Obama Needs A Political History Lesson
By Dave Gibson (06/19/08)
Barack Obama has informed us that any criticism of his wife is strictly forbidden. This though Michele Obama is constantly making speeches for her husband and plays a significant role in his campaign. However, according to his allies in the press we are also forbidden to comment on the racist rants of his pastor, his association with a known terrorist, nor his 20 year membership in a church that seems to preach more hate than anything else.
Seemingly, hyper- sensitive, Obama has taken an unprecedented step in confronting his critics who have legitimate questions about his background. He has set up a website ( Fightthesmears.com ) to confront so-called smears and rumors which surround him.
While the website offers very little in the way of proof for such issues as whether or not Obama ever attended a madrassa, it does offer a great example of just how thin-skinned the presumptive Democratic nominee may be.
Whether it is his lack of experience or his complacency which has grown out of an all too adoring press, it is obvious that he fails to understand the level of criticism and insults which are almost always heaped upon presidential candidates.
During his 1964 re-election campaign, President Lyndon Johnson set up a clandestine group known as the “five o’ clock club.” Among other things, the sixteen member cabal dispatched CIA agent E. Howard Hunt to spy on the Goldwater campaign, with Hunt sending advance copies of Goldwater speeches to the White House. They also created a coloring book for children in which Goldwater was portrayed as a Ku Klux Klansman in full regalia.
Not to be outdone, the Republicans placed ads in newspapers across the western United States, which claimed that Johnson was suffering from kidney cancer and had only a short time to live.
During the summer of 1884, Republicans dubbed Democratic nominee Grover Cleveland a “lecherous beast,” due to a child which Cleveland may or may not have fathered out-of-wedlock while he was still a bachelor. Despite Cleveland’s doubts over the child’s ancestry, he gladly and generously supported the boy. The Republicans introduced a popular chant which went: “Ma! Ma! Where’s My Pa?”
The race between Cleveland and James G Blaine even had a 19th century version of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. A Buffalo, NY preacher who supported Blaine once announced: “The issue is evidently not between the two great parties, but between the brothel and the family.”
During the election of 1876, Democrats started a ridiculous rumor about Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, claiming that in a drunken “fit of insanity,” Hayes had shot his own mother. It was a ridiculous rumor indeed, considering the fact that Hayes was a teetotaler, alcohol was actually never served at the White House during his presidency…Not to mention the fact that he loved his mother!
Equally dishonest was the claim from the Republicans that Hayes’ opponent Samuel Tilden had syphilis, supposedly contracted from an Irish prostitute.
During the 1836 election, Whig Congressman Davy Crockett accused Democratic nominee Martin Van Buren of wearing women’s underwear. Crockett even wrote a book devoted to bashing Van Buren. One passage reads: “Martin Van Buren is laced up in corsets, such as women in a town wear, and if possible tighter than the rest of them. It would be difficult to say from his personal appearance, whether he was a man or a woman but for his large red and grey whiskers.”
Negative campaigning and even rumor mongering have a long and at times amusing history in American politics. The creation of a website devoted to calling the rumors lies along with his complaints about fair criticism of his associations, gives Obama a rather weak appearance.
If Obama is having trouble dealing with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity…How can he possibly deal with Mahmud Ahmedinjad or Kim Jung Il?
As the old saying goes…If you can’t take the heat, then get out of the kitchen (or the presidential race)!
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