Ohio Citizen Alert--Big Sister is Watching You

The Columbus Dispatch and other media have reported that the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Helen Jones-Kelley, approved records checks on Samuel Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio. Mr. Wurzelbacher, whose middle name is Joseph, is better known as Joe the Plumber.

These records checks were clearly politically motivated and therefore completely improper. As the Dispatch stated in its lead editorial on Wednesday, "Access to such data is supposed to be restricted to official business of government and law enforcement....Such scrutiny could have a chilling effect on the willingness of people to stand up and be counted prior to elections. It also undermines the confidence of all Ohioans that their state government is serious about protecting sensitive information."

Referring to the Ohio governor, the Wednesday editorial also stated: "Strickland, who...said there were no political motives in the data-checking, apparently is giving [Jones-Kelley] the benefit of the doubt."

I suggest that Ohio citizens who read The Postliberal not give Gov. Strickland the benefit of the doubt. He should be inundated with mail informing him that Jones-Kelley's snooping was transparently political, and that he shouldn't be covering up for her. He should fire her.

Gov. Strickland's homepage can be accessed by clicking here. Follow the "Contact" link to find a form for sending the governor mail. Let him know that voters feel personally affected by Jones-Kelley's abuse of her office to harass a fellow Ohio citizen and infringe upon his rights. We can watch too. Make sure Ted Strickland knows we're watching his administration, and that we care.

Top Ten Titles for Friendly Leader's Infomercial

After welcoming himself into our homes last night to tell Americans who we are, celebrity self-endorser Barack Hussein Obama seems well positioned to add more statuary to the Grammy he won for reading the audiobook of Dreams from My Father. (And every word he read was his own!) Will that be an Oscar gracing the Green Room mantelpiece? An Emmy? Golden Globe? Whatever. But Obama's cinematic masterpiece will need a title before Barbra can announce "the winner is". Hmmmm....The Postliberal has a few suggestions.

1. "The Night the Earth Stood Still"
2. "A Convenient Lie"
3. "Dependence Day"
4. "No Sudden Moves"
5. "A Joe Named Barack"
6. "Barack Obama's Day Off"
7. "Invasion of the Money Snatchers"
8. "The Plot Against Amerika"
9. "Ocean's 14: The White House"
10. "Triumph of the Nil"

Readers of The Postliberal are invited to submit their own suggestions, before the high wears off.

Obama's October Surprise

Nominee's infomercial leaves millions convinced Obama's ready to take the wheel. Younger voters ask: thanks for the lollipop, are we there yet, is anything else on, are we there yet, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..............................

And maybe, Mr. Nice Man, where's my mommy?

Can Random House and Obama Be Sued? Ask Arista Records and Milli Vanilli

If Barack Obama didn't actually write Dreams from My Father himself, could Random House and Obama be sued on behalf of consumers? I'm not a lawyer, so I wouldn't venture to say. However, the case of the early '90s rock act Milli Vanilli might offer some precedent. Here a promoter created a sound with certain performers, but since he didn't like their stage presence, he hired other performers to act as a front. The act became very successful (like Barack Obama they won a Grammy) but a technical malfunction during a "live" performance revealed that the guys on stage were lip-synching. Evidently the country wasn't ready for Milli Vanilli in the White House, since the media made much hue and cry about the deception, and the promoter eventually confessed. In the aftermath at least 26 lawsuits were filed on behalf of consumers (according to the Wikipedia article linked above) and substantial damages were awarded.

In principle the cases of Milli Vanilli and Dreams would appear to be similar, if it could be shown that Obama was not the author of Dreams, which I deem reasonably suspected. In the Milli Vanilli case the promoter's confession made things easy for consumers and their advocates; but one doubts that Barack Obama will put the interests of consumers ahead of the royalties he's collecting. Anyone concerned about whether a President Obama will redistribute wealth need only consider how much wealth author Obama has redistributed from consumers into his own swollen bank accounts.

Authorship of "Dreams": The Bottom Line

I and others (in particular Jack Cashill) have raised questions about whether Barack Obama is actually the author of Dreams from My Father, as one would think from the book's cover. But why should anyone care? Lots of people don't.

It's safe to say that questions about the authorship of Dreams might never have been raised if Obama had not received the Democratic nomination for the presidency. And if it were shown that Obama didn't write Dreams, or even that there were serious reasons to doubt it, the candidate might lose some trust and some votes. Still, the authorship of Dreams has significance in ways not directly related to the election, and not directly related to how members of the public form opinions about Barack Hussein Obama's personal integrity as politician and author. It's not fundamentally political, much less partisan.

Dreams from My Father is a publication of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House. Paperback copies retail at $14.95 U.S. and $16. 95 Canadian. Copies are sold in other countries too, and I have no doubt that Dreams has been translated into quite a few languages. According to Peter Osnos of the Century Foundation (follow the link and search for "Barack Obama and the Book Business"), who as an executive of Times Books at Random House was the original publisher of Dreams, by 2006 about 500, 000 copies of the book had been sold. Neither Osnos nor anyone else doubts that the explosive sales of Dreams were a direct result of the political prominence of its putative author, Barack Obama: the single most commercially valuable feature of the product is Barack Obama's name on the cover. Given Obama's continued political rise, it would be fair to guess that sales of Dreams have already exceeded a million copies and may eventually be counted in multiples of millions. According to Osnos's estimate, by 2006 the royalties accruing to Obama and his agent, Jane Dystel, had already reached about $1 million.

Dreams from My Father is a multi-million dollar, profit-making sales operation. The revenue it has generated comes from consumers who have paid for the books and derivative products such as the audio version read by Barack Obama. Since the attractiveness of the Dreams product line to consumers is substantially based upon Random House's representation of U.S. Senator Barack Obama as the author of Dreams, if Obama is not actually the author, then Random House and Barack Obama have collected and are continuing to collect millions of dollars from consumers under false pretenses. Such a lucrative commercial fraud, or even the reasonable suspicion of one, would demand the attention of a judge, whatever voters might happen to think about candidate Obama, or about President Obama if he were elected.

There are many reasons to doubt the integrity and truthfulness of candidate Obama--and that's putting it cautiously. The discovery that Obama was not the author of Dreams would add another item to the roster of his lies about himself, and the discovery that the real author was William Ayers would add another item to the roster of lies Obama has told about his relationship with Ayers. His lie about the authorship of Dreams would perhaps be exceptionally important as the most elaborate lie, but it also might seem less important because it would be one of the oldest. If it's a matter of how individual Americans evaluate Obama's personal integrity, or his suitability to the presidency, the weight that the new discovery might add to impressions of Obama's dishonesty could ultimately be as meaningless as the weight his smooth performances on TV add to popular impressions of his honesty.

