... if only for a moment.
Spiegel Online spells things out in an interview with the editor in chief of the New Yorker and Presidential biographer David Remnick:
SPIEGEL: The American title of your Obama biography is "The Bridge". You describe the first African-American president as a bridge-builder between the political camps in America. But after two years in office, he is one of the most polarizing presidents of all time. How could that happen?
David Remnick: This drama of a young African American becoming president was enormously important and brought the country together. But that drama is over. Now it's the drama of difficulty in the prose of governing which doesn't have happy endings. Look, this is a president that came into office with shall we count the crises?
SPIEGEL: It would take up too much time.
Remnick: It would take up hours. And so has his rhetoric been heavily geared exclusively toward reconciliation and bringing the nation together? No, it hasn't.
SPIEGEL: But many Americans didn't just want a crisis manager. They saw in Barack Obama the leader of a movement that would change the country -- a sort of political messiah.
Remnick: It was part of Obama's political genius that somebody who is engaged in electoral politics could echo the prophetic voice. Somebody like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. That's not something a politician can usually do. Part of it had to do with a kind of attachment to a racial drama, a historical drama in the United States. But that's the campaign. Governing is harder.
SPIEGEL: So this magic only works once? And Obama will get punished at the ballot in November?
Remnick: I think it's intermittent. Even if that happens, it will help Obama in the long run that he is also a "shapeshifter." He speaks in a different way in the Oval Office to the entire nation than he does in Selma, Alabama, speaking directly to the African-American community, or to union workers in Ohio. That is another one of his gifts and I think it will help him find a way to reach out to angry voters.
SPIEGEL: Has that gift to adjust also undermined his credibility? In your book, you quote a Hillary Clinton aide who complains that Obama basically changed his life story in the presidential campaign, depending on the audience he spoke with. Does he not stand for anything?
Remnick: I quoted the Clinton aide not to agree with him but to get the point of view of the Clintons, how helpless they felt during their campaign against Obama. Do I think Barack Obama manipulated his life story in some pernicious way? No, I don't. Do I think he gave it its full poetic force? Yes.
SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?
Remnick: He did what politicians have done for centuries. They take the facts of their life and try to make it embody a national drama at a certain point in time. Lincoln did this. Obama did that when in his book he describes his upbringing as that of a disadvantaged African American even though he actually grew up under rather comfortable circumstances.
SPIEGEL: Many describe Obama as analytical and cool. But you point out that every chapter of his autobiography ends with him in tears. Can we assume that the current difficulties of his presidency are an emotional burden on him?
Remnick: To find out about his tears was surprising to me as well. But I am sure he has emotions, too. And for me to say he's faking anything, I would have to have evidence that he's faking. I don't. So we can assume he is emotional now as well.
SPIEGEL: Or fed up already with Washington? You write that Obama gets bored easily -- as a student, as a professor, even in the US Senate. In one of his first Senate meetings, he writes a note to an aide after a particularly boring speech by Senator Joe Biden. It says: Shoot me now.
Remnick: I don't find that a most attractive quality. To be transparently bored while being a senator for a very brief period of time seems odd to me and it speaks also to the fact that Obama has a considerable ego.
Obama has a considerable ego and that seems surprising to Remnick? Next we'll be told that Michael Moore has a considerable weight problem, that the Elephant Man is considerably ugly, or that the Religious Left have a considerable interest in seeing Democrats get elected... and we're to believe that it's all... out of kilter... somehow...
Sigh.
The interview goes on to stain itself further by smearing the Tea Party, Beck and Palin and by making excuses for Obama's failures but the focus on Obama's ego is what initially captured my attention. For a moment, Remnick swerved into the God's honest truth about Barack Hussein Obama and clearly, it was a painful swerving.
Their man is crashing and burning yet the die hards remain loyal.
Tis a potent koolaid that's been drunk.
Crossposted at Wizbang.
