Obama fooled people (including some conservatives) on his way to the White House

By Michael Gaynor

Obama has been fortunate to escape scrutiny, to have race work for him and to be able to fool or to intimidate people, even some conservatives. America is fortunate that most people are no longer awed by the style and audacity of Barack Obama and they are still hoping for change for the better and looking elsewhere for it. What worked for Obama at the Harvard Law Review — style — will not fool the American people now.

Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

Lincoln was right. There is hope for America. There's been a big drop in President Obama's political approval rating since he was inaugurated and lots of folks who hopefully voted for him in 2008 realize that they were attracted by his style and assumed he would be up to the job realize that style is not a satisfactory substitute for substance. They appreciate that he's a president without either military or executive experience over his head but ardently determined to fundamentally transform America instead of to respect the wishes of most Americans. (He really thinks he knows best.)

Ironically, Obama's personal approval rating is still about 60%.

Why?

The liberal media establishment and the perpetual Obama campaign has worked overtime to sell the Obama's-a-good-guy message.

Tragically, most Americans are still not aware of the truth about Obama, ACORN and the liberal media establishment (especially The New York Times).

Blame "conservative" media for not doing the expose effectively.

Bill O'Reilly seemed like he would, but then backed away. In 2009 O'Reilly's feud with The New York Times led him to interview Heather Heidelbaugh, the attorney who represented the Pennsylvania GOP in the ACORN voter fraud case in October 2008, and then Ms. Heidelbaugh and her star witness in that case, ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief. But, with Obama in the White House and O'Reilly taking heat after abortionist George Tiller was assassinated for having called Tiller a baby killer, even though Ms. MonCrief stated (twice) on his show that ACORN had served as "an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party," O'Reilly did not pursue it (That seems to be too big a scandal for O'Reilly. Judicial Watch just released FBI documents confirming what Ms. MonCrief said, but don't hold your breath waiting for O'Reilly to go there.)

After joining Fox News, Glenn Beck focused on Obama's radical connections, including ACORN. Beck is bolder than O'Reilly, but Beck made a big mistake: he embraced as his "Rosa Parks" radical Obamaton Marcel Reid, head of DC ACORN and the ACORN 8 and a former member of the ACORN national board, after ACORN national spokesman Scott Levenson had told him (off air) that he (Beck) was "afraid of black people." (Beck and Levenson are white; Ms. Reid is black.) In picking Ms. Reid, a radical, instead of Ms. Moncrief (also black), an ex-radical, Beck made the wrong choice: Ms. Reid does not want to tell the whole story, while Ms. MonCrief does.

Many people have heard or read Ms. MonCrief. Ms. MonCrief was a featured speaker at the Right Online Conference in 2009 and CPAC 2010. Laura Ingraham interviewed Ms. MonCrief twice on her radio show, in 2008 and 2009. Michelle Malkin revised her New York Times best seller, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies after it had gone to the publisher to add six pages on Ms. MonCrief (pp. 244-490) and gave Ms. MonCrief "special thanks...for her enormous courage and vigilance on ACORN corruption" in her book's acknowledgements. Ms. MonCrief blogs at many websites, including www.anitamoncrief.blogspit.com and in the Green Room at www.hotair.com.

Strangely, Sean Hannity, the conservative with a tv show, has yet to interview Ms. MonCrief. The sooner he does, the better. Hannity was right about Obama, but he never proved his case. He tried, by connecting Obama to domestic terrorist William Ayers and Obama's minister for many years, Rev. Jeremiah A. "God damn America" Wright. But Obama slipped away by pleading ignorance. He pointed out that he was a mere child when Ayers tried to blow up the Pentagon and he had no heard Rev. Wright's more outrageous sermons. Alas, it was about a year after Hannity interviewed Rev. Wright that the video of Rev. Wright's "Greatest Hits" was obtained and excerpts played on television. By then, however, it was too late to stop the Obama Express. A year early, the Obama campaign would have been strangled in the cradle. If Hannity is ever to prove that he was right all along about Obama, his witness should be Ms. MonCrief. THAT would give Team Obama grief.

Obama has been fortunate to escape scrutiny, to have race work for him and to be able to fool or to intimidate people, even some conservatives. America is fortunate that most people are no longer awed by the style and audacity of Barack Obama and they are still hoping for change for the better and looking elsewhere for it. What worked for Obama at the Harvard Law Review — style — will not fool the American people now.

David Mendell, in Obama: From Promise to Power (2007), summarized the Obama style (p. 85): "He would give voice to minorities who had felt slighted but in a conciliatory tone that did not threaten whites; in addition, he would give conservatives the impression that he was willing to listen to their arguments."

It was a winning strategy for a presidential candidate, wheh he aspired to be President of the United States as well as when he ran for president of the Harvard Law Review.

Mendell (p. 85): "...of course, Obama would center his presidential campaign on the message of uniting a bitterly divided country."

That's a very appealing message.

Ironically, it was Harvard Law Review conservatives who made Obama the president of the Harvard Law Review, so let's blame them for the Age of Obama!

Mendell (p. 89): "Finally, after the last conservative was voted out of the competition, that faction threw its support behind Obama, titling the election in his favor and bestowing on him the honor of being the first African American to hold the presidency in more than a century of the Review's existence."

This was key to Obama's political career.

Mendell (pp. 89-90): Obama's election as president of the Harvard Law Review "provide[ed] Obama with his first bit of national media exposure, profiles quickly appearing in the New York Times and several other publications.That publicity, in turn, opened up the opportunity for Obama to publish [his autobiography, Dreams from My Father.

