Redstate

Posted at 12:52pm on May 27, 2008 A Pathological Need to Be a Part of History

By Jeff Emanuel

Exaggerations and fabrications are, and always have been, part of political and campaign rhetoric. From John Edwards' ridiculous and pathetically exploitative declaration in 2004 that, under a President John Kerry, "people like [paralyzed Superman actor] Christopher Reeve" would "get up out of that wheelchair and walk again," to Hillary Clinton's high-profile Bosnia "sniper fire" lie earlier this year, politicians on the campaign trail often succumb to the deadly combination of a yearning to promise a utopian future and a shameless, almost pathological need to be a part of the Great Events of History declarations of historical greatness.

Barack Obama, the neophyte Senator from Illinois and presumptive Democrat presidential nominee (though don't tell Hillary Clinton that!), has provided example after example of this combination, to which he has added an exploitation of gravely serious issues in hopes of capitalizing politically on history and on the emotions that such issues spark.

The litany of issues and events Obama has attempted to take ownership of via family involvement reads like a proposed script for Forrest Gump 2, this time starring the Obama family tree, played by well-known black actors (since the Obama campaign and its supporters have demonstrated that they care very deeply about the skin color of any actor who would portray an Obama onscreen).

Remember Selma, Alabama? Obama staked his claim to the historic "Bloody Sunday" event there by crediting that activity with his parents' marriage, and with his birth. On March 2nd, speaking at the 43rd anniversary of Selma, Obama :

"They looked at each other and they decided, 'We know that in the world, as it has been, it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child, but something is stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala., because some folks are willing to march across the bridge.' And so they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala.!"

Of course, as Jake Tapper wrote for ABCNews the following Wednesday, "Obama was born in 1961; the Selma march was four years later."

Last year, Obama announced, in an attempt to co-opt the Kennedy legacy in the Democrat party, that he traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.

As the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs wrote of that claim at the end of March, "It is a touching story -- but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified." Dobbs continued:

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.

The most recent -- and most heinous -- addition to this list of the attempted co-opting of history for personal political advantage came on Memorial Day, May 26, when Obama apparently decided that Selma, the Kennedys, and other exaggerated historical connections simply weren't enough to build his faux reputation with a big enough swath of voters -- so, in a blatantly dishonest attempt to simultaneously pander to the military and Jewish votes, he decided to take ownership of the ending of the Holocaust and the liberation of Auschwitz, as well.

Read on.

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