Michelle Obama was born on January 17, 1964, to Marian and Fraser Robinson on Chicago's South Side. She has a 16 month older brother, Craig. She is 5'11" tall.
Craig is a Brown University men's basketball team coach.
Michelle's schooling
Michelle and Craig both skipped the second grade. She graduated from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School in Chicago's West Loop in 1981. After high school Michelle went on to Princeton University where in 1985 she graduated cum laude with a B.A. in sociology and a minor in African American studies. After college, Michelle continued her education at Harvard Law School, where she earned her Juris Doctor degree in 1988.
Michelle Obama's Career
For three years after law school, Michelle worked as an associate in the area of marketing and intellectual property at Chicago law firm Sidley and Austin, where she met Barack Obama. She left the corporate law world in 1991 to work as assistant to the mayor and then as assistant commissioner of planning and development for the City of Chicago.
In 1993, Michelle became founding executive director of Public Allies - Chicago, a leadership training program that received AmeriCorps National Service funding.
Obama served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago since 199 developing the University's Community Service Center. She worked for the University of Chicago Hospitals beginning in 2002, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May, 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. She also managed the business diversity program.
In May 2006, Essence magazine listed her among "25 of the World's Most Inspiring Women."In July 2007, Vanity Fair magazine listed her among "10 of the World's Best Dressed People".
Barack, Michelle and their two daughters Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, live on the south side of Chicago, where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.
Michelle Obama is currently taking a time-out from her career to help with her husband's presidential campaign. She has been described as Obama's "secret weapon" and the "closer" in the campaign.
Barack Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961 to Barack Hussein Obama of Kenya and Ann Dunham of Kansas. His parents met in Hawai'i and divorced when Barack was still young. Barack's father was from the Luo people of Kenya coming as a scholar to study in the United States. His mother was also an intellectual, an anthropologist by training.
His mother remarried to Indonesian Lolo Soetoro and the family moved to Indonesia when Barack was six years old. He has one sister, Maya, the daughter of Lolo and Ann. At the age of 10, Barack returned to live with his grandparents in Hawai'i.
He became a student at the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu and after graduating studied at Occidental College in California before transferring to Columbia University in New York. He graduated with a B.A. in political science and specialization in international relations.
After working a short while with a corporation, Barack decided to follow his calling and took a low-paying job as a community organizer in Chicago, a city he had never lived in before.
After working a few years at community organizing, he entered Harvard Law School in 1988. Obama has stated that he believed that in order to effect real change, someone had to work at the political level. He became the first African American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and completed his J.D. degree with magna cum laude honors in 1991.
Rather than accept corporate job offers, Obama became a civil rights lawyer with Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate. He also was a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1994 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
In the Illinois State Senate, Barack worked on ethics and health care reform, and sponsored legislation improving tax credits for low-income workers. He negotiated welfare reform, and better subsidies for child care. Obama also played the key role in legislation requiring videotaping of homicide interrogations, and a law to monitor racial profiling.
In 2004, during his bid for the U.S. Senate, Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention.
As a U.S. Senator, Obama is a Veteran Affairs Committee member. He has championed legislation on redeployment of troops out of Iraq, increased government accountability, veteran's benefits and care, nuclear non-proliferation, energy independence and global warming action.
In 2007, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States. He has mounted an impressive grassroots campaign up to Nov. 2007.
He married his wife Michelle in 1992 and has two daughters, Malia and Sasha. In 2004, he published an autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. His second book, The Audacity of Hope, was published in 2006.
Barack lives with his family on Chicago's South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.
Many people both inside and outside of Washington and the national media have come to the conclusion that President Elect Barack Obama has ran one of the greatest and most comprehensive ground games in history. There are many forces that drove this campaign but today we’re going to take a quick look at the top 3.
