivial by comparison. Furthermore, all parties involved agreed to run in the Democratic primaries according to the rules. If they happened to work in favor of Obama, then that's just how the cards were dealt.
I heard Freddoso on CNBC's Kudlow & Company saying that the Obama campaign has "immunized" itself from serious criticism by dismissing criticisms of Obama as attacks in the same vein as the slanderous accusations that "he refuses to salute the U.S. flag or was sworn into office on a Koran (sic), or that he was really born in a foreign country" (x). Freddoso writes that these "spurious criticisms have given rise to an intellectual laziness among the very people who should be carefully scrutinizing Obama" (Ibid.). What I think Freddoso is saying is that Obama has benefited from the fact that most of the criticisms leveraged against the Illinois Senator have been so ridiculous that they don't merit serious attention by thoughtful people which has created an environment in which Obama the politician has not been critically examined. If that is the case then Freddoso's point is well taken.
However Freddoso fails to lob substantive criticizes at Obama for his known policy position, with the exception of Obama's position on abortion. The book clearly shows from Obama's own legislative work that he supports medical practices known as "induced labor abortions" which is designed to kill a premature fetus from the trauma of his or her mother's violent, chemically induced contraction and which sometimes result in a live baby being born which is left to die by medical professionals. This live birth of an independently functioning human being creates an individual person entitled to all the same rights and privileges under the law as a natural citizen of the United States. Not providing life saving medical treatment to this person is a violation of fundamental human rights and this practice amounts to infanticide.
Illinois state senator Patrick O'Malley introduced a piece of legislation, Senate Bill 1095, whose clear language did not conflict with the Roe v. Wade decision. Section (c) of that bill said, "A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person and accorded immediate protection under the law" (195). Obama opposed on the Illinois Senate floor saying:
There was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so...this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a pre-viable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a--a child, a nine-month-old--child that was delivered to term. That determination, then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it--it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional. (197)
What Obama is saying, whether it is his intent or not, is that a living, breathing child born by a failed abortion is a "pre-viable fetus" which should not be defined as a person and provided protection guaranteed to living persons by the Constituion. What Obama is saying is that he is a proponent of medical infanticide.
Aside from such a horrible stance on such an indefensible and monstrous practice, Freddoso doesn't offer much of a case against Obama. Freddoso paints the picture of Obama as a perfect storm in the American political landscape. What conservatives like Freddoso are most frustrated about is that Obama may be seizing upon Ronald Reagan's legacy. Freddoso quotes The Audacity of Hope to show Obama's views on Ronald Reagan.
The Reagan era created today's divisive politics, Obama writes. After him, "(n)o longer was economic policy a matter of weighing trade-offs between competing goals...You were for either tax cuts or tax hikes, small government or big government...In politics, in not policy, simplicity was a virtue." (56)
Reaganite conservatives created the current American political environment, where simple messages like "Yes, we can" and "Change" have more resonance than well articulated, comprehensive policies. Now that a liberal is able to capitalize on that overly simplistic, concision constrained, media-driven operating environment where candidates talk about values and vacuous concepts in sound bytes rather than genuine and useful ideas, conservatives are absolutely confounded. Having great debates over ideas is just simply not the way democracy in America works anymore. Republicans were instrumental in creating a "dumbed-down" America and now that they aren't the most adept manipulators of public sentiment anymore, all of a sudden they want serious substantive debate about the issues. American Republicans may have unwittingly created the instruments of their own destruction.
The Case Against Obama even quotes Obama's most telling statement about his political savvy: "I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such I am bound to disappoint some, if not all of them" (57). This statement is very revealing about the real Barack Hussein Obama. Obama is a master manipulator who is controlling the public mind quite consciously. He clearly understands that being a blank slate upon which people can project their ideas is a powerful tactic for consensus building.
Obama's cleverness and fortitude are reminiscent of another gifted orator and president from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a talented strategist who defeated powerful and entrenched Southern conservatives under the guise of ending agrarian slavery in order to usher in the Age of Industrialization. Obama appears to be another talented strategist who will defeat powerful and entrenched Southern conservatives under the guise of ending industrial slavery in order to usher in the Age of Globalization. This global village created from the work of Obama will be far from a utopia (in fact it may even be a nightmarish Fritz Lang-style dystopia), but it will be better than the nuclear holocaust offered by the advanced defense technology obsessed Republicans.