But behind the authorship of Dreams from My Father there is a matter of fact that, whether it ever becomes public or not, is what it is and not what Jack Cashill's arguments make it. Somebody did write Dreams and that writer either was Barack Obama or someone else whose name has much less commercial value than Obama's. Random House has represented Obama as the author of Dreams, and on that basis the company has collected and continues to collect millions of dollars in sales from consumers. Consumers who doubt that Random House has delivered the advertised product have, in principle, a right to have their complaint heard in court, and Random House and Obama have a right to produce whatever evidence they can to prove that Barack Obama was indeed the author of the product sold under his name. It is not my responsibility, nor is it any other blogger's, to accuse Barack Obama of wrongdoing or to acquit him, to prove that Obama didn't write Dreams, or to prove that he did. We have procedures of due process for investigating and deciding matters like this, and they should be followed.

At the present time Random House and Barack Obama have produced no evidence supporting Obama's authorship of Dreams beyond the mere assertion. On the other hand, there is considerable circumstantial evidence indicating that Obama did not write Dreams. As I have pointed out in a previous post, this evidence includes the Introduction and 2004 Preface to Dreams, which curiously narrate the book's genesis without ever stating that Obama wrote it, and in other respects offer a self-contradictory account that is not plausible enough in itself to support an implied claim of authorship, and only plausible to any degree if, as the Introduction actually says, Dreams was written in some other way (which would necessarily have been by somebody else, although the Introduction artfully leaves that implication unclear). Moreover, Jack Cashill has assembled stylistic evidence indicating that William Ayers had at least a significant hand in writing Dreams, and while by its very nature this evidence cannot be fully conclusive, it is sufficient to justify the suspicions of a reasonable person.

That being the case, I think (and I speak here as a non-lawyer) it would be appropriate for at least one state attorney general to initiate an investigation of the authorship of Dreams with a view to a possible filing against Random House and Obama on behalf of the consumers in the attorney general's state. With the matter removed from the web to a court, we would be able to consider not only Cashill's stylistic analysis, my clever deconstruction of the Preface and Intro to Dreams, and other similar evidence, but also any evidence that Random House and Obama wished to produce in their own defense. I'm the last person to want to deny them the opportunity, or to want any innocent person to be falsely accused.

Of course, documents and testimony entered in evidence for a court would be affirmed as truthful under oath. And witnesses, such as William Ayers, Obama's agent Jane Dystel, his editor Henry Ferris, and Obama himself, might be examined under subpoena. But that's nothing they should worry about if the things that Cashill and others are saying about the authorship of Dreams are merely empty and malicious speculation. We doubters have put our cards on the table. It now looks like Obama who's bluffing.

Obama's Signature: Another Specimen Emerges

Scholars researching the writings of author Barack Obama now have another specimen to ponder. I noticed it in the September/October issue of Columbia College Today. Columbia grads who get the publication should check out the Class Notes column for the Class of 1983 (p. 70). There they will find the text of a letter that Obama sent to his 25th class reunion earlier this year, where it was read in his absence. For those who can't lay hands on a copy of CCT themselves, I reproduce Sen. Obama's letter here.

"Dear Friends,

"I want to thank you for the opportunity to welcome everyone to the Columbia College Class of '83 Reunion. I'm sorry that I am unable to join you all today, but it sounds like you have a great program planned to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our graduation and the accomplishments of our class over the last quarter-century.

"It's hard to believe that so many years have passed since we left this instititution to take on the world as new college graduates. I learned a lot at Columbia, found my focus, studied and came out with a determination to do something about the injustices I had seen and read about.

"While it may seem like we graduated yesterday, I don't have to tell you how much has changed. Since our time at Columbia, the world has transformed into a place where graduating from an American college without using the Internet is impossible. Medical advancements have turned many terminal illnesses into treatable disorders. New York City has recovered from an unspeakable tragedy. The challenges, but also the promise, of an increasingly interconnected world has [sic] been laid in front of us in myriad ways.

"Twenty-five years ago, we left Columbia with the wind at our backs. But in spite of our successes, many in our nation have not shared in the prosperity of the last quarter-century, and some are worse off than before. We must continually be reminded of the work that remains to protect our union and repair our world.

"Once again, I want to thank you all for the opportunity to share these thoughts with you today. I wish you all continued success and happiness in the years to come.

"Sincerely,

Barack Obama"

The Class Notes item added that one member of the Class of '83, evidently no victim of injustice, had contributed $100, 000 to Columbia in Obama's honor. That gift was also matched by another classmate who is CEO of an investment management firm. The Class of '83 column then continues with personal news about class members and their families.

What does the new specimen of Obamiana add to our understanding of Obama the writer?

At his current stage of literary development, the acclaimed author of Dreams from My Father strongly displays the influence of that popular voice of platitudinous epistles, Hallmark. Anybody who wanted to market a pre-inspired greeting card for liberal politicians to send their 25th college reunion couldn't surpass the formulaic banality of Sen. Obama's letter to his classmates.

Does the style contribute anything to research on the authorial signature of Dreams from My Father? I wouldn't think so. On the one hand, it offers no indication that it shares common authorship with Dreams, and thus does nothing to disprove or weaken Jack Cashill's thesis that Dreams was ghostwritten by William Ayers. On the other hand, any weight the letter might add to Cashill's argument is dwarfed by the material Cashill has already assembled by comparing passages in Dreams to texts by Ayers. For all we know Obama may have assigned a staffer to write this letter to his classmates, and it wouldn't be considered surprising or seriously unethical for a busy political candidate to sign a letter he hadn't written himself (although some guys at the reunion, the letter's addressees, might feel manipulated if they found out about it). A letter is also not a book, and the same author might write both in different styles for a variety of reasons. And then there's the passage of years. Perhaps at 47 Obama's literary creativity has burned out, and formula is all he's got left. That's not a recommendation for the U.S. presidency, but it wouldn't make him a liar when he claimed to be the author of Dreams from My Father.

But style aside, the utterly banal content of Obama's reunion letter sounds an errant note, at least to my ear. I find it hard to believe that the author of this letter ever wrote a memoir. Here is Barack Obama, a 1983 graduate of Columbia, gesturing toward a formative experience in his life, an experience that in some acknowledged measure he shared with his addressees, for whom it was also formative--yet he cannot mention one concrete personal detail that might render vivid his experience at Columbia and evoke the recollections of others who were there at the same time. Obama mentions no professors or courses that influenced him. He mentions no books that challenged his thought. He offers no reminiscences of all-night conversations about Machiavelli, Marx, and girls from Barnard (or Marymount...). He doesn't mention Alpha Phi Alpha or Omega Psi Phi, which as I recall were the African-American frats. No chess games in the Furnald lounge (and according to Dreams the young Obama was a chess player). No poker games in the John Jay basement. No pals, no subways, no volunteer tutoring on the far side of Morningside Park. Nothing. As a presidential candidate Obama can come on TV and tell the camera about a working class American he supposedly met in Toledo (inhabitants now 18, 000, 000, the second largest population of anecdote-worthy Americans after Youngstown), but he can't bother to recall one person he knew, one place he went, or one thing he did in two years spent at Columbia! If Joe Biden had been invited to address the Columbia reunion as a guest and had to decline, he could have sent virtually the same letter Obama did, and nothing would have seemed amiss.

