WASHINGTON — It has been a mixed week for Senator Barack H.
Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. On the
one hand, a Reuters/Zogby poll announced that the junior senator
from Illinois’ 7-point lead over Senator John McCain, the
presumptive Republican presidential candidate, has dissolved into a
5-point deficit. McCain now leads him 46% to 41%. On the other
hand, the media have discovered Senator Obama’s long-lost half
brother, George Hussein Onyango (also spelled Owango), living
quietly in Kenya. Among the rustics who compose the Democratic
base, this discovery can only help Senator Obama.
According to the Reuters/Zogby poll, the Democratic frontrunner
has slipped with almost every category of Democratic voter:
Catholics, Evangelicals, vegetarians, nudists, flagpole sitters —
you name it. Yet the slippage has been greatest among the senator’s
core supporters, the liberals. Among them he has dropped 12%. Part
of the reason for this drop, Zogby speculates, is owing to the
candidate’s efforts to sidle toward the political mainstream. Zogby
mentions Senator Obama’s switch from opposing all offshore oil
drilling to accepting limited drilling.
Brother George will assuage the concerns of many of these
liberals. According to the Italian edition of Vanity Fair,
George lives in a hut in bucolic Hurma, Kenya, a few miles outside
Nairobi. His residence is the epitome of “green,” using no
electricity, cooled solely by gentle breezes, and with no plumbing
to pollute nearby waters, if there are nearby waters. George leaves
almost no carbon footprint. He does not drive an automobile. In
fact, he lives a very Spartan existence, spending only “a dollar a
month,” as he apprised VF in an exclusive interview,
though other sources report an expenditure of a dollar a day. At
any rate, his consumption of the world’s resources is minimal.
Actually, it is not completely accurate to say the brother
George is Senator Obama’s “long-lost” sibling, for he met his
brother when George was five years old, two decades ago. In
Dreams From My Father, Senator Obama’s autobiography, he
recalls George as a “beautiful boy with a rounded head.” As a
writer, the senator has an eye for detail. George tells VF
that the two met again in 2006 when Senator Obama was touring East
Africa and visited Nairobi. Apparently the meeting did not go well.
As George recalls it, “We spoke for just a few minutes. It was like
meeting a complete stranger.” George is only 26, which could help
his brother shore up the youth vote back in the United States, a
vote that is often unreliable.
Frankly, I find it curious that Senator Obama has not brought
George onto the campaign trail with him. Perhaps he has been saving
George for the Democratic National Convention. The Convention will
abound with so many of the enthusiasts who in the recent primary
season plucked Illinois’ junior senator from relative obscurity and
elevated him above the likes of Senator Hillary Clinton and the
widely admired former Senator John Edwards in the presidential
sweepstakes. I have in mind the environmentalists, the enemies of
the giant corporations, the Angry Left, the Even Angrier Left —
most of whom have never dirtied their hands in politics or, for
that matter, any civic involvement whatsoever.
In his VF interview, it is apparent that George is well
spoken and has experienced the ups and downs of life that are so
enrapturing to Democratic convention goers — particularly the
downs. Moreover, it would be prudent to get George out of Kenya,
where his presence could be a Secret Service nightmare. For that
matter, Senator Obama has seven other half brothers living in
far-flung habitats. The Secret Service will have its hands full
keeping an eye on them.
If brother George does make an appearance at the Democratic
National Convention he will surely outshine Senator Hillary Rodham
Clinton’s brothers, who were so deeply implicated in the brokering
of President Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardons and in other
questionable financial deals in the 1990s. Senator Obama’s boast of
being aloof from the “same old Washington politics” can only be
reinforced by his brother’s presence at the convention. George
Hussein Onyango (also spelled Owango) Barack is the farthest thing
from being one of those “Washington insiders” his brother inveighs
against. Finally, given our country’s low estate within the world
community, who would make a more agreeable United States Ambassador
to the United Nations than this exemplary Citizen of the World,
George H. O. Obama?
Senator Obama’s decline in the polls may be over.
