Hope and Change
Posted at 3:33pm on Jun. 14, 2008 That's Not the Barack I Knew
Fighting Fire with Guns
By absentee
Senator Obama has one more prominent figure in his life about whom he's sure to claim "he's not the man I knew" ... Senator Barack Obama.
If you have not yet heard Senator Obama's calls to transform politics; if you haven't yet heard his claims of post-partisanship, his plans to bring us together ... well you don't, then, have a television or the internet. Likely, therefore, that you are not reading this, so stuff off.
For the rest of us, the relentless feel-goodery from the HopeChangeiac has been so total that I believe I have actually developed a rash which, in the right light, looks like it spells hope in flowers.
However, like Senator Obama's friends, coworkers, religious figures, and family members, that unity message has been thrown under the bus. Senator Obama's many bus escapades are surely contributing a near un-offsettable carbon footprint.
Addressing the possibility of Republican attacks against him to a crowd in the City of Brotherly Love yesterday, Senator Obama said "they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." My, I feel so transformed. I guess that's what you call post-post-partisan. The Barack that Barack used to know had a different message:
"I chose to run ... because I believed that Americans of every political stripe were hungry for a new kind of politics, a politics that focused not just on how to win but why we should, a politics that focused on those values and ideals that we held in common as Americans... "
Ahh, memories.
Of course, the rhetoric has long been undermined by deeds, as the campaign has used distortion and age-mongering against Senator McCain for months.
Still, it's amusing that one of the "guns" Senator Obama has drawn is his "Fight the Smears" website, (presumably the product of his crack cybernauts) which is prominently headed with a quote from Senator Obama: "What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon -- that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first. We are always Americans first."
We are always Americans first. At least, the we that he used to know.
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