Yahoo! News: US Elections - Inside Obama - by William F.Buckley
US Elections - Inside Obama - by William F.Buckley
One reason for the spectacular success of Barack Obama is the accumulation of burdens he faced and overcame. His father was black, the family destitute; early life was a struggle in Hawaii and Indonesia. What does it take to transform that into acceptance by Columbia University? OK, it seems that affirmative action leaned a heavy shoulder on the admissions office door. But wait! Obama was then accepted by Harvard Law School and --finally -- he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review. There is no reason to suppose that the admissions people, or his colleagues on the Review, said, Whoa! Here's a guy homely enough personally, and cosmopolitan enough in background, he might become a presidential candidate!
In 1948, when Sen. Robert Taft announced that he was seeking the GOP presidential nomination, a reporter asked his wife, "Mrs. Taft, do you consider your husband a common man?" She turned on him and said: "My husband was first in his class at Yale College. Then he went to Harvard Law School, where he graduated first in his class." Robert Taft was not to be likened to the common man, and neither is Barack Obama, who can do a great deal urging the younger generation to emulate what he, Obama, did in working to be educated, and mastering the law, and of course expressing gratitude to free American institutions that recognize and encourage advancement. But it is not unimportant to remind the voters of that generation that there is nothing, nothing that the state can do to replicate Obama's success for a million others.
Labels: Obama, US elections
