So what? Well, there’s a taboo factor seemingly attached to his persona. The very idea of Barack Obama means some facts just can’t be stated. Extend this a bit and we’ll all be asking who’s Tony Rezko, anyway?
Obama’s name and his race are unquestionably advantages in his campaign, but to point out that he is benefiting, in any way, from a spontaneous surge of affirmative actionism, combined with multi-cultural paranoia, is verboten.
You are not allowed to mention Obama’s race or ethnicity. It’s the third rail of the Dems nomination struggle. It’s why Condi Rice is the smart choice for GOP veep.
Former Democrat VP nominee Geraldine Ferraro said: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.” She attracted a lot of flak for this, and has just resigned from the Clinton campaign because of it. The fact that she’s got a good point doesn’t mean she can be allowed to express it.
Before you start feeling guilty twinges about secretly agreeing with Ferraro, think of it this way:
If Barack Obama were a smooth talking white guy with an uplifting personal biography and no discernible resume, he would be John Edwards.
-Tom McGuire
Add statist populist demagogue to that, otherwise it could be Mike Huckabee. Huck’s only statist on health care and economics, though equally weak on national security.
Another example; recently there has been a big flap about using Senator Obama’s middle name. If you somehow didn’t know, it’s “Hussein.” Calling him Barack Hussein Obama will get you labeled a racist Islamophobe.
Here’s what the candidate himself had to say about that before his middle name became a victim card.
Sometime before Barack Obama’s middle name slipped into the realm of the unmentionable, it was supposed to be a selling point of his candidacy. “Well, I think if you’ve got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that’s a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush,” Mr. Obama told PBS’s Tavis Smiley on October 18, 2007. “If you believe that we’ve got to heal America and we’ve got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver that message.”
If his middle name is a uniting characteristic, as BHO seems to imply, it isn’t working very well. Maybe it’s only OK if he says it.
H/T Instapundit & LGF