by Garrett Anderson

Created on: April 28, 2009   Last Updated: April 30, 2009

Barack Obama is simply the latest offering in that make believe world of a two party system. Obama is charismatic, somewhat charming, and an excellent orator. He is narcissistic, an unrelenting self promoter, and he lacks experience. What many find troubling is that Obama is expanding government at a frentic pace and he may lack personal courage. Characterizations and judgements require evidence. Robert Kennedy told us to rely on what a candidate has accomplished and discount heavily anything offered in the form of speech. So we will rely on what has happened and not happened thus far and try to sift through it all. That seems like a logical thing to do.

Prior to the election, President Obama's history was a bit of a mystery. His mother, characterized as young and a free spirit, became pregnant at an early age. Whether Obama was born here (Hawaii) or Kenya is still puzzling. He was schooled under another name, Barry Soetoro, in Indonesia and took classes in the Muslim faith. He did not spend many of his young and formative years as a U.S. citizen. He attended our very best universities including Harvard, worked at various jobs and he taught for 12 years, and then he began his meteoric rise through politics via the state of Illinois. Where did he acquire the means and support to do all of that? Much of Obama's past, prior to his arrival in college, is simply a mystery. We can't rely heavily on it. When given an alternative, one that required a choice between loyalty or self interests, President Obama chose the latter.

During the campaign, Obama distanced himself from his friend, Reverend Wright. It doesn't matter whether Wright said outrageous things or not. What matters is courage. Standing by your friends and convictions at your own peril requires courage. Some of us noticed.

Nominating Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State was done to show goodwill and disarm her potential criticism as part of the administration. Her selection was clever, cagey, but unfortunately a poor choice. If we examine what Hillary has done, we find a woman involved in suspicious acts like trading cattle futures that yielded her a fortune despite her absolute lack of knowledge, she with held Vince Foster's documents after his apparent suicide, her unwavering silence during the Lewinsky scandal, and her carpetbagging New York State as a Senator. In addition, Ms. Clinton charges U.S. taxpayers a vast sum of rent money for housing Secret Service at their New York home as though the Clintons'

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