President Obama Comes Out

During the election campaign, Barak Obama was the least known, least understood presidential candidate in the history of the United States.  His public record was all but non-existent; his work record as a community organizer and lawyer was proprietary and not released; and he declined requests for any school, personal, or occupational information.  He did refer frequently to his two books of memoirs.  By Election Day, it turned out that what he told us in those volumes was essentially all of the information available to the average voter about Barak Obama.

There were a few unplanned campaign situations that generated questions from a very few reporters:  his church and its outspoken pastor; his association with a 1960s domestic terrorist; his business associate who was convicted of fraud, and even his encounter with “Joe the Plumber”.  But all that these campaign speed bumps generated were more questions and no real answers.

Barak Obama was elected by a comfortable margin and he has since been developing a significant public record.  We have gotten glimpses of the real Barak Obama and we have seen occasional clues to his identity. His FY 2010 budget proposal told us a lot, and his handling of the financial institutions and auto manufacturers has told us even more.

President Obama has given an extraordinary number of press briefings, including prime time televised events.  He has also taken the risk of granting one-on-one interviews with “safe” media personalities—risky because even an adoring, incompetent reporter / commentator might accidentally ask a hard question.  Thus little fragments of his true beliefs have been accumulating.

With more than 100 days in office, President Obama apparently feels secure enough in the position to finally “come out”.  We have a pair of quotes that precisely define his outlook and his intentions:

“I have continued directing the unpopular fight for the rights of agitation … I have been to Europe several times, mostly in connection with international radical activities, chiefly against war, fascism and imperialism; and have traveled constantly in the United States to areas of conflict over workers’ rights to strike and organize.

“My chief aversion is the system of greed, private greed, private profit, privilege and violence which makes up the control of the world today, and which has brought it to the tragic crisis of unprecedented hunger and unemployment …

“Therefore, I am for socialism, disarmament and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion.  …

“I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control of those who produce wealth.“ ¹

We now know who Barak Obama is and what drives him.

The second quote quote reveals how our President wants his staff and his trusted Congressional allies to proceed toward his goals:

“Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise …We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution and what our forefathers wanted to make of this country, and to show that we are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions.” ²

It has taken a while, but we now know what is in store for all of us.  Some, those who knew all along, are undoubtedly laughing at the naivety of the rest of us.  But most of us are not laughing.

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¹  Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, Harvard Class Book of 1935, “Thirty Years Later”, as reported in numerous publications

²  Roger Nash Baldwin:  advice in 1917 to Louis Lochner of the socialist People’s Council in Minnesota, reported in numerous publications

Tags: Barak Obama, Roger Nash Baldwin, stealth president