Judging Obama By The Company He Keeps
Rod Dreher's column in The Dallas Morning News Points section reads like a page from the John McCain playbook. Not one word about Iraq, the federal debt, the sinking economy, the endangered environment, immigration, or any of the other important issues facing America in 2008. Instead, Dreher tars Barack Obama by association with others, making it appear that this candidate, who was only eight years old at the height the Vietnam War protests, is a bomb-throwing, fire-breathing, 1960s unreconstructed radical.
Dreher argues that "It's not 'guilt by association' to inquire to what extent Mr. Obama ... shares the views and assumptions of the soixante-huitards." (Look it up. Dreher is dressing Obama up not only as a 1960s rioter, striker, and revolutionary, but French to boot! Such vocabulary. Maybe it's the McCainiacs who are the elitists!)
Dreher poses the question but spends no time answering it. It's not like Obama's life is a secret. There's no evidence in Obama's public service, which began in the 1980s, to suggest that he is a leftover 1960s-era radical or is at all nostalgic for the politics of an era he himself cannot remember. Obama has denounced and rejected the views of Wright and Ayers. But it serves John McCain well just to raise a question, to damn Obama by insinuation, to convict him of guilt by association. And Rod Dreher is all too willing to do the dirty job as a loyal foot soldier in John McCain's campaign.
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