The person who wrote Obama's letter to the Columbia Class of '83 is not someone who thinks of his own life, or anybody's else's, as material for a memoir--not that I can see. This observation would apply to anyone who might have written the letter. And it would apply to Obama, who signed it, even if he did outsource the wording of the letter to a staffer. If presidential candidate Obama was going to send a letter to his Columbia reunion at all, why not include some personal touch? For a Chicago pol, this would be a chance to lay on a double-grip handshake--and lay it, I might add, on a group possessed of some disposable income and lively interest in liberal politics. But Obama passed up the golden opportunity to make that personal connection with his Columbia classmates. If this man was ever interested in personal memoirs, he must have suffered brain trauma and lost all awareness of it. He's a case for Oliver Sacks.

Well, perhaps I'm being too hard on the busy Sen. Obama; perhaps I'm applying an inappropriate standard. After all, in his Preface to the 2004 reissue of Dreams Obama strenuously insisted that his career as a memoirist was merely a temporary diversion from "the business of my life," and that after a few months of promotional appearances he put it completely behind him. So is it fair to expect him to sound like a memoirist when he writes to the Columbia Class of '83?

I'm willing to cut Sen. Obama some slack on his Columbia letter. He never claimed to be a memoirist, and his Introduction and 2004 Preface to Dreams don't claim he wrote it. The letter he wrote, or at least sent, to his 25th Columbia reunion is nothing but what we'd expect from any on-message liberal politician, or an actor playing one.

The Postliberal is a 1972 graduate of Columbia College.

Obama in Plain Sight: Intro to "Dreams" Implies He Didn't Write It

Jack Cashill has assembled evidence suggesting that Barack Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father may be the work of a ghostwriter: Obama's Chicago neighbor William Ayers. Obama agrees with Cashill on one important point: in his own Introduction to Dreams, which describes his book's genesis, Obama himself strongly implies that he didn't write it.

According to Obama, he did some writing on another book, not a memoir but "an essay on the limits of civil rights litigation in bringing about racial equality" (xiii; all citations refer to the 2004 paperback edition). This book was never finished, and it doesn't exist. Obama says that his work on the "civil rights litigation" project was aborted by personal memories that forced themselves upon him: "I found my mind pulled..." (xiv). But he doesn't say how these memories turned into the book Dreams from My Father. In particular, he doesn't say he wrote the book. He says that Dreams "found its way onto these pages" (xvi).

Most readers of Dreams have probably assumed that Obama's curiously impersonal description is merely figurative, a display of humility, a modest way of saying that he did write the book the reader has in hand. I have no doubt that Obama hoped the words would be understood that way. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Obama's display of humility is so extreme that although he devotes his Introduction to just a single topic--where Dreams came from--he omits the writing altogether. Instead he replaces the writing of Dreams by a quasi-automatic process whereby memories somehow took form in words and found a way onto the page by themselves. This picture is so fantastic that it can't be taken literally, and therefore can't be suspected of falsehood. In describing a genesis of Dreams that is blatantly impossible, Obama is counting on readers to think, "he can't really mean it," and he leaves it to us to come up with our own idea of what he did mean. That's very convenient for Obama, since in saying, as in essence he does, "this book came into existence without anybody writing it," Obama also implies, "and I, the credited author, didn't write it." Unlike "nobody wrote this book," "I didn't write this book" is not a fantastic statement that cannot mean what it literally says. Lots of people didn't write Dreams from My Father. Maybe Barack Obama is one of them. Maybe when he said he didn't write the book--because nobody did--he meant it. And maybe he was telling the truth. That would explain why Obama would want to say something as implausible as "[it] found its way onto these pages": he used an implausibility to muffle an implicit, plausible, and truthful, but dangerous statement: "I didn't write it."

Obama's whole Introduction to Dreams has the odd rhetorical project of persuading the reader that Barack Obama, the author of Dreams from My Father, actually had nothing to do with writing his book and couldn't have written it. Describing how the project began, Obama explains that the idea for his first book was not his in the first place: the "opportunity to write it arose" when newspapers reported that he had been elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, and "a few publishers" (i.e., nobody in particular, the idea for his book was nobody's), who must have thought Obama was a writer or could become one, took the initiative to call him (xiii). Obama then accepted the role of writer which publishers had offered him, and he "agreed to take off a year after graduation and put [his] thoughts to paper." As Obama describes it, he did not exactly agree to write a book, but rather to do some writer-like things, that is, to clear his agenda for time to write, and "put thoughts to paper." Would the transition of thoughts to paper involve words? Obama leaves that part to the reader's imagination.

Obama began to play at being a writer with only a vague idea of his subject matter, "imagining [him]self to have something original to say about the current state of race relations." He demurs at claiming he actually had anything original to say, or anything to say at all: Obama only claims to have imagined he had something to say, and eventually he concluded on his own that the theories in his plan "seemed insubstantial and premature," and he gave them up (xiv). So far Obama has stated that he "sat down and began to write," but not that he ever got past "began to." His incipient writing was soon interrupted by forces outside his control, just as Obama's legal career had been sent onto a detour by the calls of publishers who thought he was a writer and convinced him to "take a year off"; except now the impersonal alien forces approached Obama from inside himself: "I found my mind pulled toward rockier shores. First longings leapt up to brush my heart. Distant voices appeared, and ebbed, and then appeared again" (xiv). One might have expected Obama to explain that these voices were a kind of Muse, and that by listening to them he became the writer who wrote Dreams. But he doesn't; on the contrary, he states, "I strongly resisted the idea of offering up my past in a book."

Obama does once mention writing in connection with his memories, but the passage does not refer to writing Dreams from My Father. Obama says that in reflecting upon oral stories told him by others, he discovered "I had spent much of my life trying to rewrite these stories" (xvi). Even here Obama only claims that he was trying to write, and the activity he calls rewriting yields no inscription of words in any permanent medium where they might be read. This metaphorical "writing" has no text and produces no books--it's all in the head. So Obama the author is affirming that, yes, he was after all a writer, he'd been one for a long time, only not the kind who writes books.

Obama's writing-without-writing allows him to explain how he became the author of Dreams without writing it and without wanting to write it. After evoking his lifetime process of "trying to rewrite these stories," Obama arrives at Dreams from My Father this way:

At some point, then, [note the temporal vagueness] in spite of a stubborn desire to protect myself from scrutiny, in spite of the periodic impulse to abandon the entire project, what has found its way onto these pages is a record of a personal, interior journey--

In other words, Dreams from My Father is Obama's "writing," even though he won't say he wrote it, because he wrote it metaphorically: it told stories he'd been "trying to rewrite" all his life. But as for actually writing the book the reader is holding, nobody did that. It just "found its way onto these pages."

So as I said, Obama agrees with Jack Cashill on one critical point: Obama didn't write Dreams from My Father. Where he and Cashill differ is that according to Obama, nobody wrote Dreams, while Cashill thinks somebody wrote it for him. Needless to say, of the two positions, only Cashill's is plausible. It's a certainty that somebody wrote Dreams from My Father. If Barack Obama didn't write it, then somebody else did.

