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| April 14, 2008 11:50 AM
Off-the-Record Obama
The Politics of Meaning on steroids.
By Peter Wehner
Senator Barack Obama finds himself in the midst of a controversy in the aftermath of comments that he made at a private fundraiser in San Francisco on April 6, during which he explained his difficulty appealing to working-class voters in Pennsylvania. He said, “It’s not surprising that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment. . . .”
Senator Obama’s words are significant because they were said off-the-record, meaning they provided a more authentic glimpse into the attitudes of Obama than a carefully scripted event. Nonetheless, his words were not merely careless; his comments were based on a carefully constructed, if deeply condescending, explanation.
Beneath the enormous charm and cool persona of Obama beats the heart of an arrogant man. With increasing frequency, the 46-year-old one-term senator from Illinois orates as though he resides at Olympian Heights. By his presumptuous demeanor, he suggests that he sees what no one else sees, and can do what no other person can do; he is America’s healing balm.
Even his efforts at damage control radiate arrogance. Speaking in Muncie, Indiana, after the story broke, Obama said “Lately, there has been a little, typical sort of political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my home town in Illinois who are bitter.”
The flare-up, you see, happened because Obama is the Great Truth-Teller amidst the masses, many of whom can’t handle the truth. Once it dawned on Obama’s aides that expediency demanded an apology, the Senator offered a qualified mea culpa: “Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.”
So if Senator Obama worded things in a way that made people feel offended (rather than worded things in a way that is offensive), well, he regrets that.
And at last night’s “Compassion Forum,” hosted by CNN, Obama accused his critics of “misconstruing . . . [his] words” effectively turning the tables on those who take issue with his comments. In Obama’s construal, he is the offended party, and any criticism directed at him is a mere “distraction” from the real issues of the campaign. This method of damage control, as that displayed in the Reverend Wright controversy, implies that simply by questioning the candidate, one is out of line, unfashionable, and uncouth.
I suspect these comments will be quite damaging to Obama because they reinforce (in spite of his efforts to equivocate during this campaign) his conventional liberalism. In this case, though, it’s not simply a matter of him being liberal on economic or domestic issues; it demonstrates that he is a cultural liberal, which has been a particularly lethal charge in presidential elections. It is another brush stroke on the canvas of a man who burst onto the national scene less than four years ago and about whom we know very little. But with every passing week, it seems, we are learning more about the Man of Hope.
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