October 4, 2008

The Obama File

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama:

...a man of dubious associations, a hyper-partisan voting record, a disturbing if not vicious campaign history in Illinois, with large lacunae in his past at Columbia, and before and during Harvard, and a record of very little accomplishment if not frequent failure as an ambitious community organizer, while a politicized professor at Chicago Law School without a trace of scholarly publication.

The pattern is the same: rhetoric, identity politics, and charisma substitute for accomplishment as he goes from one position to the next before the assessment of the last is in. In contrast, the mayorship in an Alaskan outback, local politics, the governorship of Alaska, at least suggest she had to perform in the give and take of rough and tumble Alaskan politics and be responsible for budgets, decisions, and hiring and firing. In that regard, Obama reminds me of a lot of the very bright people I went to graduate school with, and Palin the very independent and reliable people I farmed with.