Obama's Introduction to Dreams from My Father is a pretty strange document. But the Preface he affixed to the 2004 reissue is even stranger. Bear in mind that the Preface is printed immediately before the Introduction in the 2004 edition, so that it would not be difficult for anyone to read both of them and compare. Like the Introduction, the Preface also narrates the genesis of Dreams. But Obama seems to have forgotten parts of his own story.

As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went to work with the belief that the story of my family...might speak in some way to the fissures of race, etc. (vii, emphasis added)

The "burst of publicity" that testified to Obama's "modest accomplishments" in the Introduction has here been reduced to "some modest publicity." The "few publishers" who initiated Obama's project when they "called" him have given way to "an advance" (i.e., a cash incentive) that Obama received from "a publisher." But most importantly, Obama's original project (the essay on the limits of civil rights litigation), his project agenda, his work-in-progress, the memories that arose unbidden to overwhelm his theories, his struggle to resist the direction in which those memories were leading him, the final triumph in which his inner journey "found its way onto these pages"--all this has disappeared. According to the 2004 Preface, when Obama received his advance, he already had a "belief" about the story he could tell, and he immediately "went to work."

Obama says he "went to work" on Dreams from My Father, but he still does not say that he wrote it. In the Introduction Obama also said he went to work on his essay about civil rights litigation, and even that he "sat down and began to write." But he never wrote that book, and it doesn't exist. When Obama says in the Preface that he "went to work" on Dreams, it's impossible to know whether this means he started writing the book, started thinking about writing it, or started imagining how to deliver a book to his publisher without writing one. "Went to work" claims only that Obama made some early contribution to the Dreams project as a content-provider, whatever a content-provider might be.

Obama's narrative then skips straight from "went to work" to the completed book's publication. Neat! Utterly uninformative about the work of writing Dreams--or the miracle that created it, whatever it was--Obama pronounces confidently about the side of authorship that involves book reviews, promotional appearances, and sales. "Like most first-time authors," he explains, sounding like a veteran mid-list publishing personality, "I was filled with hope and despair." But when his book enjoyed only modest success, Obama says, "I went on with the business of my life." According to Obama, being an author was not part of the business of Barack Obama's life. It was merely a temporary and superficial intrusion upon a life devoted to other things that Obama took much more seriously. Referring to his short-lived "career as an author" as a "process" he was "glad to have survived," Obama seems to be referring to the negotiations with his publisher and their promotional campaign. He hasn't said anything about writing.

Obama's statement that he "went on with the business of [his] life" strikes another note of discord with the Introduction, where Obama had explained that Dreams somehow emerged from an inner work of "trying to rewrite" that had occupied "much of [his] life" (xvi). In that sense his authorship of his book, although not the actual writing of it, was putatively continuous with Obama's life and not an intrusion upon it. But in the 2004 Preface to Dreams the life of Obama is no longer a private "journey" but public "business" instead. When Obama's ephemeral performance as book-trade personality has run its course, it disappears from his life without residue: not only does Obama not write anything else, he doesn't even reflect: "I had little time for reflection over the next ten years" (viii). This is not the same "Obama" who described himself in the Introduction to Dreams.

Taking a paragraph to illustrate the business of this period, "Obama 2004" kicks off his narrative by mentioning a voter registration project that he ran in the 1992 election cycle. This is a strange touch, because the period supposedly summarized began in 1996, after Dreams was published (hardback 1995, paperback 1996, according to the copyright page). Perhaps "Obama 2004" just wanted to sneak in a plug for his voter registration talking-point, and didn't bother to reflect on the chronology of the life he was narrating.

When the summary arrives at 2004, Obama wins the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, and finds himself in the news again (his first fifteen minutes of fame, we recall, having come when he was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review); and once again, as if through an odd coincidence of mistaken identity, powers outside Obama descend upon the busy public man and impose the role of author: "Just as that spate of publicity prompted my publisher's interest a decade ago, so has this fresh round of news clippings encouraged the book's re-publication" (ix).

What follows these words is a passage whose peculiar unbelievability exceeds even Obama's high standard.

For the first time in many years, I've pulled out a copy and read a few chapters to see how much my voice may have changed over time. I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity. (ix)

After reading in the Introduction to Dreams that the book recorded Obama's "search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American" (xvi), that the book culminated a lifetime effort at attempted "rewriting" of intimate stories, undertaken "in the hope of extracting some granite slab of truth upon which my unborn children can firmly stand," it comes as a surprise that the author should have stored this hard-won granite slab in a virtual attic and never read it again for many years. But "Obama 2004," we recall, has denied that reflection was ever part of the business of his life, or that he even had time for it. So when Obama 2004 is moved to pull out a copy of Dreams, he isn't interested in the personal achievement of his stories. Nor does this man, who in the Introduction admitted he periodically thought of abandoning the whole book in deference to "a stubborn desire to protect myself from scrutiny" (xvi), now feel even a little bit curious to see whether the republication of his personal book might expose something that on second thought he would rather have kept private. No, Obama 2004, the vote-drive organizer, law professor, family man, Illinois state legislator, and candidate for U.S. Senator--the guy who admits he never thought of publishing a book at all unless someone else, aroused by publicity, thought of it first and asked him--Obama pulls out his own book solely to measure the changes in what he calls his "voice" by examining a few sample passages ("a few chapters"). Supposing Obama's "voice" did change; why should a man so busy with an active political life have cared about his changing "voice," and cared about this "voice" above all else? That would make sense for a teacher of rhetoric, a literary scholar, or a professional writer. Or even for a serious recreational writer. But Obama, according to the self-portraits of the Introduction to Dreams and the 2004 Preface, was none of these.

Let me translate Obama's statement that he reopened Dreams "to see how much my voice may have changed over time." This means that Obama--the real, living Obama, "I," the one who pulls out Dreams to read it--he suspects that the "voice" of the author-on-the-page Obama doesn't sound like his voice, the real Obama's voice. For some reason this concerns him, and he wants to see how much the author of Dreams doesn't sound like Obama. Now what is this phenomenon Obama calls his "voice"? First he discusses the prose style of Dreams, and this, he affirms, is not the "voice" of Obama 2004 (who I reiterate is the only actual, living Obama). But according to Obama, "voice" is not prose style alone, because after describing how alien the prose of Dreams seems to him, Obama declines to disavow the "voice" in Dreams after all: "I cannot honestly say, however, that the voice in this book is not mine--that I would tell the story much differently today than I did ten years ago, even if certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically, the grist for pundit commentary and opposition research" (ix). So Obama is saying that by "voice" he means two different things: (a) prose style, and (b) something other than prose style that includes content political opponents might want to highlight. Of these, Obama considers the latter the more important to "voice," since he says that although the prose style really is not his, the voice still is.

Fine; but in that case, affirming ownership of the "voice" (content) would involve reading through the whole book, and not just representative passages, which is what Obama says he did. Examining "a few chapters" would be satisfactory only if Obama was interested in checking the style and nothing else.

