posted 2007/03/20 at 15:36
Activist Obama church enters spotlight (AP through Yahoo! News)
Members of my family keep asking me what I think of Obama, and to be honest I'm not sure what to think at this point. Obama says a lot of things I can agree with, and I don't think there's any doubt that in the few short years he's been in the national spotlight, Obama has proven himself to be one of the most gifted orators of our times. However, as has been mentioned countless times already, Obama has yet to really define his stances on a huge range of issues, and to be honest I almost worry that Obama may be too skilled of an orator, and that he may be able to craft his rhetoric in such a way that tricks other people into thinking that he's saying things that he really isn't saying.
I'd like to believe in Obama, but I can't put my foot down on where I stand on him one way or the other. I suppose the only way I really would be able to tell is if he were to get the Democratic nomination, and then to really listen closely to him and see if he sticks to his left-wing guns, or if the DLC just winds up Lamonting him into the centre like they've done with so many other candidates. I really don't think that there's going to be any stopping the Hillary juggernaut, though; the only way I see her losing the nomination is if she does something to screw up her own chances, and the Clintons may be the biggest masters of political games of all time, let alone this generation.
Still, I have to say that it's funny to see how desperate the right-wing is to discredit Obama this early on in the game. Perhaps the most amusing of these follies is how some on the right-wing (particularly the crowd over at Fox) keeps harping on the fact that Obama smokes, as if that has any bearing on his ability to govern effectively. The delicious irony here, of course, is that the right's hero of heroes, Ronald Reagan, used to be a SPOKESPERSON for Chesterfield cigarettes. Episodes like this makes me wonder just how little intelligence people on the right assume that everyone else has.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon