For What It's Worth

An opinion from the editor's desk

 

CSW 08-17

Strategic Status Assessment - '08 Presidential Campaign

As the general election draws closer, I will periodically give my assessment of the state of the presidential campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama.

As of this writing, 07/07/08, Barack H. Obama is in the lead. He has several things going for him: an immense hatred of President Bush from Obama's left cronies, the slowing economy, high energy prices (gasoline in particular), high food prices, the Iraq war, and McCain's age. Neither candidate has much of a solution for any of these issues. Obama claims, however, if McCain is elected we will get more of the same old Bush policies.

When it comes to Obama's specific positives, well, there is a limited and questionable list, none of which addresses the issues. For example, a couple of the things he touts in his political ads as his presidential qualifiers are: he is from a racially mixed family (white mother, black father), his maternal grandparents were from Kansas where they had a corner on the market for hard times and instilled in him the values of the Kansas working class; Obama's father left home when Obama was very young and he was raised by his single mother; he learned what it was like to grow up ('till he was five years old) among the poor although ages 5 to 10 were spent in Indonesia attending one of the best and most expensive elementary schools in that country. His hardships continued as he moved at age ten to Hawaii and was enrolled in a Hawaiian private elementary school at a cost of $15,000 a year, graduated high school from the same expensive private school, worked odd jobs and financed his stints at Columbia University in New York City and Harvard Law School in Boston (notably two of the most elite and expensive schools in America) and now, after all those trials and tribulations, he wants to be our president.

The courage of this man is amazing. I don't know how he does it. It must have been very difficult for an underprivileged poor kid raised by a single mother to fit in with the elitist crowd of Hawaii's rich. As a matter of fact, the peer pressure was so intense that he indulged in drugs and alcohol in high school just to escape the distressful situations in which he found himself. Oh, the sacrifices he made.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to adversities, those endured by Obama are of presidential magnitude. They beat the heck out of five years in a Vietnamese P.O.W. torture camp, don't they?