Notice, moreover, how at the end of the paragraph Obama acknowledges that passages in Dreams had already become a topic of media comment and opposition research. At the beginning of the same paragraph he said that for many years he never so much as pulled out a copy of Dreams until his run for the U.S. Senate encouraged the book's republication. So Obama is saying he knew opponents were reading his book to mine it for dirt, but Obama himself wasn't interested enough in the book to go back and see what they might find there, until his publisher showed an interest in reissuing it to the marketplace? I compute only three possible explanations for Obama's account of how he finally "pulled out a copy" of Dreams after neglecting it for many years: he's lying, he's clueless, or both.

But perhaps the strangest feature of this paragraph is Obama's commentary on the change he observed in the prose-style aspect of his "voice." Obama does not merely assess the quantity of change, as he says he wished to ("to see how much my voice may have changed"); he assesses the quality of the writing in Dreams; and his assessment is brutal. Where else does an author who has published only one book, and that one only moderately known, append a preface to a republication of his own sole book informing readers that the prose in it is painful to read, and so flabby that fifty pages should be cut? I doubt those sentiments were shared by the critics whose "mildly favorable" reviews Obama had mentioned earlier in the Preface. The testimonials printed on my paperback include "beautifully crafted," "beautifully written," and "a book worth savoring." Why would an author of a book whose writing is so often selected as a special object of praise append a preface saying that the writing in his book stinks? It certainly couldn't be a sales pitch. And if Obama's assessment was sincere, if he really thought the prose in Dreams so bad, why didn't he just revise it, and give readers a better book? Even writers of well-known classics sometimes make considerable revisions for later editions. Dreams from My Father was hardly a classic whose circulation outside its author's control inhibited revision. Not yet, anyway.

There is clearly something about the writing in Dreams that embarrasses Obama. But it is not at all plausible that what embarrasses him is what he says it is, the ineptitude of the writing. Because the writing in Dreams is far from inept, and even if it were inept, the author himself would have no conceivable reason to observe and advertise his own ineptitude, unless he had already published other books and gained a reputation for a better sort of writing. But at the time of the 2004 Preface Obama's only reputation as a writer was as the author of Dreams from My Father, and no reader of the reissued book could have had any expectation of an authorial voice other than the one that was there, if they had any expectations at all.

So if the writing in Dreams embarrassed Obama, but not because it was inept, what was it that embarrassed him?

An inference may be drawn from Obama's description of the curiosity that supposedly drew him back to Dreams: he wanted "to see how much [his] voice may have changed over time." Even before Obama discovered that the writing in Dreams was inept, he already knew (or strongly suspected) that its voice was not his. Now the way Obama puts this implies that the voice in Dreams, including its prose style, was his once; but for Obama who goes back to Dreams, the voice he is looking for, and the one he finds, is not his. Instead of saying, however, "I didn't write this, it found its way onto the page by itself," as in essence he did in the Introduction, in the Preface Obama implies instead that he did write Dreams, but he was a different and very bad writer when he wrote it, so bad that he's now ashamed to be associated with the writing in his book.

Well, Obama 2004 was right about one thing: the "voice" in Dreams isn't his. The distance between reader-Obama 2004 and the writing in Dreams can be gauged from the writing in the 2004 Preface, whose text we have under examination: it has none of the lyricism of Dreams from My Father (or of the Introduction to Dreams). Or by looking at the writing in The Audacity of Hope, a preview excerpt of which is printed at the back of my copy of Dreams from My Father. Very little lyricism there either. Let's give Barack Obama a little credit for perceptiveness: when he said he was curious about how much the prose-style-voice of Dreams differed from that of Obama 2004, his instinct, if that's what it was, was right on target: the author of Dreams and Obama 2004 do sound like different people. The question is, why?

Obama's critique of the prose style of Dreams preempts that question by providing an immediate answer: Obama's prose style was changed by "time." He then provides a few illustrations of the improvements time brought to his taste in writing. To the implausibilities already noted we now may add another, the implausibility of someone becoming a markedly different and, in his estimation, better writer, without any acknowledged effort to improve his writing, or even any acknowledged practice at writing in the interim--by Obama's account between 1995 and 2004 he had no time even for reflection, much less for writing. Nevertheless during this span his writing improved significantly, the work, he suggests, of time (whenever Obama discusses writing, he never does anything, the writing just happens).

But Obama's whole self-critique is implausible, whether he's bashing the writing in Dreams or congratulating himself for becoming better. So if we can't accept "time improved Obama's style" as a plausible answer to the question of why the author of Dreams and Obama 2004 don't sound like the same writer, what would an alternative answer be? One possibility, obvious when the question is properly phrased, is that one or both of the authorial Obamas isn't Barack Hussein Obama at all. This would mean that at least one ghostwriter was involved in the two books credited to author Barack Obama. Since none of Barack Obama's publications acknowledge any writing assistance besides his agents, editors, and consulted advisors, the involvement of one or more ghostwriters would mean that Obama has misrepresented himself as the author of at least one of his two books.

According to this analysis, Barack Obama's Introduction to Dreams from My Father and his 2004 Preface offer an obfuscated, self-contradictory, and unbelievable representation of his authorship that, upon close reading, proves vacant. As Obama tells it, his authorship of Dreams was miraculous, because although he lacked the writing skill to be the author of anything, and he didn't want to be the author of a memoir, and he resisted becoming the author of a memoir, and he tried in vain to become the author of a different kind of book, and he never had an idea of being the author of anything until one or several publishers had the idea first and he agreed to accept the opportunity they offered to be an author, and even then he only considered himself an author as long as his publisher was selling his book, after which he reverted back to a complete non-author, reverted so completely that he wasn't even moved to reread his book when political opponents were using it against him--because, in short, despite all the reasons Obama gives why he couldn't have written a book like Dreams from My Father, and despite the fact that, according to Obama's account, he didn't write Dreams from My Father, nevertheless Dreams from My Father somehow "found its way" onto the page with Barack Obama's name under the title as the author. That's a miracle. It couldn't have happened.

But if Obama's fantastic story contains one believable detail, one grain of truth, it would probably be that Obama did not write Dreams from My Father. Because if he had written it, why would he have concocted an alternative story about its genesis that is so implausible, much less one that implies he didn't write it? Instead of telling an outright lie--"I wrote Dreams from My Father"--Obama would have told the truth, but obfuscated it.

But why wouldn't he have lied? If Obama had a ghostwriter and wanted to hide it, why wouldn't he have covered his tracks better? Perhaps we'll never know; and unless Obama someday proves that he did write Dreams after all--i.e., unless he puts all doubts to rest by replacing the story he has already told in two inconsistent and unbelievable versions with a third that he could have told at the beginning if it was the truth--then the question of Barack Obama's incomplete self-concealment will intrigue psychoanalysts and literary scholars for a long time to come. Here I will offer speculation of a comparatively mundane and practical sort.

