Whom would Obama represent?

“I think,” [Obama] mused to New York Times reporter James Traub, “that if I am the face of American foreign policy and American power … if you can tell people ‘We have a president in the White House who still has a grandmother living in a hut on the shores of Lake Victoria and has a sister who’s half-Indonesian, married to a Chinese-Canadian,’ then they’re going to think that he may have a better sense of what’s going on in our lives and in our country. And they’d be right.”

That quote, posted at VFR in January, underscores a point reader that Adela G. made recently, that the main objection to Obama is not the anti-white theology of his church, but the fact that because of his strange background he simply does not represent America.

Which opens a interesting line of questioning that ought to be directed at him by a reporter in a presidential debate: “Senator, based on your statement that one of your qualifications for the presidency is that you have a grandmother living in a hut in Africa and a half-Indonesian half-sister married to an ethnic Chinese, and therefore, as you said, people in Third World countries will understand that you understand their concerns, if you are elected president, will you be representing the United States, or Africa and the Third World?” If he answers, “We’re living in a global age, so of course I will speak for the whole world,” then he’s admitted that he will not represent America, and therefore he cannot be relied on to hold America’s interests first. If he says, “Of course, I will represent America,” then we only need read the above quote back to him, and his statement about intending to represent America will be shown to be at least questionable.

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Adela G. writes:

I’m honored that you paraphrased my argument about Obama not being suitable to represent the America people as their president because he is not representative of the vast majority of Americans.

I like this argument because it removes nearly all inflammatory topics from the subject and poses not an arguable moral point but a nearly irrefutable practical one.* I object to Obama as a possible American President not because of his race, ethnicity or religion but because his specific background is, in the context of that of most Americans’ backgrounds, particular to the point being peculiar. He could never be said to represent us because he is, only nominally, one of us. Further, his perspective, if not un-American, is distinctly non-American. He seems more eager to represent global concerns on the world stage than American ones.

Finally, I am perplexed every time he mentions that in no country but America is his story even possible. He always says that as though it’s good thing.

* I say my argument is a “nearly irrefutable practical one” because left-wingers don’t even want America represented on the world stage in any terms acceptable to traditionalists. So the fact that Obama would not be representative of America nor willing to represent her is, in their eyes, a point in his favor.

Buddy writes:

You ask “Whom would Obama represent?”

To find out, go to the front page of Obama’s website, and click on the drop-down menu under “People.” You’ll see African-Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Women, Environmentalists, etc., but not one item for, oh, I don’t know, “heterosexual white men with jobs.” The only categories that come close are Labor, Veterans and People of Faith. If you’re management or a white-collar worker, you don’t exist to the Obama campaign.

For a comparison, I checked McCain’s website. His analogous drop-down menu is titled “Issues.” I prefer to have our political battlegrounds defined by issues than by groups of people.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 06, 2008 10:59 AM | Send