From the cheering hordes at his keynote address at the 2004
Democratic National Convention in Boston to the enthralled 200,000
who turned out for his speech at Berlin’s Victory Column, Barack
Obama’s followers have been numerous, loud, and loyal. Most of all,
though, they have been unquestioning.
It has been a little harder to follow Obama so blithely since
Monday, when National Review Online reporter David
Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama hit the
bookstands. Freddoso reviews Obama’s history, from his earliest
political experiences as state senator in Illinois to his maneuvers
in the general election campaign, to convince America that Obama is
not everything they — and the doting media — want him to be. He
highlights Obama’s engagement in Chicago-style dirty politics, his
hard-line liberalism, and his utter lack of a reform or bipartisan
resume.
David generously devoted some of his time recently to discuss
his book with TAS.
TAS: What are a few things that people
should but don’t know about Obama?
David Freddoso: The broad pattern with Obama is
that he’s not the reformer he’s claimed to be in this election. His
whole message of hope and change is a carefully crafted one. It’s
designed to give people an impression that he’s something different
from what you typically see in politics. In fact, if you look at
his record both in his dealings and the alliances he’s made in
Chicago, and in the kind of legislation he pushed in Springfield
and in Washington, you see a pattern of Senator Obama always
choosing to get along rather than fight for positive change. So
this idea of him as an agent of positive change is a false one.
The first thing that I go into in The Case Against Barack
Obama is what it means to say that Chicago politics is dirty
and how Senator Obama has helped to keep it that way, through the
endorsements he’s made and the alliances he’s forged with various
Chicago machine politicians, Mayor Daley being the principal, but
others as well. I’m afraid the national press just doesn’t pay
enough attention to the Chicago press. If it did, I seriously doubt
that Obama would be the Democratic nominee. His ties there go well
beyond this business about Tony Rezko.
TAS: Does Obama ever take a bold
stand?
DF: Although Senator Obama usually does pick
the easy way when he’s faced with a choice between doing something
difficult in the name of change and reform and getting along with a
corrupt systemic arrangement, there were a couple times in his
career when he took a risk and stuck his neck out. The two
noteworthy ones were his speech against the Iraq War in 2002, and
when he was the only state senator to speak out against the bill
that would have protected premature babies from being left to die
after they survived abortion. And that one, I don’t think, is very
praiseworthy.
It is interesting that that’s the time he chose to stick his
neck out politically and do something that might prove politically
damaging to himself; to promote an extreme abortion agenda that
even people like Senator Barbara Boxer would not support. And in
fact she would end up voting for the same piece of
legislation at the federal level, which passed unanimously.
TAS: What motivated you to write this
book?
DF: I had done some coverage of Senator Obama
in the past, going back to his 2004 election, and one of the
stories I recounted in the book is how I interviewed his opponent.
John Gizzi and I sat him [Republican candidate Jack Ryan] down for
lunch, and he basically lied to us about what was going to happen.
Jack Ryan was forced out of that race when really embarrassing
revelations came out of his divorce files. But the real motivation
for doing this now was to watch how the media was treating Senator
Obama.
TAS: What do you dislike about the
mainstream media coverage of Obama?
DF: First of all, you have a very amusing and
at times just absurd love fest, where people are talking about him
as the word transcending flesh and Chris Matthews is saying that
Obama sends a thrill running up his leg. You have that
Newsweek story back in May — a story written and designed
by two real political reporters, not columnists — that immunized
him from all criticism. Even now we see a lot of his supporters
going to the major media organs and pushing this line that any
criticism of him is either racist or the old politics.
Now, Senator Obama is good at the old politics, but it’s an
absurd idea to think that calling him arrogant for saying that he’s
a symbol of hope is a racist attack — it’s absolutely not. The
Obama campaign has tried — and a lot of their friends in the media
have bought into this idea — to promote the idea that they deserve
to be immune from criticism. I don’t understand why they would
deserve it, but that’s the way Senator Obama is being treated.
TAS: Why do you think the media have given
him so little scrutiny?
DF: People are buying into this idea that he’s
someone who’s an agent of positive change. But if he is, why hasn’t
he ever done anything to that end in his entire career? He didn’t
stick his neck out and fight against the Chicago teachers union to
make sure the kids in that town get a decent schooling — and
that’s something I go into in depth in The Case Against Barack
Obama — he doesn’t stick out his neck to fight against
corruption because all of his friends are the problem in Chicago.
He doesn’t stick out his neck in Washington to change the scene
here, which is a very unfortunate and dirty one.