The person who wrote Dreams from My Father was not merely a hired professional wordsmith. He or she was a literary talent: no creative genius perhaps, but someone with a definite gift and the ambition to develop and use it. Since Obama was not that kind of person--as he repeatedly insists--then by claiming to be the author (i.e., the writer) of Dreams, he would have assumed a role that brought with it expectations he could not meet and did not wish to. Barack Obama did not have another Dreams from My Father in him--he wasn't even comfortable acknowledging authorship of this one. So he would have tried to avoid a massive, elaborate charade that might consume his life and run a high risk of exposure. Instead he would indirectly tell as much truth as he could, by refraining from saying that he actually wrote Dreams, and also by acknowledging that he wasn't a writer at all, so no further writing should be expected of him. I suspect that when Obama said in the 2004 Preface that he knew his career as an author would be short-lived, but he was "glad to have survived the process with his dignity more or less intact," he was glad indeed he had survived without the loss of dignity that exposure would bring, and glad he could stop pretending to be the author he wasn't. And when Obama described the ten years after Dreams as if he couldn't do enough to forget about his book, maybe that had some truth in it too.

Barack Obama, and the literary author who may have put Obama's Dreams into writing on paper where a publisher could sell it and people could read it, escaped the curious attention of readers for a long time. Nobody much cared who wrote Dreams from My Father until Barack Hussein Obama became a candidate for the U.S. presidency. But those days of untroubled obscurity may soon be ending for the author or authors of Sen. Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father.

Stop the Smears: Obama's Middle Name

I heard recently that a newspaper formerly fit to print has published an article revealing the source of the vile rumor that Barack Obama is Muslim. The alleged source is one eccentric person who has spread the rumor via the Internet.

This piece of investigative trivialism is a perfect example of the disinformation that the MSM has spun around the Obama campaign. It should be obvious to anyone that the source of the rumor that Obama is Muslim is none other than Obama himself. His name is Barack Hussein Obama. Duh! Is it any wonder that he has to go around insisting "I am a Christian, I am a Christian, I am a Christian," like a broken record? Maybe he could send the message more efficiently by adding another middle name that would symbolize his putative Christian faith. It's been done; the Pope's name wasn't always Benedict. But unless Obama either augments his nomenclature or loses the "Hussein," some people will think that he's Muslim. And not unreasonably.

One of the small but telling symptoms of the MSM's official war on free speech is the prohibition against mention of Barack Obama's middle name. It's like Holocaust denial in Europe (except not yet illegal): mention "Hussein" and you're a bigoted nut, a public menace who must be silenced. Of course there are problems with this. One is that in this country we don't silence people unless very special circumstances justify it. Another is that Hussein is Obama's middle name. How can it be forbidden to refer to someone by his actual name? Most accepted restrictions on speech concern statements that are untrue: you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater if there isn't a fire, and you can't spread harmful lies about people. But this case is different: the MSM is forbidding Americans to tell the truth. It may seem like a small matter. I hope that with the perspective of time it seems even smaller. But I think there's a chance it's a symptom of something bigger.

Personally I am not too concerned about Obama's middle name, and I am not too concerned about whether he is Muslim. I am concerned about whether he is truthful, and given that his middle name is Hussein I don't think he should hide it. Americans like to use the middle names of presidents, and since Obama is hoping to be president, he's hoping to be called by his middle name. (Americans also like to use initials for their presidents, and if Obama and the MSM aren't comfortable with BHO, BO will be their only other option.) I also don't think Obama should welcome or accept the MSM's effort to restrict the speech of Americans when they talk about him. But he does accept it.

Now if Obama and the MSM had concocted a little title for the leader and insisted that everybody use it when referring to him, that would be offensive in a very obvious way. Insisting that references to the leader not use a certain word is much more subtly offensive. But there is a common principle at work, the principle that we can and should be told what to say. So I must confess that I have grown resentful of the way the use of Obama's middle name has been prohibited. What is a name, anyway? It's what you're called. If it's OK for Hussein to use Hussein, then it's OK for everyone else to use it too. From now on, I'm calling him Hussein. Why not? It's easier to say than "Dubya".

MSM Exclusive: Katie and Ayers, One-on-One

Just kidding.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that nobody has interviewed Bill Ayers and asked him about his relationship with former neighbor Barack Obama? Find out what it was like to have an accidental brush with a talented Chicagoan before anybody imagined he could run for president? Get Ayers' ironic perspective on the way his practically nonexistent relationship with someone he hardly knew has been blown all out of proportion by the capitalist-controlled media? With Ayers' name on everyone's lips, wouldn't journalists want to get the story? It's a natural!

I wouldn't think getting an interview with Bill Ayers would be hard. He's a public figure, and not just because he was a terrorist in the Weather Underground. He was "Educator of the Year" in Chicago. Was praised by Mayor Richard Daley. Ayers has given lots of interviews, including one right after 9/11 if I'm not mistaken. Had his picture taken in his University of Illinois-Chicago Circle office. Posed with his foot on the American flag. The guy's not unknown and he's not shy. Ayers loves to talk. He's a journalist's dream. The story is ripe for the plucking.

So when are we going to see it?

I did notice somewhere on the web that Ayers has declined to give interviews until after the election. I don't know whether this is true or not, since I haven't tried to interview him myself.

If it's not true, then I repeat my plea to the MSM: what's holding up the Ayers interview?

If it is true that Ayers declines to be interviewed, then I have some other questions.

Like, how do we know it's true? Who has sought to interview Bill Ayers? Has Brokaw invited him to appear on "Meet the Press"? Does Matt Lauer call every day to try to get him on "The Today Show"? Did the NY Times contact him for their front-page story about his non-close-relationship with Barack Obama? And if they did, and Ayers declined to be interviewed, why haven't they reported Ayers' refusal?

And this question: why would Bill Ayers decline interviews? He's not what you'd call a private person. Normally when a figure is in the news but they decline interviews, it means they're hiding something. What could Bill Ayers be hiding? It's not illegal to be on a foundation board. And it's not illegal to be a not close friend of Barack Obama. You'd think the worst that could happen would be that the interview would be boring.

Maybe I've watched too many movies, but if Bill Ayers isn't talking, he thinks there's something he isn't talking about. Therefore, his silence is all the more reason that journalists should want to talk to him. Of course they can't make him submit to an interview. But they don't need his permission to surround his house, follow him everywhere, and shout at the camera about his evasions. Why aren't they doing that? (Not even Fox.)

The public needs to demand an interview with Bill Ayers. Even if we don't get it, we can call attention to the fact that we aren't getting it, and what that implies. And we can also call attention to the fact that the MSM, by all appearances, has collaborated with Bill Ayers in keeping whatever secret he's keeping.

Let's everyone spread this question around the web: When will they interview Ayers? And let's inundate every medium we know of with the question: When will you interview Ayers? When? When? When? We demand to know. We won't stop filling your inboxes until you tell us!!!!!

"Qualifications": A Lesson in Liberal Ideology

During the past month we have repeatedly heard liberal commentators proclaim that Sarah Palin is "unqualified" to serve as vice-president. While followers of one party or the other have always disparaged the rival party's candidates because their policies would have undesirable effects, sometimes supporting their critiques with illustrations from the opponent's past record, the particular term "unqualified" has not often been used of candidates running for election to executive office. Of course I am sure that many liberals thought that Ronald Reagan was unqualified for the presidency (I confess that I did). But the term "unqualified" and the paradigm it implies did not, to my recollection, play an important role in the public and MSM discourse during the campaigns of 1980 and 1984. In the current election the demand from the MSM that Sarah Palin prove that she is "qualified"-- or rather submit to a public inquisition by Katie Couric to produce evidence that she isn't qualified--this is something new in American politics.