1. Organization and Team Building -
One of Barack Obama’s greatest talents is finding other people with top notch talent and a passion for their work, so it was no surprise that when it was time to pick a campaign manager Barack Obama chose David Plouffe. Plouffe had been working as a democratic party campaign consultant for Axelrod and associates. David Plouffe’s greatest strength came in the primaries when he along with chief strategist David Axelrod devised a game plan that would heavily rely on caucus states instead of primary states and work on extending the campaign far beyond “Super Tuesday”. This plan not only allowed them to tally more delegates than Hillary Clinton, it also allowed them to build their national campaign infrastructure from the ground up. By the time the general election came around the campaign had already competed, recruited, and gathered donors in all 50 states. This allowed the campaign to avoid one of the biggest road blocks politicians face when running for office, the dreaded “October surprise”. But since voters already knew Obama, there was little the McCain campaign could say to scare away voters.
2. Small Donors -
Big campaigns require a large amount of cash to fuel the day to day operations and the Obama campaign was no exception. Barack Obama had only been a senator for 2 years when he decided to run for president and faced an uphill battle when it came to raising cash against the Clinton machine of the 1990’s. If he had the choice he probably would have relied on big donors but since that option wasn’t available the campaign had to rely on the small donors and the net-roots for support. Many view Barack Obama as generational shift not only because of his young age but because he is the first candidate to really run a 21st century campaign that took advantage of the internet and technology. Campaign volunteers were actually given the ability to phone-bank from home with pre-written scripts and even worked along side the Obama campaign to stomp out viral emails and message board postings that contained false or misleading information about the Senator.
3. Getting Out The Vote -
This was the heart of the Obama campaign, it has been called one the greatest ground-game operation in United States history. It doesn’t matter how much airtime you buy, or how well you perform in the debates. If you can’t get your supporters out to the polls on election day that you will have absolutely no chance of winning. The Obama campaign understood this and during the primaries and in the general election it did everything possible to make sure voters got to the polls. Earlier we mentioned how Obama is the first 21st century President, and if you want more evidence of that checkout what he did to make sure voters got to the polls. The Barack Obama campaign hired a technology company to develop a voter database that updated in real-time as people voted, as voters came into their precincts to cast their ballot the Obama headquarters would send out the information to volunteers in the field. As soon as the information was received on the volunteers blackberry, the voter’s name would be crossed off a list and marked as “voted”. At 3:00 PM the volunteers would then go through the list and call everybody who has yet to vote and encourage them to make it to the precinct.
Born to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Barack Obama has a multiracial heritage. He made history when he was elected as the 44th President of the United States of America, as he is the first African American to hold this post. Though, young and inexperienced as he has not spent much time in Washington, Barack Obama has worked for the last twenty years as a community organizer, a civil rights attorney, a constitutional law professor, a Sate Senator and then U.S. Senator.
Commonly called "Barry" throughout his childhood, he was born, Barack Hussein Obama II on August 4th 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama Sr. was of Luo ethnicity of Kenya. Hussein was their middle name as Barack Obama Sr.'s father had adopted Islam but originally they were Christians. Barack's mother, Ann Dunham was an American brought up in Kansas State. His parents met during college at University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father had come as a foreign student. They got married and Obama was born soon. When Barack Obama was two years old, his parents separated and later divorced in 1964. Obama and his mother then came to stay with his maternal grandparents in Manoa district.
Meanwhile his father received masters in Economics degree from Harvard after which he moved back to Kenya. Form his father's other marriage, Barack has two half-sisters and five half brothers, all of them in Kenya. His father became Finance Minister in Kenya and eventually died in a road accident in the year 1982. Before his death, his father met Obama only once in 1971 when he visited Hawaii. So all he knows about his father is through his stories and photographs. Obama's mother married an Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro while they were in Manoa. In 1967, Obama with his mother and step father moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. It was the time when, Suharto came to the power in Indonesia and all residents and students studying abroad were called back to their home land. Obama's only half sister from his mother's side, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was born in Jakarta. In Indonesia, Barack attended all local schools where the medium of language was Indonesian. Till his fourth grade he stayed in Indonesia; after which he moved with his grandparents in Honolulu, Hawaii. He stayed with him till his graduation.
