WASHINGTON — As I noted
several weeks back, some very bizarre happenings began to haunt the
Obama campaign in April. The candidate, taking his breakfast in a
Scranton, Pennsylvania eatery, was asked by a reporter for his
reaction to a meeting former President Jimmy Carter had just
concluded with a thug from Hamas. Clearly annoyed, Senator Barack
Obama refused to answer the question. In a word, he waffled. Worse,
he was actually eating a waffle — a Belgian
waffle. It was not even an American waffle. That is not the only
bizarre element in this story. Despite all his vaunted political
acumen, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination actually
blurted out to the nonplussed reporter: “Why can’t I just eat my
waffle? Just let me eat my waffle.”
I also cited another bizarre story reported about this time. In
San Francisco, which should be safe territory for him, an Obama
supporter released the candidate’s confidential remarks made to a
closed meeting of donors. The remarks were posted on a friendly
website for all to admire. Of a sudden, they created a nationwide
furor that has troubled his campaign ever since. It was in those
remarks that Obama confided his conviction that religion is the
opiate of the gun nuts, who, he claimed, have been unemployed and
living in jerkwater for “twenty-five years.” At the time other odd
phenomena were cropping up around the theretofore suave and
invincible junior senator from Illinois. Some went unreported.
Others were merely dismissed as gaffes.
I perceived a more serious problem mounting for the candidate.
There was a fundamental weirdness in these episodes that reminded
me of a condition President Jimmy Carter found himself in not long
into his presidency. He was suffering some sort of diabolical
infestation. Supernatural pranksters had made their way from heaven
or hell to trip him up. What was happening to Jimmy when he claimed
to be attacked by a huge amphibious bunny rabbit or during numerous
jogging mishaps was not normal. Now the paranormal has settled upon
the Obama campaign.
Along with the bad luck of eating a waffle while waffling and of
having his elitist prejudices exposed to public scrutiny, there is
an accumulating junk pile of gaffes that seem to be beyond Obama’s
control. On Memorial Day he declaimed in one of those august
orations of his that suggest an aide is burning incense offstage:
“I had an uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first
American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration
camps.” Truth be told, the Russian Army, not the American Army
liberated Auschwitz; and Obama has had no uncle. It was a gaffe.
The glib and affable candidate is becoming gaffable.
There have been many signs of his gaffability. For instance, he
has been caught at least twice claiming — as he did in Selma,
Alabama a year ago — that his “very existence” was the result of a
Kennedy-funded program that airlifted his father from Kenya to
America. His father arrived in a 1959 airlift. The Kennedy family
grant was actually made for a second airlift in 1960. Also in Selma
he claimed to be born “because of what happened in Selma, Alabama
because some folks are willing to march across a bridge.” The march
took place in 1965. Obama was born in 1961. A year ago, he smugly
observed, “In case you missed it, this week there was a tragedy in
Kansas. Ten thousand people died.” He was off by 9,988 casualties.
More recently, he has claimed to campaign in 57 states. During a
know-it-all assessment of the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, he
blundered into saying that the Iraqis and Afghans speak the same
language.
Now people who know Obama have been telling me for months that
he is a very likable fellow and very clever. The problem he has,
they say, is that things come easily to him. So easily that often
times he simply wings it, expecting his facile mind to get him
through. That makes sense. The tendency to wing it is encouraged
all the more by Obama’s insufferable arrogance.
Yet I fear his problems are more complicated. He is in the mess
Carter has been in ever since the 39th president’s ill-starred
administration. Obama’s campaign is haunted by supernatural
mischief-makers. The fates are against him. Ghosts and goblins want
to have fun at his expense. His gaffability will continue, and soon
the Democratic leaders will be wincing. Yet, they have no
alternative to Obama. Hillary’s recent gaffes have been as
abominable, and she is not as likable as the young man from
Illinois or Hawaii or Indonesia or wherever else he claims to hail
from.