Something new in American electoral politics, that is. In the past we've heard plenty about candidates being qualified or unqualified in another political realm: nominees for the judiciary. The inquisitions into Sarah Palin's "qualifications" for office, and into John McCain's "vetting" of her, represent the importation of a paradigm routinely applied in deliberations about the appointment of civil service employees and judges.

In particular, during the past three decades nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court have been subjected to dramatic public interrogations by the U.S. Senate. Hearings like these constitute the implicit background of the current demand that Sarah Palin appear before journalists and respond to any questions they might ask, as if the press had a right and indeed a responsibility to subpoena candidates for electoral office and compel them to produce evidence of qualification under oath. (An item on the web today quotes Charles Gibson as saying that journalists have a responsibility to "expose" Sarah Palin.)

The fact that liberals have transferred this discourse from congressional hearings to public elections reveals a lot about how liberals think. It can help us understand what they see in Sarah Palin that horrifies them, and the qualities that nonliberals see but liberals overlook. It also can help us understand what liberals think about elections and about us, their fellow-citizens and fellow-voters.

The evaluation of potential judges according to a standard of "qualification" has long been institutionalized: organs of the legal profession regularly examine and rate the work of judges. This makes a lot of sense, because of what judges do. The task of a judge is that of applying an existing body of legislation and judicial precedent to the particular cases that will come before his or her bench. A satisfactory judge must have expert command of this knowledge or he cannot do the job. Moreover, the judge's decisions, in order to be effective, must be able to withstand appeal to higher courts that implement the same body of law and precedent according to essentially the same principles of judicial logic. The work of a judge, therefore, by its very nature is implicated in impersonal standards that the judge is supposed to put into practice: the judge represents a bench. This body of knowledge is the same for any judge who might be serving at the same bench, and so it makes perfect sense to demand approximately the same knowledge and legal skills of any prospective judges under consideration for a given bench.

Since judges are evaluated according to their professional expertise, those who evaluate them must be professionals who possess the same expertise. Judges are trained lawyers and members of the bar, and they are evaluated by fellow members of the bar who are experts in the relevant jurisprudence. The most important judicial seats are filled by appointment rather than election, and even when seats are regularly filled by election, voters accept and appreciate the evaluations of professional boards, because only legal professionals can tell them whether a judge or prospective judge knows what he will need to know to do the job.

The job of a U.S. president or vice-president is very unlike that of a judge or civil servant, so it should not be surprising that there are no institutions for formally evaluating candidates for president and proclaiming them as either "qualified" or "unqualified". In each presidential term the officeholder confronts a unique array of problems and opportunities. To a very large degree a president is entrusted with choosing how to distribute the administration's attention to these matters. Moreover the president does not merely deal with situations that come before him, as judges deal with cases; presidents can initiate legislation and diplomacy, issue executive orders, and sometimes authorize military action. Every presidency is different, and that uniqueness is built in to the office itself. For that reason it is impossible, even for former presidents, to say exactly what the "qualifications" for the presidency are.

The office of president is also filled by the election of voters, not through appointment by someone deemed better capable because of their professional expertise. It is true that the framers of the Constitution devised the Electoral College to be the body that would select the president. But it has never actually functioned that way, and the electors were never supposed to be experts.

Ultimately it is the voters who decide whether they wish someone to serve as their president, and if anyone were to pass judgment on the qualifications of a presidential candidate it would be they.

To summarize the previous two points: in our system the presidency is not conceived of as a professional position like a judge's, and presidents are not selected or authorized by professional licensing boards.

The fact that liberals are making such a fuss about the Governor of Alaska's alleged lack of "qualifications" to serve as vice-president shows not merely that liberals have a problem with Gov. Palin, but that they have a problem with the characteristics of the presidency and vice-presidency outlined above. When liberals talk about the "presidency," they are not in fact referring to the office now held by George Bush and held previously by Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, JFK, FDR, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson. They are referring to an imaginary office that is much more like a professional civil service or judicial position. Some (deluded) liberals may think the presidency is already that, and that President Bush is the one dreaming he holds a job that doesn't exist. Others may want to make the presidency the equivalent of a professional civil service position. But either way, when liberals make proclamations about whether presidential and vice-presidential candidates are "qualified," the presidency they have in mind is not the real one, but the imaginary liberal presidency that is occupied only by qualified professionals who have been authorized by expert practitioners of the same profession.

This conception of the presidency is not merely an accident. It is intrinsic to liberalism, which is an ideology that might accurately be described as the political expression of social science. According to classical social science human affairs follow regular patterns like those of inanimate nature and can therefore be studied "scientifically." From this premise it follows that the only true and valid understanding of human affairs is that of trained experts, and that all practitioners of actual politics should either be experts or should implement "policies" that experts provide for them.

Therefore from the liberal standpoint, political progress requires that the government be controlled by experts, that office holders answer to experts rather than to voters (just as judges answer to the law and not to public opinion), and that the requirements of public service be defined in terms of obedience to the authority of social science expertise. In this framework, office holders are not supposed to lead, and the views of the voters are not supposed to matter. Office holders and voters alike are supposed to believe and do what experts tell them to.

In this ideal liberal world the board of experts that enforces the progressive regime of social science is supposed to be the news media, acting with the advice and support of higher academic experts who are quoted in interviews. The media (those heroes who saved America from fascism by exposing Watergate and publishing the Pentagon Papers) believe they have been entrusted with the quasi-official responsibility of exposing incompetence in office. The media also believe they are not expected to report news of actual events that readers may want to learn about, but to transmit images and conclusions that experts have determined are appropriate, so that members of the public do not get any wrong ideas: if, according to social science experts, criminals are not a problem, the NY Times may publish statistics about crimes and their alleged causes, but nothing about criminals. It may not be news, but it's "truth", since it's what social scientists have told the journalists we should know.

Why then do liberals say that the Governor of Alaska is "unqualified" to be vice-president? And why will we hear in the next election too that the Republican candidates are ridiculously "unqualified"? Is it because Republicans just can't find anyone who got a higher grade than C in political science to run for office? Or because Republican voters don't know the difference between an expert like Joe Biden and a rube who winks at them? Liberals might say "all of the above," but the truth is, "none of the above." Liberals will continue to find non-liberal candidates "unqualified" because certain people, like Republicans and the Postliberal here, don't subscribe to the liberal ideology: we don't believe that government should be an expression of social science. We think that human affairs do not follow such regular patterns and laws as social scientists would have us believe, and that the policies of social scientists can and indeed have led us into great error. We believe it is better to have officeholders who think for themselves, and that citizens who think for themselves are also better than citizens who have been indoctrinated.

So why then did John McCain select Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee? Was it because he submitted her to a Ph.D. oral examination about foreign policy and decided that she passed it? Or because he meant to give her the exam and forgot? Or because he thought she could win votes even though she flunked the exam? None of the above. I am absolutely sure that McCain selected Palin because he knew about her work as the Governor of Alaska, he got to know her personally, and he concluded that she had what it took for the job of vice-president and running mate that he needed done. Of course, that wouldn't be the way to appoint a judge. But for a vice-presidential candidate it makes perfect sense, much better sense than the process of "vetting" demanded by liberals who know about "issues" but don't know what vice-presidents and presidents actually do.