Barack Obama has admitted that he struggled through his initial childhood years to find answers about his multicultural, multi racial heritage. As a very small child he found difficult to accept such vast differences between his mother and father's skin color. In his own words he says that he had a middle class upbringing. During his teenage years, he even used cocaine, marijuana and alcohol to deal with his internal conflicts, something which he regretted later. Now, he thinks it was a big mistake and he was morally wrong. He never touched illegal drugs again after those years.
After high school, Barack moved to Los Angeles and studied at the Occidental College for two years; from there to Columbia College in New York. He majored in Political Science with specialization in International relations in 1983. In the meantime his father had died in Kenya in 1982. Barack Obama moved to Chicago after spending four years in New York and working at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG). He was hired as Community organizer by Developing Communities Project, a church based community organization. The organization wanted a young black man to help them collaborate with black churches in the south side. From 1985 to 1988, Obama worked there as Director of the organization. He helped blacks fight for their rights from the city government. He worked to improve the living conditions of poor neighborhoods which faced crimes unemployment. Working in a small organization taught him organizational skills. He was always good with words and was known for making speeches which people could emotionally connect to. He worked with Saul Alinsky whose method was �agitation� which meant getting people angry enough about their current state of things that they are compelled to take some step and do something. During his tenure at Developing Communities Project, the staff at this organization grew from 1 to 13 and so did their budget. Then, he worked as consultant and instructor for Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. It was 1988 when we first traveled to Europe and then to Kenya for few weeks, where he met his fathers family for the first time.
Barack Obama felt that law was a medium which could facilitate activism and community organization. So in late 1988, he entered Harvard Law School. In his second year at college, in 1990, he was elected as the president of law review. This role required him to be editor- in-chief and supervisor of law review staff of about 80 editors. As he was the first black to be elected for this position, it was a widely reported and much publicized event. It had taken Obama long sessions of discussion with conservatives to support him. While still in law school in 1989, he worked as an associate at Sidley and Austin law firms. He met his future wife Michelle, also a lawyer, here. Newton Minnow was a managing partner here. Minnow, later introduced him to many of the Chicago's top leaders. In the summer of 1990, he worked at Hopkins and Sutter and finally graduated from Harvard in 1991; after which he again moved back to Chicago where he practiced as a civil rights lawyer. His could have easily taken up a god job after Harvard but his values and mother's teachings had taught him to do something for the society and the less privileged ones. The publicity that he garnered at Harvard, because of his election as first black president of Harvard law review, led him to an offer by University of Chicago law school to write book on racial relations. He was offered a fellowship from the university and an office from where he could write the book. In the meantime, after dating for few years and being engaged for a year, Barack married Michelle Robinson in 1992. Obama initially thought he would complete the book in one year but it took much longer as it was a memoir and he included bits about his personal life also. He traveled to Bali with his wife and wrote most of the part of the book there. In mid 1995, the manuscript was published. Book was named Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Few months after this publication his mother Ann, who had moved to Hawaii from Indonesia in 1994, died of ovarian and uterine cancer. He won the Grammy award for the audio version of this book.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama also taught Constitutional Law at University of Chicago Law School from 1992- 2004; first as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then as Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004. Barack had also joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland law firm as civil rights attorney. He was an Associate in this law firm from 1993 to 1996 and then counsel from 1996 to 2004. Barack served on the board of Directors Woods Fund of Chicago, Joyce foundation form 1994 to 2002. In 1992, he became the founding member of board of director of Public Allies but resigned in 1993 and his wife joined it. All these years in Chicago, he served on board of directors of Chicago Annenberg Challenge, Chicago lawyer's Committee for Civil Right under Law, the Centre for Neighborhood Technology and Lugenia Burns Hope Center.