TAS: Can you give me some
examples?
DF: Senator Obama votes for bills like the farm
bill. He votes for a bridge to nowhere, and ethanol. He votes for
and supports, generally, all the special-interest, corrupt systemic
arrangements, where corporations are taking the taxpayer for a
ride. Senator Obama is an avid supporter for all of these kinds of
things, which is something I document in the book. He voted for
ethanol twice, then went back and did his land deal with Tony Rezko
on the same day: June 15, 2005.
All of these things form a broad pattern. It’s not as if he does
these things on occasion — when he endorses the Cook County
machine politician in the election it’s not an isolated incident;
it’s something he’s done consistently. He attached himself in
Springfield at the hip with Emil Jones, the state senate majority
leader, who represents precisely this kind of politics.
I believe that very few politicians from either party can claim
to be reformers, because reformers usually lose elections. That’s
something Senator Obama knows and understands. He has never acted
as a reformer because he doesn’t want to lose elections. He wants
to win, and so he sides with the winners, who are in Chicago some
really bad people who are not interested in the common good, who
definitely put their own interest in front of the public good.
Throughout his career Senator Obama has put his parochial interests
ahead of the common good.
TAS: Then do you think it’s fair for Obama
to paint himself as a new kind of politician?
DF: Well, another thing that Senator Obama
tries to do with his media campaign is to portray himself as
someone who is very open-minded and post-partisan, even
post-ideological. And this is also misleading because Senator Obama
is someone who is never really swayed on any issue. He’ll listen to
you and thank you, and then completely ignore everything you have
to say.
TAS: Does this explain the Obamacons
phenomenon? Why do some conservatives overlook his liberal voting
record?
DF: I think there are a lot of conservatives
out there who are discouraged about the way things are going right
now and think, “Well, if we had someone like Obama, maybe he would
listen to what we have to say.” In fact there are some prominent
ones who have endorsed him and given this line, whether or not it’s
something they really believe or think, at least it’s a plausible
explanation.
[When it comes to policy] Senator Obama is not in the least bit
persuadable ideologically. He’s very rigid and very consistent.
Abortion is just one example where he does not favor and will not
favor any restriction. He always wants higher taxes.
There’s almost no tax that I can think of that he’s not considering
raising as president.
When he changes it’s not because he’s open-minded, it’s because
there’s a political consideration. He’s getting slammed right now
on this energy business. You notice that he’s finally willing to
say, “Well, maybe I’m open to something that might involve
drilling, I’d be willing to swallow it.” This is because he’s
getting murdered in the polls over this issue. And he knows what he
has to do to win.
Senator Obama’s beliefs are very rigid, and that’s something I
go through and document. He’s very liberal — he was ranked the
most liberal senator by National Journal, and it wasn’t
without reason. He definitely represents his party’s ideological
left, and he was able to get to the left of Hillary Clinton, which
I think says a lot.
TAS: So if he changes on an issue, it’s for
political expediency. Otherwise he’s going to go liberal.
DF: Yes… it’s been damage control for him on
that one issue [drilling]. It is interesting to see him say, OK,
I’m open. Of course, he’s said he’s open to many things. You read
The Audacity of Hope, and you see him talk about how we
need to keep an open mind on the issue of abortion. Then you see
that when the Supreme Court upholds a very, very, modest loose ban
on partial-birth abortion, he denounces it as if it’s the worst
thing to happen to this country. He wants to re-legalize partial
birth abortion in every circumstance, that’s his number one
priority for the country. He actually said at a Planned Parenthood
event last July that the first thing he would do as president is
sign a bill that would do that.
So he talks a good game about being open minded, but I could see
him becoming president and having a Democratic Congress pass
something that has no oil drilling. That would be more typical of
the way that he behaves ideologically. He’s very much locked into
what he believes, and not very much into opposing points of view.
If he has to accept something he can, just because he doesn’t want
to lose the election.
TAS: So should McCain attack him as a
flip-flopper or a liberal?
DF: The more important theme is that there’s
nothing wrong with being a liberal — lots of people are, and run
for office all the time. Maybe Obama’s too liberal to win this
election, but there are a lot of liberals out there….The real
thing Senator Obama is doing is that he’s trying to make people
think: A) he’s not the liberal that he really is, and B) that he’s
this good government liberal that even conservatives can trust.
Both of those are false.
In fact, when liberals and conservatives come together around
issues of good government and reform… generally they can count on
Obama to be on the opposite side, working against them.
