Defining Obama For America

Day after day, Barack Obama is being defined as a liberal, elitist, corrupt, racist-hugging radical. Bitterquiddick, Reskorama, Wrightology. It just goes on and on.

And what is John McCain doing? According to Jennifer Rubin at New York Observer McCain is touring the backcountry.

While Obama was fending off stories about his flag pin and his wifeā€™s comment that she had never been proud of America, McCain was reveling in nostalgia over his familyā€™s military service and the sacrifices he made in service of ā€a cause greater than [himself].ā€¯

While Obama deals with question after question about his spotlight-dwelling mentor Reverend Wright, McCain introduced us to his salt-of-the-earth English teacher who, McCain says, influenced his character and values. The implicit message is that the other guy has Wrightā€™s invective and McCain has Mr. Ravenel’s honor code.

Don’t worry, Rubin continues. Eventually McCain will have to talk about foreclosures, health care, and education: The Issues.

She’s wrong, of course. RIght now, McCain is running around defining himself to ordinary voters that aren’t too politically active. As he defines himself, he contrasts himself with his opponent and defines his opponent.

And once you have defined yourself and defined your opponent for the voters it becomes very difficult to change their first impression. That’s the second law of politics.

It can’t hurt that McCain really is a crusty old white guy who believes in character and values. And Obama is not, as he maintains, the candidate of “unity” and “change” but a Sixties retread on domestic policy and a 1930s retread on foreign policy, as Thomas Sowell writes.

Although Senator Obama has presented himself as the candidate of new things ā€” using the mantra of ā€changeā€¯ endlessly ā€” the cold fact is that virtually everything has says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Sowell tells the story of baseball player Paul Waner making his 3,000th hit. The fielder didn’t handle the ball cleanly, so Waner asked the scorer to record the hit as an error.

One day America will elect a black president, reckons Sowell. Let’s make sure he’s a good one.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

mysql close 0