Obama on Meet the Press

I saw Barack Obama on Meet the Press yesterday. I’d seen a lot of comments on Daily Kos saying that it wasn’t fair or right that Obama should be subjected to such tough questioning while no other candidate is ever given tough questions. All of this made me curious so I watched and didn’t see what I was lead to expect.
Tim Russert makes Captain Kangaroo look like a tough questioner. I’d say the man is in the tank for Obama. He asked a few questions about Rev. Wright and it looked that he might close in for some really tough questions but let the whole matter drop when Obama intimated that it was a distraction. Russert seemed afraid to ask the questions that will let America really get to know Obama and his character. Once he had established some of Wright’s more disturbing views and Obama’s awareness of them, Russert did not follow up to find out why Obama would spend twenty years as a regular attendee where such virulent ideas were a commonplace. He did not find out why Obama would give tens of thousands of his own dollars to support such a program if it really was so abhorrent to him. Why would Obama allow his children in their most impressionable years to be subjected to such hate and detachment from reality? And, if you didn’t know what was being said at your church for twenty years, how many years will it take you to figure out what people are saying while you’re in the oval office? Russert declined to ask these questions that would get to the heart of letting us really get to know Obama. They must have edited out the part where Russert fluffed the candidate’s pillows.
This all gets to the heart of what is so suspect about Obama’s campaign. The campaign seems designed to hide who the man is and what he believes. With the exception of the ABC debate, he has never been asked difficult or very revealing questions. Any time there is a line of questions that makes Obama uncomfortable he dismisses it as a distraction. I think distraction is Obama talk for, “I don’t like those questions.” If he can’t handle polite questions from George Stephanopolis and Charlie Gibson why would we imagine he is capable of dealing with real difficulties while president?
It has often been said that the primary system is valuable since it gives the voters a chance to observe how the candidate handles boredom, frustration, difficult situations and situations that they would never allow to happen if they had any control. It gives us an idea of their abilities, weaknesses and temperament. It give us, the voters a chance to get to know them. Some of the main things I know about Obama at this point are that he is not forthcoming, he doesn’t think the voters have the right to get to know who he is, he has a tendency to frequently change his account of events and if people don’t fall in line his surrogates tend to accuse them of racism without any sign of disapproval from Obama himself. He is running an unrepentant race bating organization.
Obama says the American voter doesn’t want distractions. He says they want him to talk about the real issues. So, he had an hour on Meet the Press, how did he do issue wise? He reiterated his intention to remove all American troops from Iraq as quickly as possible. That was as definite as he got. The federal deficit is a big issue, but I guess Obama didn’t want to distract us by talking about it. Medicare and Social Security don’t seem to be of any interest to him. I couldn’t tell from his grappling with issues whether or not he takes global warming seriously or if he might have some strategy for dealing with it. He became a little more concise when he talked about our problem with high gas prices. He wants to spend many billions of dollars on research that he acted convinced would solve the problem thru efficiency and alternative fuel sources. It is sad that he actually believes this crap. Or, maybe, he was just trying to see how stupid his listeners are. Let me see, in 2010 we put 8 billion into research, after all of Harry Reid’s relatives, Pelosi’s husband, the corporations who pay for Ted Steven’s campaign and house, Diane Feinstein’s husband’s corporation and on and on and on . . . When these people all get their cut there will probably be fifteen or twenty dollars left for research. The point is that Obama can’t handle distractions and doesn’t know what to do with nondistractions. And he’s a race baiter. I don’t plan to vote for this guy.
Now, what about the daily kos crazies. They will savage anyone who might ask Obama a question he doesn’t want to face. They don’t seem to understand or respect the democratic process. Their go for the throat attitude looks like the ethos of gang warfare moved onto the internet. I read dk from time to time to help save me from the echo chamber effect. And it can be amusing. I got the impression that for most of them someone has proved something if they can cite a URL to back it up. They seem to believe that the lack of a url equates to lack of proof and lack of evidence. Strange to believe, I think some of them are even college graduates. Well God love’em, as long as they don’t take democracy and reason away from anyone else let them live in their parallel universe.