Remarkable yet unsurprising (is that a contradiction?) revelation about Obama

Barack Obama has often given the impression—and I’ve often said the same—that his main goal in being elected president was not to do anything but simply to be president, that by the mere fact of his, a non-white man’s, being president, everything would be changed for the better. This was apparently what he meant when he said that “We are the One we are waiting for.” It was also apparently what his lovely and charming wife Michelle meant when she told voters that by the mere act of voting for her husband, they would teleport themselves from the condition of cynicism, fear, and separateness in which they currently weltered to a world of harmony, trust, and love.

Now we have confirmation that this s indeed is Obama’s own view, from a Ron Suskind article in the New York Times Magazine via Byron York at the Corner:

Just Imagine Me Being Me In The White House [Byron York]

The New York Times magazine had a story yesterday by Ron Suskind which reconstructed the time in which Barack Obama decided to run for president. Obama was asked—by his wife—what he wanted to accomplish, and the answer he came up with was that he simply thought it would be a wonderful thing for everyone if he were in the White House.

[Obama strategist David Axelrod] thought back on what he called the original why question, what got all this started, back in December 2006. Barack, Michelle and eight others were in Axelrod’s office in downtown Chicago. If Barack was going to run, he had to decide quickly, a point the group made by laying out primary schedules and game plans for fund-raising and building an organization. Insights were offered from around the room.

It was Michelle, Axelrod remembers, who stopped the show. “You need to ask yourself, Why do you want to do this?” she said directly. “What are hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?”

Obama sat quietly for a moment, and everyone waited. “This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently,” he said. “And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently.”

11/17 09:42 AM

- end of initial entry -

I wrote to a correspondent in the immigration reform movement:

What had been one of the explanations of him all along turns out to be true, admitted by the libs themselves and in Obama’s own words.

This is great news. It suggests he is not deeply committed to any radical agenda.

The correspondent replied:

I agree it’s good news—this has been my sense all along. He’s certainly not going to be an ally on immigration/sovereignty issues, but I don’t see him as an implacable foe, either.

N. writes:

I fail to see how the expressed desire, “I think the world will look at us differently” and “millions of kids across the country will look at themselves differently” is at all incompatible with a radical agenda. This looks like a bedtime story, to put people to sleep, more than any breaking bit of news.

LA writes:

True, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a radical agenda. It does suggest that he does not have a primary drive to achieve a radical agenda. It suggests that if he runs into any serious opposition, he will not keep pushing.

I hope what I said at the beginning of the entry is not seen as saying that we can relax. There are all kinds of very threatening possibilities coming from the Obama administration. Consider Jim Boulet’s article at American Thinker about the possible use of “localism” rules by the FCC to kill conservative talk radio. However, Boulet says that the threat of this happening is really coming in the last two months of the Bush administration.

N. writes:

You wrote:

“It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a radical agenda. It does suggest that he does not have a primary drive to achieve a radical agenda. It suggests that if he runs into any serious opposition, he will not keep pushing.”

Why does it suggest that? I am not trying to be obtuse, but I just do not see how this little anecdote changes anything: he’s still a Saul Alinsky-trained community organizer who marinated in Communism …er…Progressivism for decades, who got elected to his first and second public office via behind-the-scenes power games, who has freely demonized his opponents and played the race card with abandon.

This statement actually fits in well with Michelle Obama’s various comments, including the one about how we won’t be able to go back to our ordinary lives, once Obama gets hold of us.

Consider the statement if it was said by Benito Mussolini, or Juan Peron, two dictators who came from a Socialist-populist background. How would it sound?

“The world will view our country differently, once I am the leader.” “Every child will see himself differently after I am the leader.”

Do you still find this comforting? I do not.

LA replies:

Hmm…

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 17, 2008 03:00 PM | Send