England for Obama

Following his short visit to Afghanistan, Iraq and other Middle East countries, US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made stops in Germany, France and the United Kingdom from July 24 to 26.

Source: People’s Daily Online

US presidential contender Barack Obama Saturday rejected charges that he had exploited his trip to Berlin, Paris and London for his own election campaign, denying the five-day tour was a premature “victory lap.”

SOURCE: Deutsche Welle

The BBC have a great set of links from Obama’s recent visit to the UK:

Barack Obama has arrived in Iraq on the second stage of a major foreign tour.

Source BBC News

Apparently, Obama’s decision to give a “rock-star” acceptance speech at a stadium seating over 75,000 people is not only designed to associate him even further with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. - he will be speaking on the anniversary of the “I Have a Dream” speech - but has a precedent, set by none other than John F. Kennedy.

Although the occasion he is marking is highly appropriate - the nomination of an African-American candidate is an important step towards fulfilling MLK’s dream - it is also a high-risk move in two ways: Obama’s speech will have to avoid paling in comparison with King’s, and the venue could provide an opportunity for some nutcase to make Obama “emulate” MLK and JFK (and lest we forget, RFK) in the worst possible way. For some reason, the idea of it is frightening - I have visions of Icarus flying towards the sun, the wax in his wings slowly melting…

I wish Barack Obama well, and sincerely hope he will not disappoint his legions of supporters, including me. But I fear the effects of hubris. Like Caesar, he should always have someone on hand to whisper: “Remember, you are only a man.” Michelle Obama, perhaps?

I’ve been struck how segments of the Muslim community - particulary the courageous Muslims against Sharia - are enraged with Obama for his failure to add a “so what if I were?” to his denial that he is a Muslim. He has changed the accusation on his “Fight the Smears” site to “is a secret Muslim,” but that has done nothing to assuage the fury.

First, I believe that Muslims against Sharia are absolutely right - Barack Hussein Obama should and could have taken a firm stand from the very beginning. If blacks and women have a right to be elected President of the United States, then so do Muslims - there is nothing in the US Constitution to the contrary.

Branding someone a terrorist because he or she is a Muslim - or is a Christian with a Muslim name - is just as absurd as it would have been to call everyone with an Irish name a terrorist when the IRA were setting off bombs in Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK. That would have included every Kyle, Kevin and Connor in the US of A. (I’m also reminded of the time when Kennedy’s opponents railed against him because he was a Catholic, claiming that he would be controlled by the Pope.)

Although Obama should have said “I’m not a Muslim, but even if I were, there would be nothing wrong with that,” the Muslims’ worst enemies are Karl Rove and all those who use Rovian tactics, Fox News commentators and conservative bloggers and emailers who fuel and pander to prejudice and bigotry by sending out scurrilous libels of Obama and, by association, the Muslim community, such as emails and comments about 99% of terrorists being “Muslim males between the ages of 18 and 40″ (try Googling the words in quotes or variations thereof). The injustice to the Muslim community is so staggering that the fact that Obama is 46 and a Christian seems hardly worth mentioning. Even NY Mayor Bloomberg has denounced the “whisper campaign“. In this regard, it is worthwhile reading this NY Times article on how lies live and grow in the brain.

If Senator Obama is elected President of the United States, I hope he will feel secure and confident enough to take a firm stand in favour of the peaceloving Muslim community and start the healing process. They, too, have a right to fight off slurs and live the “American dream.”

The ease with which smears and innuendo are spread through the Internet have intensified the power of what are now known as ‘Rovian tactics’. A column by Paul Krugman published in today’s New York Times makes a point that is well worth repeating and reflecting upon - how quickly the media and public jump to conclusions, and how easy it is for spin-meisters like Karl Rove to manipulate the opinions of those who either don’t bother to read or watch the news (and are content to have it relayed to them second-hand) or don’t pay close attention.

For example, Krugman writes: “Al Gore never claimed that he invented the Internet. Howard Dean didn’t scream. Hillary Clinton didn’t say she was staying in the race because Barack Obama might be assassinated. And Wesley Clark didn’t impugn John McCain’s military service.” In other words, the Obama campaign may have lost yet another valuable player and possible VP candidate - General Wesley Clark (Ret.), a man with impeccable military credentials - due to an impolitic remark that was blown out of all proportion.

However, as a comment in The New Yorker pointed out in 2007, there is another secret to Rove’s success that goes well beyond the Internet: “He was consistently better than the other side at reaching the groups that felt shut out of politics, usually through local organizing. There are plenty of these groups on the left as well as on the right, but Democrats have let the muscles needed to reach them grow slack. Organizing is hard, unglamorous work; the language it requires is combative, self-interested, and non-seigneurial.”

As a former community organiser in Chicago, Obama is well qualified to do this ‘hard, unglamorous work’ without resorting to Rovian tactics.

Politico.com has reported that the NRA plans a “Fall blitz” of advertising against Obama, investing a total of $40M to help elect McCain. That amount includes $15M directly targeted at adverts describing Obama as a threat to the Americans’ “right to bear arms”. The article quotes Chris Cox, head of the NRA’s political arm, as saying: “Our members understand that if Barack Obama is elected president, and he has support in the Senate to confirm anti-gun Supreme Court nominees, [the District of Columbia v. Heller decision] could be taken away from us in the future.”

Foreigners are often bemused by the American insistence on the right to own guns - knife crime is bad enough - but there is an even more important point to be made. Obama has been accused of “flip-flopping” on his pledge to use public campaign financing, but the NRA’s $40M investment makes it obvious that the Republican budget will not be limited to the relatively small amount ($85M) officially available to McCain. This is clearly one of the loopholes in the “broken system” that Obama and his advisors were talking about.