In 1992 election he had organized largest voter registration drives, Project Vote, in history of Chicago from April to October 1992. He had with him a staff of ten and around seven hundred volunteers. They had the goal of registering around 150,000 African Americans in the state who were unregistered. It was one of the most successful voter registration drives one had ever seen. Barack's work led him to run for Illinois State Senate. Eventually, he was elected in 1996 November, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer, as Barack Obama was the only candidate left, after rest of the petitions were invalidated. He strongly worked for ethics reforms and criminal justice reform. In 1998, Barack with U.S. senator Paul Simon passed the toughest campaign finance law. It called for banning any personal use of the campaign money and any gifts received from the lobbyists. Before the law was passed, Illinois was among the worst states for campaign finance regulations.
He went on to serve three terms in the Illinois State Senate, from the year 1997 to 2004. Barack lost a primary run for U.S. House of Representatives to Bobby Rush in a very close fight in the year 2000. In the year 2003, he passed legislation to expand healthcare coverage to 70,000 children making Kidcare, state Children's Health insurance program, permanent. The legislation also extended health insurance to uninsured parents, which added up to additional 84,000 parents. After he found there were 13 innocent death row inmates, Barrack saw to it that death penalty reforms were changed. Also, Illinois became the first state where videotaping an interrogation became mandatory. Even Law enforcement agreed that recording questioning would help the prosecution's chances. As the Chairman of Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee, Barack Obama unanimously led a legislation to be passed on racial profiling by the police, which means maintaining records of the race, age and gender of the drivers detained. For low income families, Obama created Illinois Earned Income tax credit which offered tax relief.
Barack Obama came into national limelight with an inspiring speech at July 2004 Democratic National Convention where he spoke against the Bush administration's policies on Iraq war. His speech was the highlight of the convention and people who saw it knew that he was an emerging star. Barrack is a great orator, at par with Martin Luther King Jr. and often compared with John F Kennedy. People wait for hours to hear him speak. During his presidential campaign he drew huge crowd. He has a flair for consensus building and he loves addressing crowds. His wife Michelle Robinson is a Harvard Law School graduate. Michelle and Barack had their first daughter, Malia Ann in 1998 and second daughter Natasha, known as Sasha in 2001. His second book, Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream was out in October 2006 and he won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for audio version of this book too. As a writer, Barack is very talented and is an introspective writer. Barack is a devoted basketball player and a Chicago White Sox and Chicago Bears fan. Though his father was brought up with Islamic faith, he was an atheist by choice, however, Barack follows Christianity.
By middle of 2002, he started thinking about running for U.S. Senate and formally, announced his candidacy in 2003 for U.S. Senate. On 2nd November 2004, he won the election by a great victory margin and was finally, elected to the US Senate, following which he resigned from Illinois State Senate. Barack Obama became the fifth African American senator in the history to do so. Till 2006, Obama held minority appointments like Foreign relations, Environment and Public Works, Veteran�s Affairs on Senate committees. He took additional major assignments of Committee of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs at the start of 2007. While in U.S. Senate Foreign relations Committee, Barack visited Iraq to witness the war. In January he even introduced a legislation to end the Iraq war. He went against the conventional thinking of U.S. and had the courage to oppose the war. He also traveled to Russia and Africa. Right through his career he has spoken about his opposition to the Iraq war and to providing universal health care, which he focused on even in the presidential campaign. Obama made efforts to correct the disparity that existed in the state of Illinois where veterans were receiving less disability benefits as compared to other states. As a result more disability claims specialists were hired for the regional office in Chicago and claims of veterans were re-examined. Education was his top priority during his Senate years. He passed a legislation to carry summer education programs which emphasize mathematics and problem solving skills. He worked on to get black colleges eligible for grant money.
