The Muslim Question 2

American Soldiers Die To Keep Us Free

Barack Obama, the man who sees the world as a vehicle for his autobiography, continually takes reality, sticks himself in the picture, then adds his own spin. Generally, he forgets to tell how slow he is to understand much about reality. For instance, you know that Chicago church he just resigned from? Why did it take him 20 years to realize hate-churches are a problem? Will it take him that long to catch onto each of the other simplistic concepts he plans to “change” when “uniting” America and the world when he’s it’s supreme leader?

Timing may not be everything, but it’s close to everything. The rest is comprised of what one leaves out. Obama’s timing and omission tell you all you need to know about him. This article, by William Kristol, tells you something about Obama using just one of his many recent omissions.

Read on, I think you too will find it very telling.

What Obama Left Out | By WILLIAM KRISTOL | June 2, 2008

Commencement speeches are hard.

I gave one at a college about seven years ago. I labored over it, consulting orations from years past, writing and rewriting drafts. I ended up with remarks that struck me — even while I delivered them — as banal and platitudinous. Luckily, no one seemed to be paying much attention — and at least I kept it short. I don’t think I did too much damage to the enjoyment of the day by the graduating students and their parents.

Since then, whenever I look at the annual roundup of commencement addresses, I can’t help but admire those who can pull off this mode of speechifying.

Barack Obama, you won’t be surprised to learn, can pull it off. He spoke on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., pinch-hitting for Senator Ted Kennedy, on the theme of service to our country. The speech was skillfully crafted and well delivered, the grace notes were graceful, and the exhortations to public service seemed heartfelt but not cloying.

The speech was a success. It’s also revealing — about Obama’s view of himself and of public service.
Obama chooses to introduce the notion of public service from an autobiographical point of view. In college, he explains, “I began to notice a world beyond myself.” So while his friends were seeking jobs on Wall Street, he applied for jobs as a grass-roots activist. And one day, a group of churches in Chicago offered him a job as a community organizer for “$12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an old, beat-up car.”

“And I said yes.”

Those four words form their own paragraph in the prepared text. Obama wants us to be impressed by the drama of his spurning the big bucks, by his bold acceptance of such a pittance of money in order that he could do good.

Leave aside the fact that two years elapsed between Obama’s graduation from Columbia in 1983 and his heading off to Chicago in 1985. Dramatic foreshortening is, after all, sometimes necessary. And leave aside whether $14,000 in 1985 was really such a shockingly low salary for someone recently out of college — in inflation-adjusted dollars, it’s about what we pay entry-level editorial assistants today at The Weekly Standard.

Obama’s point is that he went on to do good in Chicago — and that the college graduates to whom he’s speaking should follow in his exemplary footsteps. Of course, most politicians do admire themselves and their excellent careers. So perhaps one shouldn’t make too much of Obama’s sin of self-regard.

More striking is Obama’s sin of omission. In the rest of the speech, he goes on to detail — at some length — the “so many ways to serve” that are available “at this defining moment in our history.” There’s the Peace Corps, there’s renewable energy, there’s education, there’s poverty — there are all kinds of causes you can take up “should you take the path of service.”

But there’s one obvious path of service Obama doesn’t recommend — or even mention: military service. He does mention war twice: “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” And, we face “big challenges like war and recession.” But there’s nothing about serving your country in uniform.

It can’t be that the possibility of military service as an admirable form of public service didn’t occur to Obama. Only the day before, Obama had been squabbling with John McCain about veterans’ benefits. He said then, “Obviously I revere our soldiers and want to make sure they are being treated with honor and respect.”

And the day after the Wesleyan commencement, Obama was in New Mexico, where he read an eloquent and appropriate Memorial Day tribute to our fallen soldiers.

But at an elite Northeastern college campus, Obama obviously felt no need to disturb the placid atmosphere of easy self-congratulation. He felt no need to remind students of a different kind of public service — one that entails more risks than community organizing. He felt no need to tell the graduating seniors in the lovely groves of Middletown that they should be grateful to their peers who were far away facing dangers on behalf of their country.

Nor did Obama choose to mention all those college graduates who are now entering the military, either for a tour of duty or as a career, in order to serve their country. He certainly felt no impulse to wonder whether the nation wouldn’t be better off if R.O.T.C. were more widely and easily available on elite college campuses.

Obama failed to challenge — even gently — what he must have assumed would be the prejudices of much of his audience and indulged in a soft patriotism of low expectations.
Was this a public service?