Conservative Brad Berenson, a member of the conservative group that elected Obama president of the Harvard Law Review, told Mendell that Obama was "picked completely on the merits" and race was irrelevant.

With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that Obama played the wishful-thinking conservatives effectively.

Mendell (p. 98): "Obama was a devoted liberal, but conservatives believed that he would give their opinion a fair hearing. Obama seemed less ideologically rigid and more evenhanded than the other progressive candidates, Berenson recalled. 'Barack a;ways floated a little bit above those controversies and divisions. Barack made no bones about the fact that he was a liberal, but you didn't get the sense that he was a partisan — that he allied himself with some ideological factions on the Review. He was a more mature and more reasonable and more open-minded person. We had the sense, and I think it was borne out by the experience of the presidency, that he genuinely cared what the conservatives had to say and what they thought and that he would listen to their ideas with an open mind. And so there was just a much greater comfort level with the notion of Barack as president that some of the others."

Translation: Obama was very smart and the Harvard Law Review conservatives were very gullible.

Mendell was not prescient.

Mendell (pp. 90-91): "The conservatives were indeed correct in their assessment. Obama was an avowed social and economic liberal, bit his reasonable tone and attentive listening skills gave him a nonthreatening appeal to partisan on the right. Obama, in fact, used some of his appointment power to place conservatives in key editorial positions on the Review. He asserted that each viewpoint deserved a fair hearing — a magnanimous sentiment that would produce some criticism from people in his own progressive crowd, as well as from minorities who wanted to put their advancement at the top of his Law Review agenda. But Obama was more interested in making his publication run smoothly and convey diverse opinions than in pleasing everyone in the liberal and black contingents. His tenure as Review president, in fact, would foreshadow his future political style: a belief in giving attention to people with views other than his own; a desire to reach across the aisle to form consensus; a tendency to disappoint people in his own crowd — blacks an progressives — by not being more strident in his demeanor or behavior."

Berenson "marveled" at Obama: "He did show great political deftness as president of the Review in maintaining good relations with most, if not all, of the editors of the Review. He made people feeling generally included and valued and he got everybody in harness, working toward a common goal, notwithstanding a lot of the other problems and fissures that existed. I remember marveling at the amazing set of interpersonal and political skills that he had. It was a fractious, headstrong bunch. And he led the group with considerable skill and finesse."

Obviously leading the United States of America is enormously more demanding than leading the Harvard Law Review and outnumbered conservatives tend to be grateful for the appearance of a fair hearing and crumbs, as Obama as a member and then president of the Harvard Law Review and his soulmate, Solicitor General and Supreme Court nominee, for Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan appreciated.

Mendell (p. 91): Obama "appointed some conservatives to the Review's upper editing ranks."

Kagan added a few conservatives to the Harvard Law School faculty and it helps to make her seem fair-minded too!

The presidency of the Harvard Law Review surely was an important stepping stone to the White House for Obama, but serving in that presidency definitely did not prepare him to deal with the catastrophe in the Gulf, or the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran, or the threats to the United States and Israel posed by Islamic terrorists, or even to understand the Constitution properly.

Those who expected a bipartisan Obama to work with conservatives were shocked by his pursuit of a radical agenda to "fundamentally transform" America instead of bipartisanship. They should not have been.

A smart stealthy socialist can play conservatives who mistake an ingratiating manner and good manners for sincere interest and good intentions.

Wendy Long, in "The Myth of Kagan and the Conservatives" (May 21, 2009) (www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/50126/myth-kagan-and-conservatives/wendy-long), explained how conservatives can miss the big picture:

"...the White House and Senate Democrats think they can peddle the myth that Kagan is a 'moderate' because, as Dean of Harvard Law School, she hired a slew of conservative and libertarian professors to teach law at Harvard. This is a gross exaggeration.

"On the eve of stepping down from Harvard, Kagan sent alumni a memo about the major developments at the law school while she was dean from 2003-2009. The memo said that 43 faculty members were hired during Kagan's five years, bringing the total number of faculty members to a count of 101.

"Only 3 out of the 43 professors Kagan hired are conservative- or libertarian-leaning.... That means only 7% of Kagan's faculty hires were conservatives.

"Not exactly a huge percentage. Overall, the Harvard Law faculty only has, at most, 8 conservative- or libertarian-leaning professors....

"That means only 8% of the faculty under Kagan was conservative. Again, not exactly huge numbers when considered in percentage terms."

Especially when one considers that 40% of Americans identify themselves as conservatives.

Shortly before Obama was sworn in as a United States Senator in 2005, he told Mendell that he would anger some minorities and liberals by serving a constituency of all races, ethnicities and political affiliations (p. 91).

That approach was necessary for Obama to be elected as President of the United States. Obama knew that, and he knew how to deal with people, particularly gullible conservatives.

Perhaps the conservatives who praised Obama did not know that he considered integration of minorities into the "dominant culture" was offensive.

In Dreams From My Father (1995) (pp. 99-100), Obama explained that "the way integration always worked, a one-way street," as "a problem." Obama complained: "The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around." The traditional idea of America as a melting pot offended Obama, a self-described college-educated "half-breed."

Obama: "Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-educated, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate colored have to put up with every single day of their lives — although that's what we tell ourselves — but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger."

The sooner the Age of Obama ends, the better.

© Michael Gaynor