As a member of minority party in 109th congress, Barack created legislation to control conventional weapon and nuclear material smuggling. It became a law in 2007. Along with Senator Tom Coburn, Barack Obama passed a law to bring more transparency in the system. According to him, every American citizen has the right to know where his tax money goes and that information should be made available to them. He has worked on accessibility of renewable fuels. In 2007, Barack confronted both the parties and proposed ethics legislation which imposed subsidized corporate jet travel, restrictions on sponsored trips by lobbyists and disclosing lobbyist�s contributions became mandatory. All these became part of the final bill which became a law. He passed legislation where he demanded that gas stations be given tax credits who have installed E85 ethanol refueling pumps. He also sponsored a law for providing 40 million $ for commercialization of a hybrid car. In the 110th congress, he helped in creating legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, nuclear terrorism and care for US military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. He passed a bill to help the families of servicemen who return injured from these countries and demanded that the families should get a job protection of 12 months for taking care of their loved ones. Obama sponsored a number of bills in U.S. Senate, 136 in total, of which two of them have become law. Additionally, he also co sponsored 619 bills in his tenure at U.S. Senate.
Obama declared his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination in February 2007 at Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. Of the large number of candidates who filed for nominations as presidential candidates, only two remained in the contest; Senator Hillary Clinton and Obama. On the 3rd of June 2008, Obama became the presumptive nominee, one who is assured of his nomination but not officially announced by the party. In August 2008, Barack Obama accepted the nomination and he was in race against the republican nominee, John McCain. On November 4, 2008, Obama won the presidential election by a big margin. He delivered his victory speech at Chicago's Grant Park in front of thousands of supporters. There were, not only nationwide but, worldwide celebrations on his victory; even in his father's home country, Kenya.
His stance on ethics, stressing on government transparency, education as his priority with his reform 'No Child left behind' and providing affordable and accessible health care to all, has made him a favorite of many Americans and people have very high hopes from him.
Here’s a recent email exchange that might shed some light on the subject. First you’ll see the bogus email that is circulating the Net and then a response afterwards:
Obama mentioned his church during his appearance with Oprah. It’s the Trinity Church of Christ. I found this interesting.
Obama’s church:
Please read and go to this church’s website and read what is written there. It is very alarming.
Barack Obama is a member of this church and is running for President of the U.S. If you look at the first page of their website, you will learn that this congregation has a non-negotiable
commitment to Africa. No where is AMERICA even mentioned. Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should want to join Obama’s church… B-L-A-C-K!!! Doesn’t look like his choice of religion has improved much over his (former?) Muslim upbringing.
Are you aware that Obama’s middle name is Mohammed? Strip away his nice looks, the big smile and smooth talk and what do you get? Certainly a racist, as plainly defined by the stated position of his church! And possibly a covert worshiper of the Muslim faith, even today. This guy desires to rule over America while his loyalty is totally vested in a Black Africa!
I cannot believe this has not been all over the TV and newspapers.
This is why it is so important to pass this message along to all of our family & friends. To think that Obama has even the slightest chance in the run for the presidency, is really scary.
Click on the link below:
This is the web page for the church Barack Obama belongs to:
www.tucc.org/about.htm
- - - - - - - - -
Bob -
Thanks for sending me this. Interesting stuff. I tend to wonder how many of my family and friends have received this but haven’t forwarded it to me for obvious reasons. 
First off, I can tell you that all of these issues have come up several times and I can shed some light on these facts:
* The majority of the claims made in this email stem from a conservative radio host named Bill Cunningham. See this article: http://mediamatters.org/items/200801100003
* His middle name is Hussein, not Mohammed.
* This is the church that he belongs to - the Trinity United Church of Christ.
* Obama is obviously not a practicing Muslim nor is he a racist.
If/when the people that receive this email go to the link that is provided, they would see a video at the bottom of the page. At the end of the video a white woman says “. ..know matter who you are, you’re welcome here.”
To me, emails like this are more of a problem to us as a society than they are to Obama… It just shows you how Internet technology has unleashed the ability for untruths to be easily spread around the country - even the globe - without much fact-checking involved. And an even scarier thing is that most people well pass it along without any hesitation (I’m glad you didn’t).
I kinda think the small/trivial act of forwarding an email becomes much more critical when it contains political or religous content.
