Obama Anointed

Obama had the right stuff to beat Bomb Bomb McCain in the US presidential election. From the outset it was obvious that Bomb Bomb did not have it as he was even spurned by large segments of his own party. In the end, his senatorial toga was rent by more stabs than that of Julius Caesar. Stabs made by members of his own party – Bomb Bomb could have responded with a roll-over tape that played incessantly: Et TU BRUTE.

There were many unkind cuts, but the unkindest one of all was by General Powell who categorically impugned Bomb Bomb's failures in judgement. Obama’s biggest advantage was that he ran against a weak, enfeebled McCain combined with a fractured, economically and militarily discredited Republican Party.

Obama's victory, despite the weakness and vulnerabilities of his opposition, was still astounding – mixed race, raised by single, almost flower-child mother, with no connections. Having an Afro-Arab name, Obama's biography was not the milieu from which American dream candidates spring. I mistakenly initially dismissed him as a burning spear, black radical of the Jomo Kenyatta stripe; his Reverend Wright links deepened my dark opinion of him.

That white farmers in Iowa preferred him over Hillary in the Democratic primaries was my first surprise; I skeptically refocused my attention on him. Though Obama was linked to Wright's church, no evidence was found that he supported Wright's peculiar black liberation creed – and, Obama severed his connections with Wright and his church.

The Republicans were to play the guilt-by-association card using Wright and Bill Ayers, an unconvicted Vietnam era terrorist. Hillary did the same thing and was also rejected by voters. Had Obama wished, he could have been equally absurd by calling Bomb Bomb a communist because he consorted with communists for over five years when he was a POW – and Bomb Bomb, though under duress, did sign a certificate that supported the communists in Vietnam, Obama did no such thing; he always acknowledged Bomb Bomb's sacrifice and patriotism.

GW Bush had run the country into a deep ditch; this was evident even before the economic chaos that was to explode in the the last months of the elections, so as far as I was concerned, the Republican Party had lost its mandate to lead.

I was prepared to vote Democratic, but I was convinced that Hillary was the only Democrat the Republicans could beat mainly by waving Monica Lewinsky's blue dress; and, by reminding us of Clinton's stinking pardons at the end of his term as well as some of his post-presidential conduct – with Hillary you got two for one and the Republicans were experienced, ready and armed to the teeth to do battle with the Clintons based on Bill's warped, sleazy profile.

You should recollect how the Republicans did everything they could to insure Hillary was the Democratic Party candidate... They shamelessly even publicly urged Republicans to cross over in the primaries to vote for Hillary.

Obama ran a superb campaign. He had set up a grass roots, bottom up campaign during the primaries. He bundled little people into a mass that was directed interstate. Over this he superimposed a hierarchal system based and linked to the Daly machine in Chicago. Those old Irish machine political powerhouses were organized like the Catholic church – which every red-blooded Irishman understood. In Chicago the machine dynamically encompassed every ethnic group to include Blacks and Jews. It is disciplined, loyal, and enforced its rules ruthlessly.

Obama's campaign did not leak. No back-biting was reported. Compare this to the Hillary and McCain campaigns which sprung leaks routinely. This discipline was even more surprising after Obama included Hillary workers on his staff. Let's hear it for a community organizer.

Chris Rock, an acerbic, gifted black comic declared that for a black man to win a prize fight against a white man, he would have to knock him out. White judges would not score for him on points. The black fighter had to be much better than his white opponent. Well, Obama was that much better than his white opponent and he won with sizable white votes.

Let us hope that YES WE CAN does not morph into WE SHALL OVERCOME. Colonel Robert E Bartos USA Ret.