The problem here is not Palin's ignorance. It's the ignorance of liberals. These textbook-taught experts have no capacity for self-criticism. They do not know that real scientists test their own hypotheses and not just those of rivals. They are so blinded by their social science paradigm that they cannot even imagine an alternative to it, and so they simply dismiss anyone who doesn't subscribe to it as an idiot, religious fanatic, or some other kind of intellectual deviant. Sorry, liberals. Some people aren't like you. They're smarter. Sarah Palin is one of them.

And the voters--including those who actually are liberals themselves--are also smarter than liberals think they are. If anything about the present election is more aggravating than the media-bashing of Sarah Palin, it is the persistence of the media in attempting to coerce us into voting for Obama. It's offensive and disturbing. It's not just about electing Obama; it symptomatizes a lack of faith in the voters, and therefore a lack of faith in democracy. We who think for ourselves had better show our protectors what thinking people can do. Casting a vote for McCain and against Obama would be one step. Dropping subscriptions and turning off the news would also help--with the web, who needs the media any more? But there are other steps that may be taken after the election. The Postliberal will propose some. And if anybody has suggestions, please share.

Obama's Polling Numbers

The polls are looking good for Barack Obama. But what do they really mean?

The current polls reflect a mood of confusion and panic among the voters. The nation is facing a crisis, voters were taken by surprise, they don't understand what happened, what will happen next, or what to do. In such a situation, when a voter is asked his or her preference about the upcoming election, "undecided" would be a very lame answer. So it should not be surprising that voters who only two weeks ago were undecided or leaning have declared themselves for one side, at least temporarily.

Nor is it particularly surprising that more should have declared a preference for Obama rather than McCain, since the polls have indicated all along that in 2008 the Democratic brand is preferred to the Republican. And since the particular crisis at hand concerns the economy, the reflex preference is for Obama, the Democrat.

I fail to see that much has happened in the campaigns themselves to move voters from Undecided to either candidate in the past two weeks. Some deflation in the Palin bubble may have contributed. But the main factors appear to have been external to the campaigns and the candidates. In other words, Obama has gotten lucky. But except for early votes, which probably are not cast by undecided voters anyway, none of this luck actually goes on the scoreboard. Obama is running up a lot of yardage. That doesn't always lead to points.

Perhaps a football game is not the most relevant analogy. What about George Bush's approval ratings in the aftermath of 9/11? Very, very high. But they didn't reflect an underlying confidence in his leadership, and they didn't stay high forever. If people didn't care much for Bush on September 10, 2001, and didn't care much for him on September 10, 2003, why did they support him so much on October 11, 2001? Not really anything that he did. But the public was in a state of shock, and "I don't know" wouldn't have been a very responsible attitude.

Obama now is enjoying a temporary rise in preference, but there is no reason to believe that it reflects a fundamental change in the way voters think about him or McCain. As the sense of crisis passes--even if the economic distress becomes regular, and not a new shock a day--voters will again return to thinking about what they will do. When that happens, Obama will have to win their support on the basis of what they know about him rather than their confusion about everything. If Obama can rise to that challenge, he will win the election.

But it will not be easy for him without more luck of the sort that has helped him for the past two weeks. The fundamental weakness of Obama's candidacy is Obama's complete lack of accomplishments. Voters have no reason to trust him to fulfill his promises, because they have no reason to think that he is up to the job. And even if Obama could give them reasons by scowling and talking in a deep voice, his campaign's message is still Hate Bush, Hate McCain, over and over and over again. It isn't a very persuasive message, especially coming from a candidate who also claims that he is a transformative healer.

Moreover, many of the deep weaknesses in Obama's candidacy are only beginning to come out now. In the long run the financial crisis will hurt Obama's reputation a lot. Who ever heard of ACORN before House Democrats tried to channel billions of dollars of taxpayer bailout money into it? But Americans know about ACORN now, and more find out as every day passes, and there's no telling how much there is to know. For a while Obama was bashing McCain for causing the mess through his advocacy of deregulation. But voters who have seen the CSPAN video of the 2004 House hearings on regulating Fannie and Freddie are not going to find that line persuasive at all.

On the contrary, it is now Obama who can and should be put on the defensive about his involvement with ACORN, and what ACORN's methods and goals really are. Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright--these associations, significant and discreditable though they are, are merely symptoms of Obama's ideological commitments and activities. Obama knows as well as anyone that voters will not be pleased to learn what ACORN is, much less how deeply he has been involved in it. That's why Obama and his "Lie Squads" have tried everything to keep it hidden throughout the campaign.

Needless to say, voters won't be learning much about ACORN from the MSM (or Pravda as I sometimes call it). And in the short run the unremitting crowd-noise of the MSM does help Obama. But news travels very fast these days, and more and more people are finding out things that the MSM doesn't want them to know. And they are also finding out that they can't trust the MSM. Ill-gotten gains can backfire. It won't help Obama when people have time to think about how many lies they've heard about him. They'll resent it.

I'm not predicting anything about the election. But I don't think that Obama's star is on an upward course, despite appearances this week. Much trouble is breaking around him. If he survives the election and gets to the White House, the president he'll commune with most at night will be Richard Nixon. That second term must have been rough.

Debate Format Biased: Favors Journalists

Should Gwen Ifill be disqualified from moderating the VP debate because of her book on Obama? Absolutely. There is no reason to expect her to be neutral, and the expectation of neutrality is precisely the reason for having the debates moderated by supposedly professional mainstream journalists.

But who said that journalists are neutral anyway? If that fiction was ever believable, if journalists made a serious effort to maintain trust in their professionalism and neutrality, those days are far behind us. I don't know whether Gwen Ifill is more biased than anybody else; I just know that there's reason to doubt it, and in that case the debate becomes merely a press conference and not a "bipartisan forum" for the benefit of the voters.

One of the problems with the present system is that it pays Gwen Ifill and others in her line of work a compliment they don't deserve. The bipartisan national debate commission should quit dignifying the sordid profession of journalism. Let the candidates speak on whatever issues they wish, with agreed upon time-limits, and some provision for responding to each other's points--as in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Minimal moderation is called for. Let the candidates suggest moderaters from any profession, provided that they agree they can manage the clock fairly--the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be fine if the candidates agreed. But why put journalists between the candidates and the voters? So many of the questions they ask are stupid. "Where do each of you stand on the bailout package?" The bailout package then still being negotiated. How can anybody have a sensible discussion around an unanswerable question like that?

If journalists have to be involved, it would make more sense to have the candidates ask the questions and let the journalists answer, as if they were giving a briefing to the president. After all they lay claim to our attention by implying that they know all about sophisticated matters like the Bush Doctrine, etc. etc. Then if a candidate caught a journalist in a serious gaffe, he could act presidential and fire the at-fault adviser on the spot. There's a press conference for the post-liberal era.